Local Services Ads for roofers.

What holds up Google Guaranteed approval for a roofer?

Before a roofer's Local Services Ads can show, Google screens the business: the owner and field staff go through background checks, and the business has to show its state contractor licence and liability insurance in the names and categories Google expects. In roofing, approval rarely stalls on the checks themselves. It stalls on mismatches - a licence held under a different entity name than the Google Business Profile, an insurance certificate that has lapsed or does not list the business exactly, or roofing work filed under a licence class that does not cover it.

We line those documents up before the application goes in rather than after Google sends it back. Re-verification is also not a one-off: when a policy renews or a licence is reissued, the profile needs the new document, or the badge can lapse in the middle of the season. The general mechanics are on our Local Services Ads management page; this is the roofing-specific version.

What happens to LSA lead flow when a storm hits?

LSA is pay-per-lead, so a storm changes the account in two ways at once. Volume jumps as homeowners search for roof damage help, and every roofer in the metro raises budgets in the same few days. The weekly budget that lasted all week in a quiet month can be spent by midweek, and the leads that arrive are a mix of genuine damage enquiries, shoppers calling five companies, and calls for work the business does not do.

We plan storm budgets before the season rather than raising them in a panic, and we watch lead quality by day during a storm week, not only volume. Because the account pays per lead, a week of poor-quality leads is a week of charges worth reviewing - which is where disputes come in. Our roofing industry page covers the wider storm-response picture across channels.

Which roofing leads should be disputed?

Not every charged lead is a lead. Wrong numbers, solicitors, calls for a service area the business does not cover, and enquiries for work outside roofing can all be charged. Google allows disputes on those, but only within a time window and only with a clear reason, so it needs a routine rather than an occasional clean-up.

We review call recordings and lead details on a schedule and file disputes for the ones that qualify. The process, and how to judge which leads are disputable, is set out in how to dispute bad Local Services Ads leads.

Why shouldn't a roofer run Local Services Ads on their own?

LSA serves a narrow set of queries: the homeowner searching for a roofer, or roof repair near them, often in the moment. It does not cover the long tail of research searches, brand searches, specific materials, or the homeowner who has not started searching yet. A roofer running LSA only is visible for that narrow set and invisible for the rest.

Search campaigns in Google Ads pick up the queries LSA cannot target, and Meta Ads reach homeowners in affected neighbourhoods before they search. The way we divide retail roofing demand between Search and LSA is laid out in structuring roofing Google Ads and LSA for retail leads.

Why are retail and insurance roofing leads different products?

A retail re-roof is a homeowner paying for a new roof because the old one is at the end of its life. An insurance job starts with storm damage and an adjuster, runs on the claim's timeline, and is decided partly by the insurer. They arrive through the same LSA listing, cost about the same per lead, and are worth different amounts to different roofing businesses on very different timelines.

If both share one target, the account cannot tell which campaigns produce which, and it cannot weight the business toward the work the company actually wants. We tag them separately at intake and keep them apart in reporting, so budget decisions are made on the kind of job, not the blended average.

How many roofers can measure what their ads produce?

We loaded 297 roofing websites in a real browser. 219 of them, 73.7%, had no conversion tracking of any kind - figures from our conversion tracking report. LSA reports its own charged leads, but only those. Without tracking on the website and the phone line, everything outside LSA is unmeasured, and the account cannot compare LSA against Search or Meta on equal terms.