LSA is verified, no issues on account but doesn’t show anywhere in the service area

[Dee]

Hello.

I am having an issue with a few customers where their LSA aren’t showing up in the service area. I contact Google LSA team and they say everything is good and send me (screenshot) the LSA showing 10 cities over. I’ve searched on 5 different mobile devices and it’ll show on 1 out of the 5 in the main areas they service.
They also come back and say it’s because changes were made and give it 24-48 hours. We give it a week and no changes. It seems like we are getting the run around and not sure what to do at this point.
They also told it’s because the service location had overlapping city & zipcodes so we removed all the cities and did by zipcodes. That didn’t fix the issue either.
The ads does show with or without Google guaranteed. It’s like it’s not a business on LSA.

Budget isn’t an issue as we have it set to $4000 a week. They are barely getting 4 calls a week now.

1 page has over 250 reviews with a 4.9 rating. I don’t think it’s a review issue either. This specific page has been up for 3 years now and just recently has it been giving issues.

Does anyone have some thoughts of what this may be? Can someone provide a contact to reach out to a higher up regarding this?

 

[zacharywilson]

We had a similar issue...been testing for nearly a month now.

The LSA reps said search by zip and then we started to see it...so to me that said there's weirdness in how LSAs actually appear in SERPs with Zips, Towns, Counties...so we started testing.

The biggest visibility impact we had was from zips to town names. We are testing county level + town names now.

Using Town Names, there were gaps in the service areas covered, but we at least got visibility.

The issue the last few weeks has been they can't eclipse the 3rd spot and get into that 1/2 spot that shows up o

They have ~100 reviews and are a 4.7 rating

Every one on top of them have 1k-5k reviews and is either a 4.6 rating to a 4.8 rating.

It's baffling to me how LSA is working for this area because they are getting almost no calls from this.

Next test is to switch the bidding mode from Max to Manual and see if we can expose what the SA bid amounts are and hone in on a CPL / CPA # for the LSA spend.

 

[Chris Barnard]

We had a similar issue...been testing for nearly a month now.

The LSA reps said search by zip and then we started to see it...so to me that said there's weirdness in how LSAs actually appear in SERPs with Zips, Towns, Counties...so we started testing.

The biggest visibility impact we had was from zips to town names. We are testing county level + town names now.

Using Town Names, there were gaps in the service areas covered, but we at least got visibility.

The issue the last few weeks has been they can't eclipse the 3rd spot and get into that 1/2 spot that shows up o

They have ~100 reviews and are a 4.7 rating

Every one on top of them have 1k-5k reviews and is either a 4.6 rating to a 4.8 rating.

It's baffling to me how LSA is working for this area because they are getting almost no calls from this.

Next test is to switch the bidding mode from Max to Manual and see if we can expose what the SA bid amounts are and hone in on a CPL / CPA # for the LSA spend.

So do you mean that right now you're "layering" the county + city/town names? Did you already test the county only?

I'm just curious always lookin for trends

I've heard there were bugs a couple few months back with how zips/cities/counties were serving, and how G favored cities and county targeting over zip codes, but yeah doubtful that just totally fixed itself in all areas at one time. Or ever.

 

[Dee]

We had a similar issue...been testing for nearly a month now.

The LSA reps said search by zip and then we started to see it...so to me that said there's weirdness in how LSAs actually appear in SERPs with Zips, Towns, Counties...so we started testing.

The biggest visibility impact we had was from zips to town names. We are testing county level + town names now.

Using Town Names, there were gaps in the service areas covered, but we at least got visibility.

The issue the last few weeks has been they can't eclipse the 3rd spot and get into that 1/2 spot that shows up o

They have ~100 reviews and are a 4.7 rating

Every one on top of them have 1k-5k reviews and is either a 4.6 rating to a 4.8 rating.

It's baffling to me how LSA is working for this area because they are getting almost no calls from this.

Next test is to switch the bidding mode from Max to Manual and see if we can expose what the SA bid amounts are and hone in on a CPL / CPA # for the LSA spend.

We have 3 separate LSA which are having these issues and 2 that don’t have these issues.

The 2 that aren’t having an issue that are a mix of zipcodes, cities and counties. They overlap and no issues at all. The only difference is it’s a smaller area.

1st: 1 county, 14 cities & 19 zipcodes
2nd: 3 counties, 14 cities & 28 zipcodes

now comes to the 3 that aren’t actively showing.

1st: 14 counties & 5 cities
2nd: 5 counties & 100 zipcodes (no cities)
3rd: 5 counties

I’ve now noticed that every other day it shows up on my phone/computer yet calls are still lower. Looking at the LSA stats the we went from 8-10 calls a day to now 2-3 calls.
We would be lucky to get 3rd spot on the LSA. Currently they are 8-14th place depending on the area.

At this point we are stuck. Google is no help, it’s effecting these businesses and we can’t find a solution.
We run Google ads for these businesses as well but it isn’t enough as they have 5-10 employees running these calls.

Another interesting thing I’ve seen is one of the businesses that’s always on top has multiple LSA with the same name but different areas.
One has around 300 reviews and services the north, another has 150 reviews services the south & another has 50 reviews services the west side. They are always ranked #1 and are always live.

If I noticed anything with the changes we are doing I’ll definitely keep you guys posted.

 

[Dee]

Update;

Much hasn’t changed with the LSA. They haven’t showed at all this week. I did discover that they do show on internet explorer though.

Also seems like the LSA is “frozen” because the reviews both on LSA & GMB have gone up by 20 but LSA still shows less. These are reviews that are a week+ old so they’ve had time to refresh and show.
Found that on mobile app for LSA shows the new number of reviews but web or internet explorer doesn’t.

LSA representatives haven’t been any help.
I’m starting to lose hope.

 

[zacharywilson]

In an update from our end, we continue to increase our budget...we're now 15x higher than what we started at (no joke) and the client is still getting zero calls, it's bizarre.

We are finding they are ranking #1 and #2 in certain queries too and absolutely no calls. So bizarre. Volume seems way way down from Q4 2023...

 

[Aritebrena]

I am having the same issue lately. My ad used to perform really good but lately am barely getting any calls. I used to look it up on google search and sometimes it shows and sometimes not. I used to check on different devices and it’s the same thing. Lately i got to update my billing threshold from $500 to $1000 which was google recommendation on automatic payment. Since that day my ad barely showing. I called google local service ad experts and they also made my accept some terms on google ad about “call messaging and ad term” and “lead form ad term”. I also pause and unpause my ad with the hope of change but nothing changed. Called google local service ad experts again and they told me since i made changes to the ad will take several hours for the changes to take place. Been waiting almost 3-4 days now and still the same. I don’t know what to do at this point since everything is ok with my account. If anyone knows anything please share. Thank you

 

[zacharywilson]

My recommendation is that you look at the report for a set date. Start with the current month and start making a note of how much visibility you’re getting each time you look at the report. Also look at the impression share that you’re getting that will at least tell you if your ad is getting any visibility anywhere.

We have clients that are getting a 60% impression share and almost 0 calls and we have clients getting zero impression share. Also getting zero calls. I think LSA in general is a very under performing channel right now at least in our vertical.

You could also try making your budget $50,000 and I bet it won’t make a difference on the number of calls you’re getting.