Key facts
- Every professional listed under your Local Services Ads profile, owners and staff who may take the job, typically needs to pass a Google background check before appearing under the Google Guarantee or Google Screened badge; missing this step can quietly limit which staff generate leads.
- LSA bills per lead, not per click, which is a fundamentally different budget model from standard Google Ads and should be scoped and reported on its own terms rather than folded into a general PPC report.
- Google gives a limited window, typically a matter of days, to dispute a lead you believe was invalid, a wrong number, a duplicate, or outside your service area, so the RFP should require the vendor to check and dispute leads on a near daily basis, not monthly.
- License and insurance verification is required for many trade categories before a profile can go live, and gaps here can delay a listing's approval well beyond a typical campaign launch timeline.
- Because LSA ranks partly on review volume and responsiveness, a vendor managing it well should also touch review generation and lead response speed, not just the ad platform settings themselves.
What LSA Management Covers, and What Verification Comes First
Scope this as setting up or managing your Local Services Ads profile: getting professionals background checked and licensed where required, configuring service categories and areas, setting a weekly budget, and disputing invalid leads. It is not standard Google Ads management, and a vendor bidding on this should show LSA specific experience, not just general PPC history.
State whether this is a new setup, likely to involve a background check and verification timeline before any leads arrive, or ongoing management of a profile that already exists and is already generating leads. These are meaningfully different engagements with different early milestones.
Name whether review generation and response management are in scope alongside LSA, since LSA ranking is influenced by review volume and how quickly leads are answered, and a vendor managing only the ad settings while ignoring those factors is managing half the problem.
What an LSA Vendor Needs From Your Team and Your Documents
Provide manager access to your Local Services Ads profile alongside a list of every professional who should be listed, along with whatever license and insurance documentation your trade category requires for verification. Background checks require the actual individuals' cooperation, so the vendor needs a named contact for each person, not just admin access to the profile itself.
Give the vendor visibility into how leads are currently handled once they arrive, whether that is a phone system, a CRM, or a shared inbox, since disputing a lead well requires knowing quickly whether it was actually valid, a real customer in your service area asking about a real job.
Share your current weekly budget and any past LSA performance history, since Google's own lead volume estimates change as the profile builds a track record, and a vendor working blind cannot set a sensible starting budget.
Who Keeps Control of the Verified LSA Profile
Your Local Services Ads profile stays under your own Google account and business verification, not a vendor's account, throughout the engagement, since LSA is tied to a verified business identity in a way that resists being transferred cleanly later.
Ask what happens to any lead history, review responses, and dispute records the vendor generated during the engagement, and confirm they remain visible to you in the platform itself rather than existing only in a report the vendor holds.
Confirm whether any staff or subcontractors added specifically for background checks and verification during this engagement can be removed or updated by you directly afterward, without needing the outgoing vendor's cooperation.
Verification First, Then a Real Read on Lead Quality
Set an early milestone around verification: every named professional has passed the required background check, and any license or insurance documentation has been approved by Google, before meaningful budget is spent. A profile still pending verification is not the same as a live, lead generating profile, and treating them the same in a timeline hides real delay.
Set a milestone measuring lead quality, not just lead count, over the first thirty to sixty days: what proportion of leads were disputed as invalid, and how quickly disputes were filed within Google's window. A high lead count with a high dispute rate is not success.
Require a weekly, not monthly, check in during the first month, since budget pacing and early dispute handling on LSA move faster than a monthly report can meaningfully influence.
How to Score LSA Management Proposals
Weight LSA specific experience over general PPC claims: 25 percent for direct experience getting professionals through background checks and license verification in your trade category, 20 percent for a stated process for disputing invalid leads within Google's window, 20 percent for a plan connecting review generation to LSA performance, 15 percent for price, and 20 percent for references in a comparable trade.
A proposal that treats LSA identically to standard search campaigns, with no mention of background checks, verification, or the lead dispute process, is a sign of limited hands on experience with the platform specifically.
Ask references what percentage of their leads were disputed as invalid, and how the vendor's dispute process actually worked in practice, not just in theory.
Questions Every LSA Bidder Should Answer
Score proposals only once you have a written answer to each of these: How many businesses in our specific trade category have you gotten through Google's background check and license verification process? What is your process, and how frequently do you check, for disputing an invalid lead within Google's window? How do you set and adjust weekly budget as the profile's track record builds? Do you also manage review generation and response, or only the ad platform settings?
Also ask how they would handle a sudden lead volume drop, since LSA lead flow can shift with changes to review count, response time, or even service area coverage, and a vendor with no diagnostic process for this will be slow to notice and slower to fix it.
Related questions
Generally yes, every professional who may be dispatched under your Local Services Ads profile needs to pass Google's background check process before appearing under the Google Guarantee or Google Screened badge, depending on your category.
LSA bills per lead rather than per click. This is a different budget model that should be reported and scoped on its own terms, since standard cost-per-click reporting does not translate directly to how LSA charges you.
Google's dispute window is limited, typically a matter of days, which is why a management contract should require frequent, near-daily checking rather than a monthly review that would miss the window entirely.
It is worth including, since LSA ranking is influenced by review volume and lead response speed, not just ad settings. A vendor managing only the platform configuration while ignoring reviews is addressing part of what actually drives lead volume.
Background checks and license or insurance verification can take longer than a typical campaign launch timeline, especially in trade categories with stricter documentation requirements. Scope this delay into the project timeline rather than assuming leads start immediately.
SearchPod is a vendor for this kind of work and would answer this RFP; the acceptance tests here are the ones we agree to.
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