Google removed the per-lead dispute button and moved to automatic crediting. Your job shifted from arguing individual leads to shaping what the system sends you in the first place — service selection, service area, business hours and accurate lead marking.

On this page

• What changed with Local Services Ads lead disputes?
• How can I still get credit for a bad LSA lead?
• What levers replace disputing individual LSA leads?
• What number should I judge Local Services Ads on?

What changed with Local Services Ads lead disputes?

The per-lead dispute button that most published guides still describe is gone, and some credit categories that used to be disputable were removed rather than automated.

This is why so much LSA advice fails in practice: it sends contractors to an interface element that no longer exists, and when they cannot find it they assume they are missing something.

How can I still get credit for a bad LSA lead?

Mark leads accurately in the dashboard, or on the Leads page in Google Ads once your account has moved there. Booked, not booked, and the reason. This is the signal Google uses, and it is the only structured feedback channel you have left.

Use the lead feedback form on leads that are genuinely invalid, such as spam or a duplicate of a lead you already received. Google also reassesses charged leads over time and credits low-quality ones automatically, usually within 30 days.

Do not expect credit for a wrong service or an out-of-area caller. Google no longer credits "job type not serviced" or "geo not serviced" leads. Your service list and service area are the only defence against those, which is why the next section matters more than this one.

Escalate patterns, not instances. A single bad lead is not worth your time. Fifty bad leads with a shared characteristic — same service type, same area, same time of day — is a case worth raising with support, and it is the kind of thing that gets acted on.

What levers replace disputing individual LSA leads?

Since you can no longer argue leads one at a time, the levers that matter are upstream:

Service selection. The single biggest source of junk leads is being listed for services you do not really want. Every service category you leave enabled is an invitation.

Service area. Tighter is usually better. Out-of-area calls are the most common junk category and the most avoidable.

Business hours. Leads arriving when nobody answers convert badly and damage responsiveness, which feeds back into ranking.

Job types within a category. Where the product allows it, exclude the job types that never book for you.

What number should I judge Local Services Ads on?

Do not judge LSA on cost per lead. Judge it on cost per booked job, reconciled against your own booking system.

Cost per lead is a number the platform can see. Cost per booked job is a number the business can spend. They move independently, and a channel that looks expensive on lead cost and cheap on booked jobs is a channel you should be scaling.

Related questions

Someone sees me in Local Services Ads, then goes to my website and calls — how do I know that lead came from LSA?

You mostly cannot, and any system that claims to close that gap completely is overstating it. What you can do is measure the size of the gap and stop making decisions that assume it is zero. Read the full answer.

Why am I first on one Local Services Ads search and nowhere on the next?

LSA ranking is recomputed per search and is heavily driven by proximity to the searcher, your responsiveness, review profile, and whether your budget can still serve. Two searches minutes apart from different postcodes are genuinely different auctions. Read the full answer.

Do more Google reviews actually get you more Local Services Ads leads, or is that a myth?

Not a myth — review score and review count are both stated ranking inputs. But they are slower and weaker levers than proximity and responsiveness, and the marginal review matters far less at 200 reviews than at 5. Read the full answer.

Written by Usama Khan, who runs Google Ads for e-commerce brands and home-services companies at AdventurAds. Figures are from accounts under active management and are anonymised. Last reviewed 2026-09-14.