What changes on October 1

Google has told Local Services Ads (LSA) advertisers that starting October 1, 2026, a phone lead during posted business hours is billable once the caller stays on the line for 20 seconds or more, whether or not anyone at the business picks up. Search Engine Land, PPC Land, and Search Engine Roundtable each reported the advertiser notice. Repeat calls from the same number within 15 days are charged once. If the line answers with a phone menu, the 20-second clock starts when the caller presses a key.

For an HVAC operator the plain reading is this: A homeowner who waits on hold for 20 seconds and hangs up is now a paid lead you never spoke to.

Why 20 seconds is shorter than it sounds

Twenty seconds is four rings. It is a standard hold greeting plus one loop of music. It is the gap between a menu key press and a CSR picking up on a Tuesday in July when three lines are already lit.

The menu rule is the trap. A long automated greeting does not stop the clock, it only delays the start, and once the caller presses 1 for service the timer is running against your hold queue. Most HVAC desks are staffed for average volume. LSA calls arrive with the weather, in the same hour the rest of your inbound does, which is exactly when the queue is longest and the charge is most likely.

The math: Effective cost per answered lead

Cost per lead on the LSA invoice is not the number that matters. The number that matters is spend divided by the calls a person actually handled. Here is one illustration for an operator receiving 200 billable LSA calls a month during business hours at an assumed $60 per lead. Your lead price and volume will differ; the shape will not.

Under the previous policy the missed calls in that table were generally not charged. After October 1 they are paid leads. At a 75% answer rate the operator pays a third more per real conversation than the invoice shows, and the ads did not get any more expensive. Invoca's call-tracking data puts 27% of inbound home-services calls unanswered, which lands on that row almost exactly.

You cannot argue the charge anymore

The old reflex was to dispute. That door closed in 2024, when Google replaced manual lead disputes with automated credits. Google's system now decides which leads were invalid and credits them on its own schedule, with no form to file and no case to make. A missed call from a real homeowner in your service area is not invalid. It is a valid lead you did not answer, and the automated review will treat it as one.

Budget for it accordingly. Missed-call billing cannot be clawed back, so the only refund available is picking up.

The second penalty

The charge is the visible cost. The quieter one is ranking. Google's Local Services Ads help pages list responsiveness to customer inquiries among the factors that decide which businesses appear first. An operator that misses a quarter of its LSA calls pays for those calls and then shows up lower for the next homeowner, which raises the cost of the leads it does answer. Missed calls compound in both directions.

This is Google Ads now

Google is also folding Local Services Ads into Google Ads as a pay-per-lead campaign type, and according to Google Ads Help, HVAC was in the first phase that began in August 2026. That moves LSA out of its side dashboard and into the account where your search and Performance Max budgets already live. The missed-call tax stops being an LSA quirk and becomes a line in your blended cost per acquisition, visible to whoever owns the ad budget.

The fix is answering the phone

None of this is a bidding problem. You cannot fix it in the campaign settings, and there is no dispute form. The lever is your business-hours answer rate, measured at 20 seconds, not at the 60-second service level most phone systems default to.

Pull three numbers from your phone system for the last 30 days of business hours: Calls offered, calls answered within 20 seconds, and calls abandoned after 20 seconds. The third number times your LSA lead price is what the new policy costs you each month. Then close the gap the way that fits your operation: Staff the desk to the summer peak rather than the annual average, put live overflow behind the queue so a caller never sits past 20 seconds, or add an AI intake layer that answers on the first ring, qualifies, and books into your CRM while your CSRs finish the calls already in progress.

Whatever answers the phone in under 20 seconds is now a marketing expense, not an office expense. Measure the answer rate weekly. The invoice will follow it.