Published September 29, 2026 · by Luis Gomez · I run a Local Services Ads account for a Kansas City drywall company and publish its numbers every month.
Short answer: The email means Google has picked your date. Your Local Services Ads account moves into Google Ads as a Performance Max campaign with pay-per-lead goals, your ads keep running, your leads move with you, and your old reports do not. Before the date: export every report, screenshot your settings, write down your weekly budget, fix who answers the phone, and leave your Business Profile alone. After the date: log in, check the converted daily budget, and watch lead credits for two weeks.
Google sends three messages: an email to the account admin about 14 days before your migration, a warning banner inside the old dashboard, and a reminder 7 days out. When the move is done you get a confirmation email and the old dashboard starts redirecting into Google Ads. If you are reading this because the first email landed, you have about two weeks. The list below is the whole job. It takes an hour.
1. Export every report while the old dashboard still exists
Campaign-level performance history does not migrate. Google says so plainly and gives you a download link on the redirection page, but the safest move is to pull it yourself now. Open the reports screen and download or screenshot each view:
- Weekly spend and charged leads, as far back as the dashboard goes
- Impressions and clicks by week
- Ad-level performance, if you run more than one ad
- The billing and credits history (charged leads, credited leads, the reasons)
- The lead inbox itself, which does move, but a screenshot of the counts is a two-minute insurance policy
If you never look at these numbers, export them anyway. The first time you argue with an invoice inside Google Ads you will want the before picture.
2. Screenshot the settings Google is about to convert
Take one screenshot of each: your weekly budget, your bidding mode and any maximum cost per lead you set, your job types, your service areas, your business hours, your review count and Google Verified status. None of these vanish, but two of them change shape:
- Your weekly budget becomes a daily budget. Google divides your historical average weekly budget by 7. Monthly spend is then capped at that daily number times 30.4. The math and the traps are in the budget guide.
- Your manual bidding stops existing. Setting your own maximum cost per lead is no longer supported. The system bids for you.
3. Fix who answers the phone, because missed calls start costing money on October 1
This is the change most owners have not heard about. Google told advertisers in late August that from October 1, 2026, a missed call received during your stated business hours can be charged as a lead if the caller stays on the line for more than about 20 seconds. If your phone system makes callers press a key to reach you, the clock starts when they press it. A follow-up call from the same customer can also be charged if the first call was not.
What to do this week: make sure the number on the account rings a human within 20 seconds during the hours you list, shorten or remove any greeting that keeps callers waiting, and set the business hours on the profile to the hours you actually answer. Calls outside those hours are not covered by the rule, so honest hours are cheaper than optimistic ones.
4. Leave your Business Profile alone for two weeks
After migration, your business name, address and hours sync one way from your Google Business Profile into the campaign, usually within 24 hours. A significant change to the name or address triggers a 24 to 48 hour verification review, and the campaign can pause while it runs. If you were planning to rename the business or move the listing, do it well before the date or well after it, not during.
5. Write down the daily budget you expect to see
Take your weekly budget, divide by 7, and write the number on a sticky note. Then multiply it by 30.4 and write that down too: that is the most Google Ads will spend in a month. On the first login after the move, compare both to what the campaign shows. If they do not match, the conversion used a different “historical average” than you assumed, and you fix it in the campaign settings before it spends a week.
6. Decide who logs in to Google Ads
The old dashboard had its own login. Google Ads has accounts, access levels and two-step verification. Decide now who is the admin, make sure that person’s email is one that gets read, and if an agency runs the account, confirm they will have manager access on the Google Ads side. The 14-day email goes to the account admin. If that address is an old bookkeeper’s inbox, the migration happens with nobody watching.
7. Put three checks on the calendar for the first week after
- Day 1: log in, find the campaign, confirm the daily budget and the monthly cap match your sticky note.
- Day 3: open the leads view, confirm past leads and their recordings came across, and rate any junk lead the same way you did before so the automated credit review keeps running.
- Day 7: compare charged leads and spend for the week against the same week last month. The bidding is automated now, so this week is the first honest read on whether cost per charged lead moved.
What does not change
Your ads stay in the same spots at the top of Google Search and Google Maps. You still pay only for valid leads, calls and messages, never for clicks. Targeting still comes from your service areas and job types, not keywords. Your Google Verified badge and your reviews stay with your Business Profile. Past customer leads transfer, message history and older call recordings included.
If someone calls you this month to say “Performance Max” means your ads are about to run on YouTube unless you hire them, that is not this campaign type. Pay-per-lead Performance Max keeps the Search and Maps placements. The full plain-words explanation is in the migration guide, and if you want the account checked before your date, the audit is free.
Questions owners keep asking
Can I delay my migration date? No. Google assigns the date and the move is automatic. The dedicated migration support line is +1-844-205-0011, Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 8 PM Eastern, for questions about your account, not for postponements.
Will my ads stop running during the move? Google says the campaign keeps serving through the transition. The one case where it can pause is a verification review triggered by a significant business name or address change, which is why point 4 says to leave the profile alone.
Do I lose my reviews or my Google Verified badge? No. Both live with your Google Business Profile, not inside the old dashboard, and the migration notice lists nothing changing about verification.
What if my trade has not received the email yet? The first wave in August 2026 covered US plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control and moving accounts with home or storefront service. Service-area businesses and accounts with custom bidding follow in late 2026; everyone else, including accounts outside the US, in 2027. Do the exports anyway. They take ten minutes and the dashboard will not wait for you.