On 20 July, Google announced the end of the separate Local Services Ads dashboard: from August 2026, these campaigns move into Google Ads as pay-per-lead Performance Max campaigns. The business model stays the same, but historical performance reports will not be transferred to the new interface.
The facts
- The rollout is gradual: August 2026 for a first group of American home services advertisers (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing), extension to other profiles at the end of 2026, then accounts outside the United States and remaining categories in 2027.
- What stays the same: payment per valid lead rather than per click, delivery exclusively on Google Search and Maps, keyword-free targeting based on service categories and areas, and the Google Guaranteed badge.
- What changes: the end of manual bidding and of target CPA by sector, a single target CPA at campaign level, and above all the loss of historical reports, to be exported before the migration date, which is announced 14 days in advance.
Why is the data export the real point to watch?
Luxembourg is outside the first wave: accounts outside the United States migrate in 2027. That leaves a breathing space American advertisers never had, and the point to watch remains the same everywhere: once the migration is done, the old dashboard becomes inaccessible, and reports that were not exported disappear. Years of lead data and year-on-year comparisons, stored only in an interface you do not control.
That is the real lesson of this migration, beyond the change of name: data that exists only in a dashboard provided by the platform is data you rent rather than own. Google sets the rules, chooses the timetable and can withdraw the tool whenever it decides. The Performance Max switch itself remains manageable; the prior data export is what separates prepared accounts from the rest.
AIxH's view
This is the kind of operational vigilance we apply as a Google Ads agency in Luxembourg: anticipating platform migrations, keeping performance data outside Google's interfaces, and preparing accounts before the change is imposed.