Local Services Ads now bill missed calls, and Europe gets no credits

Since 1 October 2026, Google Local Services Ads can charge you for a call you never answered. If someone rings from your ad during business hours and stays on the line for more than 20 seconds, that missed call counts as a valid lead. A week later, on 8 October, Google rewrote its How leads work help page to spell out the detail, and one line in it matters more in Europe than anywhere else: lead credits, Google's refunds for bad leads, aren't available to advertisers here. In the United States a bad lead can be refunded after the fact. In Europe, what you're billed is what you pay. Google has run Local Services Ads in Europe since 2020, starting with home-service trades in countries including Germany and the UK, so for a plumber in Madrid or a locksmith in Munich the phone setup is now part of the ad budget. The settings that decide the charge are ones you already control.

TL;DR: Local Services Ads now bill a missed call when the caller waits more than 20 seconds during the hours in your Google Business Profile, and voicemail counts as a connected call. Europe gets no lead credits or call recordings, so fix your ad schedule, your greeting and your callback routine before raising the budget.

What counts as a charged missed call on Local Services Ads?

Google's help page lists a missed call as a valid lead when "you missed a phone call during your business hours and the customer stays on the line for more than 20 seconds." Three details decide whether a given call bills.

• The caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds while nobody picks up.
• The call lands inside your "business hours", which Google defines as the hours set in your Google Business Profile. If you also run an ad schedule in the campaign, a missed call is charged only when it falls inside both.
• Once a lead is charged, follow-up calls and messages with the same customer aren't charged again, as long as there's contact within 15 days from the same number or email address.

Picking up late doesn't trigger the rule. Google's FAQ is explicit: if someone answers, even after 20 seconds of ringing, the call is judged as an answered call, on the conversation itself.

When the change was announced, an owner in r/localseo, a Reddit forum for local marketers, put it this way on 25 August 2026: "Sometimes the business might take longer than 20 seconds to answer and then the person hangs up." That caller is now a charge.

Why missed calls cost more in Europe

The European version of Local Services Ads has no safety net after a lead is billed. Google's page says it "continuously assesses lead quality over a 30-day period" and credits poor, duplicate or invalid leads automatically, then adds: "Automatic lead credits are not available for accounts located in European Economic Area (EEA) countries." The EEA is the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. A separate note goes further: "Call recordings and lead credits aren't available for any verticals in Europe", meaning any trade. A third line on the same page excludes all advertisers in EMEA, so a UK business is covered by the same exclusion.

Put those two lines next to the new rule. An American advertiser billed for a robocall that sat on the line gets a 30-day review and a recording to check. A European advertiser gets neither, so the charge stands. The only remaining route is the feedback survey on each lead, which Google says it uses to tune the leads it sends you next.

So in Europe all of the protection sits in settings you control before the phone rings: when you're listed as reachable, what a caller hears if nobody picks up, and who calls back.

Set your ad schedule and hours to when someone answers

Your Google Business Profile hours and your ad schedule together set the window in which an unanswered call can be billed. Google charges a missed call only where both apply.

Take an example: a plumbing firm lists 08:00 to 20:00 because the office is open, but the phone is answered by one person who takes lunch from 13:00 to 14:00 and leaves at 18:00. From 18:00 to 20:00, and at lunch, every caller who waits 20 seconds is a lead you pay for and nobody hears. Nothing in your account flags it. You'd only see it on the Leads page in Google Ads, as leads marked "Charged" in the Charge Status column with no conversation behind them.

Start with the ad schedule, because it changes nothing the public sees. Run the ads only while the phone is staffed, and the 18:00 to 20:00 window stops billing even though your profile still says you're open until 20:00.

Changing the profile hours is the second lever, and it has a cost: your listed hours also drive what Google Maps shows as open, so shorter hours can make you look less available. Reach for it only if the schedule can't cover the gap, for example a lunch break inside an ad window you want to keep.

Voicemail and phone menus: which setups get charged

Voicemail is where the rule surprises people. Google's wording: "If a call goes to voicemail or an automated greeting during your business hours, it's treated as a connected call and is charged if the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds, whether or not they leave a message."

So a greeting that runs 15 seconds, followed by a beep and a caller who hesitates, bills you. A caller who listens to the whole greeting and hangs up bills you. During listed hours, voicemail doesn't stop the charge. It only decides whether you get a message for the money.

Phone menus work differently. Google: "If your automated phone system asks the caller to press a key to select an option and they hang up without pressing a key, you aren't charged (even if the menu played for more than 20 seconds)." The timer starts at the first key press, and further key presses in a multi-level menu don't restart it.

Two decisions follow from that:

• During listed hours, keep the greeting short and ask for a name and a reason for calling, so the callback starts as a real conversation.
• Don't add a menu just to dodge the timer. It filters some unwanted calls, but every extra step is a reason for a real customer to hang up and ring the next business in the ads.

Whether a charged missed call becomes a booking depends on the callback

A missed call you've paid for is a lead you've already bought, and calling back costs nothing extra: Google doesn't charge again for follow-up calls with that customer within 15 days.

The number you see may not be the customer's own. Google routes leads through masked proxy numbers, and the same Reddit thread had an owner describing "a mysterious Google number that connects you to the lead now." Call back through that number or from the Leads page, not from your contacts.

Then decide two things in advance: who returns missed calls, and by when. Pick a deadline you can keep every working day, such as within the hour during opening times. A missed call left until the next morning gives the caller a whole evening to book someone else.

For clients we set this up as an automation: a missed call creates a task with the time it came in, assigned to whoever is on duty, on the same board as the rest of the work in SharpOS.

Should you raise your Local Services Ads budget or fix the phone first?

Fix the phone first, especially if your account ever runs out of budget before the month ends.

Local Services Ads run on an average weekly budget, with a monthly maximum equal to that weekly figure multiplied by the average number of weeks in a month, a little over four. Google's page is direct about what happens next: "After you've reached your monthly max, your ad won't appear for the remainder of the month."

Every billed missed call draws from that same maximum. In an account that reaches its cap, an unanswered phone costs the fee for that call and, later, the calls you would have answered in the last days of the month, when the ad has already stopped showing. Raising the budget buys more of those weeks, and the missed calls take their share of the extra money too. In an account that never reaches the cap, the cost is simpler: each missed call is a fee with no customer behind it.

Before you change the number, read a month of the Leads page. Count the charged leads where nobody spoke to the customer, and put that next to the leads you did speak to. That second count is what the budget is buying. The first is what your phone setup is costing.

What to do this week

Open your Local Services Ads campaign and set the ad schedule to the hours someone answers the phone. Call your own number from your mobile during those hours and time the greeting. Then pick one person who returns missed calls, and a deadline for doing it.

If you'd rather have someone own the whole chain, from the ad to the phone to the follow-up, Ads Management and AI Automations come together from the Growth plan, and you can book a 30-minute call to go through your setup.