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Google is deleting the Local Service Ads dashboard. Your leads move to Google Ads. Your performance history does not come with them.
Chris Vance is the Executive Marketing Coach at CertainPath, seven years into building marketing plans for member companies across all four trades. In May a partner took him to Google's Austin headquarters to hear from the people who run its paid ads division, and what they said there explains everything since. Customer behavior changed in response to AI, so Google changed with it. Brand is the new keyword. And the silos between Local Service Ads, Google Ads and YouTube are coming down.
On August 17 they lit the match. Local Service Ads are being pulled into Google Ads as a Performance Max product over the rest of the year. The weekly budget becomes a daily budget, and if you type your weekly number into the daily box you spend 650 a day instead of 650 a week. When demand spikes, Performance Max can run two times your daily average in a single day. The algorithm chases volume, not value, so one campaign will buy every cheap lead it finds and starve your install work.
Before it happens, download your performance history. The leads transfer over. Your spend levels and lead rates do not. From there Chris walks Bob Houchin through everything else that moved.
In this conversation, you'll discover:
• Why the BBB badge lost its weight overnight, and the six call-outs that took its place
• How AI Max builds an ad out of whatever is sitting on your website
• What Chris calls the sea of generic, and how boilerplate copy puts you in it
• Why Yelp suddenly matters again, and why you should not start sending review requests there
• The recency bias that makes 5,000 old reviews largely irrelevant
• How to turn one four-minute phone video into a dozen pieces of content
• The one-page brand brief that stops AI writing like AI
Whether you run a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, or roofing company, this is the clearest hour on what changed in search this year and what to do.
Watch on YouTube or listen on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to subscribe to The Successful Contractor for more interviews that move the needle.
About the Show
The Successful Contractor is a podcast for residential HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing contractors. Hosted by Bob Houchin, each episode features real contractor growth stories, hard-won business insights, and practical takeaways for building a profitable home services company.
Meet the Host
Bob Houchin has spent 20+ years immersed in the home services industry — listening to, learning from, and serving the people who run it. As host of The Successful Contractor, he's interviewed hundreds of the brightest minds in the trades. Beyond the mic, Bob is a Senior Strategist at CertainPath, building the training, onboarding programs, keynotes, and playbooks used by 1,200+ residential service companies. His motto: smart contractors learn from their mistakes; wise contractors learn from the mistakes of others.
About CertainPath
CertainPath is a business coaching and training organization that has built successful home service businesses for more than 25 years. We serve 1,200+ member companies across HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing with professional coaching, training for every role, software solutions, and a vendor partner network that delivers millions in member rebates every year. Doubling your sales with a 20% net profit and an inspiring company culture is ALL possible. With CertainPath, Success is Made Certain.
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