News & Notes on Google Local Services Ads: November 2021

Does your firm use Google’s Local Services Ads (LSAs) as part of your marketing strategy? Want to stay in the know on the latest news, updates, and reminders about LSAs? This post is for you!

Approximate Read Time: 2 Minutes

As Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) continue to evolve, we are keeping lawyers up to date on the latest news from Google that matters to lawyers and law firms using LSAs to market their practice. Check out this post for some recent information Google shared with its LSA partners.

Reminder: Onboarding & Timing of Ads

Completing the onboarding process is undoubtedly an important step in the process of implementing LSAs as part of your law firm’s marketing strategy. However, finishing onboarding as a pre-badged ad (those who are still pending final verification through applicable background and insurance checks) or as a fully live, Google-badged ad (those who have successfully become “Google Screened”) will not trigger any LSAs on desktop until there are three live providers (in this case, other lawyers or law firms) in your given vertical and region combination. On mobile, there must be two live providers in your given vertical and region combo for LSAs to be triggered.

Important Info: LSA Metrics in Google Ads Are Not Yet Accurate

Google is rolling out changes designed to unify the data between LSA campaigns and the metrics shown in Google Ads. At this time, lawyers should be aware that the data shown about your LSAs in Google Ads is not reliable or accurate. Presently, the only reliable source of metrics about your LSAs is the Local Services Ads portal.

When the new rollout is complete, Google will let its partners and clients know. Until then, do not assume any data about your LSAs in your Google Ads account is accurate.

Troubleshooting: 2-Step Verification Login Issue

Recently, Google has received reports from people who have experienced difficulties while logging in to their LSA account. Particularly, people have had issues on both mobile and desktop devices that caused them not to see their LSA account as an option upon login. This problem occurs when 2-step Verification is enabled for ad campaigns but was not set up with the email the person uses to log in to the LSA account.

If you are experiencing this issue, you can either enable 2-factor authentication for the emails used for your LSAs or opt out of 2-step verification. For security reasons, we suggest enabling 2-factor authentication with the appropriate emails instead of opting out.

Final Thoughts: Why Do You Care?

Keeping up with the reminders and information coming from Google about LSAs can help ensure your law firm is getting the most from your campaigns. If you don’t have time to keep up with the changing landscape of advertising with LSAs or simply want help from experienced legal marketing professionals, our Justia Amplify team can manage your Google Ads campaigns and LSAs for you.

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