When potential customers find your Local Services Ad on Google, they may call the Google forwarding number displayed no your ad, or send a message request to contact you.
You can always sign in to the Local Services Ads app or your lead inbox on desktop to find a record of your leads, contact potential customers, and review booked appointments. From the mobile app or your lead inbox, you can:
- Listen to phone lead recordings (US only)
- Review booked jobs in the app
- Receive emails and app notifications about new leads from potential customers
- Respond to leads
- Review phone calls generated by your ad
Learn more About ad rankings.
Receive and respond to leads
You can receive leads either as inbound calls or messages from potential customers. In both cases, you'll be notified about new leads through a mobile app notification on your phone (if you have the app installed). Touch the notification to find more details about the lead in the app. The email address that was used to create the account will receive an email with a clickable link to find lead details in your lead inbox on desktop.
In addition to receiving emails and notifications, you can sign in to your Local Services Ads account and find new leads in the app and web inbox at any time by going to the "Leads" section within your account.
Phone calls
The number displayed on your ad is a Google forwarding number. When potential customers call this number, the call will be forwarded to your actual business number. The number displayed is a dynamic number, meaning it will change often as different people search on Google and click and interact with your ad. There is no way to choose your tracking number.
When you get a call from your ad, you’ll hear the message: “Call from Google.” That way, you’ll know which customers your ad is bringing in. Note: You may not hear the “Call from Google” message if you have any type of call forwarding or VoIP set up on the business phone number on your Local Services account.
Note that in the US and Canada, all inbound calls from customers via the Google forwarding number are recorded by Google to improve quality and support policies and research (and customers are notified of this by a pre-recorded message immediately before you hear the “Call from Google” notification). Learn more About Local Services data.
Message leads
- When a customer sends a message, their name, ZIP code, job details, and phone number are shared with providers. Google will route your back-and-forth communications with providers through an anonymized alias.
- Message leads aren't available for health care verticals.
When a customer submits a new message lead, you'll be notified through a mobile app notification on your phone and receive an email. You can reply directly to Google’s email to message the customer, or you can use the mobile app to respond to the new lead in one of 3 ways:
- Reply to the customer by entering your message in the conversation box and tapping Send. This will deliver your message as an email or text message to the customer.
- Call the customer by tapping the phone icon in the app, or calling the number listed on the lead page.
- Decline the request by tapping the Decline button. If you decline the request, it will be removed and the customer will be notified. You can send a response with more information about why the request was declined. Once declined, requests can be recovered if something changes.
You can change whether to allow customers to contact you by message lead from the lead inbox on desktop:
- In your Local Services Ads lead inbox, tap the menu
in the top left.
- Select Profile & budget from the menu.
- Tap the message leads toggle to turn the feature on or off.
in the top left.It may take a few hours before your changes go live on Google Search.
Once you respond to a new lead, it becomes “active". You can find all active leads in the “active” section of the inbox. You'll also receive email and app notifications if there are new customer messages or calls on active leads.
When you send a message, Google doesn’t share your email address with consumers. Instead, Google routes your back-and-forth message communications with providers through an anonymized alias.
Messaging responsiveness estimates
If you have 2 or more message leads in the last 90 days, estimated messaging response times will appear in your ads. Estimates range from “a few minutes” to “one day”. The estimate is calculated using your average response time in the last 90 days. For questions about messaging responsiveness calculation or if you think your estimate is incorrect, contact support.
Note: You can opt in to the Local Services Ads booking leads feature. Learn more About direct booking leads in Local Services Ads.
Pause and turn off your ad
If you're on vacation, or if you're too busy to receive incoming requests, you can always pause your ad:
- In your Local Services Ads lead inbox, tap the menu
in the top left.
- Select Profile & budget from the menu.
- Switch your ad’s status on or off using the toggle button
.
in the top left.You can also schedule your ad to run only when it is convenient for you. If your ad is paused or it is outside your schedule hours, a free version of your listing may be displayed.
Manage response time
It's highly recommended that you respond to leads as soon as they come in. Having a consistently fast response time could improve your ad’s ranking on search and increase your ability to receive leads.
When you respond to a new lead, the lead becomes “active” and moves to the active inbox. The active inbox contains all leads where you’ve had a recent interaction with the customer. Google considers either a call or a message in the past 15 days a recent interaction.
You can still respond to inactive leads at any time but they'll remain in the inactive inbox.
