Call Only Ads for Home Services Are Going Away: The 2026 Migration Playbook

If you run call only ads for home services, you've probably already seen the banner in your Google Ads account warning that the format is going away. This is not a rumor or an agency scare tactic. Google confirmed the call-only ad format is being retired, and the clock on that transition is already running.

The good news is that the fix is not complicated, it just has to happen in the right order. Contractors who treat this as a forced, same-day swap tend to lose call volume during the handoff. Contractors who treat it as a planned migration, with Local Service Ads and Call Assets running in parallel before the old format shuts off, generally come out the other side with a cheaper, more durable call channel than they started with. Below are the 7 moves that make that happen.

Before touching a single campaign, get the actual dates right. The two deadlines Google published do very different things. On October 3, 2025, Google announced that call ads would be retired in two phases. As of February 2026, the option to create a brand new call-only ad is gone. Existing ones keep running, but you can't launch another. The second date is the one that matters most for your lead flow. In February 2027, every call-only ad still active stops receiving impressions. Full stop.

That gap between the two dates, roughly a year, is the migration window. It is not a grace period to ignore the warning banner. It is the runway Google is giving advertisers to build and test the replacement format before the old one is switched off for good. Contractors who treat February 2027 as the start of the project instead of the finish line are the ones who end up with a call-volume gap exactly when they can least afford one.

The direct replacement for a call-only ad is a Responsive Search Ad with a Call Asset attached, not a new standalone call format. That is an important distinction. A call-only ad showed only a phone number and a click-to-call button, every time, to every searcher. A call asset works differently. It is an add-on that can appear alongside your regular search ad headlines and descriptions. Google's own guidance is clear that it will not show on every single impression the way a dedicated call-only ad did.

That means the migration is not "flip a switch," it is "build the new ad group, add the call asset, and let it earn impression share before you lean on it for 100% of your call volume." Add call assets to your existing responsive search ad groups now, verify the phone number matches your call-tracking line exactly, and watch call volume from that asset for a few weeks before you start winding down the call-only campaigns running in parallel.

What to check before you flip anything off

Make sure the call asset's tracking number routes into the same reporting dashboard as your current call-only ads, so you are comparing apples to apples on cost per call and not accidentally losing attribution data mid-migration. A dropped tracking number is the single most common reason a contractor thinks "the new format doesn't work" when the real issue is a reporting gap.

If your business isn't already running Google Local Services Ads, the call-only sunset is the forcing function to finally set it up. LSA is built around calls and messages from the start. A homeowner taps "call" directly from a Google Guaranteed listing, so it absorbs the exact kind of same-day, high-intent call volume that call-only ads used to capture, often at a lower cost.

A SearchLight Digital benchmark covering 888 contractors and 126,650 leads in February 2026 put the average home services LSA lead at $53. That same month, a separate benchmark of 816 contractors put blended Google Search Ads at $104 per lead. The LSA dataset also showed a 43.9% lead-to-booked-customer rate and a $233 cost per paying customer, numbers worth comparing against whatever your call-only campaigns were actually producing.

Qualifying takes real paperwork: a current trade license for your state, active general liability insurance, and a background check on the business owner. None of that happens overnight, which is exactly why it belongs near the top of your migration list rather than something you get to after the February 2027 deadline forces your hand.

The single easiest way to make this migration look like it failed is to lose call attribution in the handoff. Say your call-only ads and your new call assets or LSA listing use different tracking numbers that don't report into the same dashboard. You'll see what looks like a sudden drop in calls. In reality, the calls moved. Your reporting just didn't move with them.

Before you let any call-only campaign wind down, check every new call source: RSA call assets, your Local Services Ads listing, and your website click-to-call button. Route all of them through the same call-tracking platform you already use, with consistent naming, so a side-by-side report is actually possible. This is the unglamorous part of the migration. It's also the part that determines whether you can prove the new setup is working.

Call only ads for home services were never one single use case. An emergency plumbing call and a planned kitchen remodel consult both came in through the same click-to-call button, but they don't belong in the same channel once you rebuild the campaign structure. Emergency, same-day work is exactly what Local Services Ads is built for: proximity-ranked, trust-signal-heavy, and already tuned for a fast response. Planned, higher-consideration work is different. That's the kind where a homeowner compares two or three companies before calling anyone, and it tends to perform better through a Responsive Search Ad with a call asset, paired with a landing page that gives them more to evaluate than a phone number alone.

Channel	Best for	Typical cost per lead	Watch out for
Google Local Services Ads	Same-day, emergency calls	~$53 (home services, Feb 2026 benchmark)	Requires license, insurance, background check to qualify
RSA + Call Asset	Planned work, higher-consideration calls	Varies; blended search ~$104	Call asset doesn't show on every impression
Call-only ads (legacy)	Nothing after Feb 2027	N/A after sunset	Stops serving entirely; no new ones since Feb 2026

Splitting budget this way also makes your reporting more honest. Instead of one blended "calls" number, you get a clear read on what emergency demand costs versus what planned-work demand costs, which is useful well beyond this migration.

Don't try to migrate every call-only campaign at once. Pull a report of which ad groups generated the most calls over the last 90 days. Rebuild those first as Responsive Search Ads with call assets attached, using the same keywords and, where possible, the same geographic targeting. That gives you an early, high-confidence read on how the new format performs against your actual best-performing campaigns, instead of a blended average across campaigns that were never equally important to your pipeline.

Low-volume, long-tail call-only campaigns can wait. There's no penalty for migrating your top three or four ad groups in week one and the rest over the following month, as long as everything is fully moved before the February 2027 cutoff. Prioritizing by volume also means any early mistakes get caught on a smaller slice of your budget rather than your single biggest lead source.

Open-ended migrations drift. Give this one a hard 90-day window instead. Weeks one and two are for call-asset setup and tracking verification. Weeks three through six are for rebuilding your highest-volume ad groups and starting Local Services Ads paperwork if you don't already have it. Weeks seven through ten run the old and new formats in parallel so you can compare cost per booked job, not just cost per lead. The final stretch winds down call-only spend as the new channels prove out.

Put a date on the calendar, 90 days out. Review cost per booked job across the new mix against what call-only ads were producing before you started. If the numbers hold up, and for most home services businesses they do, finish winding down call-only spend well ahead of the February 2027 deadline. That beats scrambling in the final weeks, when every other contractor in your market is making the same move at the same time.

FAQ: Call Only Ads for Home Services

When do call-only ads actually stop working for home services businesses?

Google announced the retirement on October 3, 2025, in two phases. Since February 2026, no new call-only ads can be created. Existing call-only ads keep running until February 2027, when they stop receiving impressions entirely. That roughly one-year gap between the two dates is the window to migrate, not a deadline to wait out.

What replaces call-only ads for home services businesses now?

Responsive Search Ads with a Call Asset attached are Google's direct replacement. The difference is that a call asset is an add-on to a regular search ad and will not show on every impression the way a dedicated call-only ad did, so it is not a true one-for-one swap. Many home services businesses pair that with Google Local Services Ads, which is built around calls from the start and tends to produce a lower cost per lead for same-day and emergency work.

Will switching from call only ads to Local Services Ads cost more?

Usually it costs less per lead, not more. A SearchLight Digital benchmark covering 888 contractors and 126,650 leads in February 2026 put the average home services Local Services Ads lead at $53, against $104 for blended Google Search Ads from a separate benchmark the same quarter. Qualifying for Local Services Ads does take upfront paperwork, a trade license, liability insurance, and a background check, but the ongoing cost per lead is typically lower than what call-only campaigns were producing.

How do I avoid losing calls during the migration?

Run the old call-only campaigns and the new call assets or Local Services Ads listing side by side for several weeks before turning anything off, and make sure every call source routes through the same call-tracking platform so you can compare performance directly. Most reported "call drops" during this kind of migration are actually tracking or attribution gaps, not real declines in call volume.

Should every home services business migrate call only ads the same way?

No. The right mix depends on job type. Emergency and same-day work, a burst pipe, a dead AC unit in July, tends to perform best through Google Local Services Ads, which is proximity-ranked and trust-signal-heavy. Planned, higher-consideration work, like a kitchen remodel consult, often performs better through a Responsive Search Ad with a call asset paired with a landing page that gives the homeowner more to evaluate than a phone number alone.

Keep Reading: More Google Ads Guides for Contractors