Attorney Local Services Ads Not Displaying in April 2022

On March 29, 2022, a catastrophic change occurred on Google’s Local Services Ads platform and suddenly the leads were completely shut off to Personal Injury Attorneys throughout California and beyond.

UPDATE: Please see this newer article: Law Firms Not Getting Leads in Google Local Services Ads.

 

We’ve seen this enormous problem affecting law firms in Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, the Valley, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, Glendale and all over California. Phoenix Arizona attorneys are facing the same issue and it is likely impacting law firms in other cities and states as well.

There are a variety of problems and we are well aware of them. We have an agreement in place to not disclose additional information but we can tell you a few things.

  1. We have discovered several flaws in the Local Services Ads platform and are working towards getting them repaired. One of the problems which we can discuss is the fact that a Local Services Ad stays running for a firm even after the associated Google Business Profile page has been suspended for being a fake location.
  2. There is a tremendous amount of spam in Local Services Ads. Some areas display up to 100 attorneys in the Google Screened section and we’ve seen as many as 80 listings all from the same firm. Initially, these listings are difficult to spot as the offending law firm (run by an attorney previously disbarred in 3 different states) has a variety of attorney in house and DBAs. So at first glance, when you look at Google Screened results, you see several different names and faces. However, if you start looking up these attorneys on the California Bar Association website, you will soon discover the pattern and which attorneys are part of the spam operation. To make matters worse, as we’ve documented, there’s no action taken by LSA support when LSA spam is submitted.
  3. LSA support reps are outsourced and usually clueless. When your Local Services Ads stop receiving phone calls and disappear, the first thing attorneys and their marketing agencies do is call LSA support. Unfortunately, the reps there literally have no idea what’s going on. On some occasions, they claim they have escalated the issue to the LSA development team (which you’re not allowed to talk to), however, most of the time, they’ll give you something small to tweak and tell you to check back in 2 – 3 days. This accomplishes nothing other than getting you off of the phone so that the rep can then go on to the next caller.

If you have been impacted by this issue, rest assured that we are working on it and a solution is on the way. I have no ETA but action is being taken after an extremely persistent push.

If you’d like to be updated on this issue please email me here as I can not post certain details publicly.