Local Service Ads sit at the very top of many high-value local searches — yet most firms treat them as either a budget game or a review race. The reality is more nuanced. LSAs blend algorithmic ranking signals with behavioral psychology. Review velocity, responsiveness, and messaging opt-in matter — but so does how your business visually presents itself. Headshots, office imagery, and “user journey” photos influence trust long before someone reads a review. Understanding this mix of ranking signals and visual cues is critical for anyone competing in LSAs.

The Podcast Deets

Segment 1 (00:00 – ~11:00)

Visual Trust: Headshots, Photos & Review Psychology

The episode opens by dissecting how LSAs visually present businesses. Headshots are required and framed differently from standard GBP photos, raising questions about trust, gravitas, and perception. The discussion expands into a “user journey” photo strategy — showing the exterior, front desk, and team to reduce friction and increase conversion. Reviews are layered on top as the dominant decision shortcut.

Segment 2 (11:00 – ~19:00)

Ranking Mechanics: Reviews, Responsiveness & Tactical Setup

This segment explores what truly drives LSA ranking: review recency, cadence, messaging opt-in, and call responsiveness. LSAs are not PPC — you cannot simply outbid competitors. Instead, businesses must maintain operational excellence. Setup best practices include broad service areas, maximize leads bidding, and maintaining at least 4–6 strong photos. Phone answer speed emerges as a hidden but critical performance lever.

Segment 3 (19:00 – 28:00)

AI Integration, Expansion & The Future of LSAs

The final section looks ahead. With over 100 categories already active, LSAs are expanding aggressively. The conversation explores how AI search (Gemini, conversational interfaces) could evolve LSAs into interactive, intent-driven ad units that respond dynamically to user constraints and preferences. The future of LSAs likely involves deeper integration with AI-powered local search workflows.

Key Takeaways

• LSAs are not purely pay-to-play

• Review velocity and recency matter more than raw volume

• Suspiciously perfect 5.0 profiles distort competition

• Photos should reduce friction, not showcase branding

• Phone answer speed materially affects conversion

• Messaging opt-in and responsiveness influence ranking

• Agencies often overpromise due to algorithm misunderstanding

• LSAs are expanding across nearly all local verticals

• AI search will likely reshape LSA presentation and interactivity

• Overly niche businesses may not benefit from LSAs

👇 Watch by topic:

00:00 – Introduction: What LSAs Really Are
02:00 – Headshots & Visual Trust in LSAs
04:30 – The “User Journey” Photo Strategy
07:30 – Review Volume, 5.0 Ratings & Competitive Barriers
11:00 – Ranking Signals: Velocity, Recency & Responsiveness
15:30 – Set It & Forget It vs Moving Targets
18:30 – Why You Can’t Pay Your Way to the Top
21:00 – AI Search & the Future of LSAs
24:00 – Category Expansion & Growth
25:30 – Lead Disputes, Credits & Expectation Setting
27:30 – Final Takeaways

Related Links

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Full Transcript

Episode 243 – Google Local Service Ads

Mike Blumenthal AI (00:00)

This is part two of our interview about the ins and outs of Google Local Service Ads.

Mike Blumenthal (00:10)

You must have a great sense of what types of photos work best in this context. Obviously we see a lot of headshots. Is your oldest lawyer a better bet? Is your male lawyer a better bet than a female lawyer? how do you understand this imagery and what works best for people?

Eric Levine (00:29)

Yeah, for these, like for lawyers right here, the photo for a headshot is specifically different. So like in the profile, when you go to upload, there's a headshot specific photo that you upload that is different than your normal just business photos. So the headshot, they want something specifically, they have the specific guidelines for the headshot and that's for what's going to display on search right there with the ads. But then for the rest of the photos,

Mike Blumenthal (00:47)

Eric Levine (00:58)

What I typically like to tell people is that we want to display the user journey with the photos. And the best way to think about it is like Amazon product photos. So if you are going to buy a new office chair and you're looking through Amazon photos, the least important photo that you could possibly see is the logo of whatever business that is. So a lot of times we'll see like office, even law offices, they'll have a picture of the logo or something like that. That logo doesn't tell me that they're good lawyers. It doesn't tell me that they're going to get me my money. It doesn't really tell me anything about the business. And again, most people aren't really going to be looking through. if you've got 50 pictures, you know, by the time you've gotten to the 40th picture of a personal injury law firm, you know, you're not getting any additional information. So. What we want to do is demonstrate the user journey. So for a law office, example, being able to see early on the front of the building. actually in that, you could see what the front of the building looks like. That's going to help show somebody where they park, like where the front door is, what they're actually going to be walking into. The next photo I'd want to see is like the front desk. So that, you know, I know that, you know, this is where the receptionist is. This is where I'm going to go. And then the next photo beyond that is like, conference room and then maybe down the line is the photos of the team or anything like that.

Greg Sterling (02:18)

So this is general advice about all GBP photos you're saying. I mean, we're talking about LSAs, but you would give this advice to somebody just setting up a GBP, the user journey as the guide. Yeah, okay.

Eric Levine (02:30)

Yeah, absolutely. Because it's much more user behavior than what Google is looking for using their image recognition. It's much more about when people actually click on the ad, what is the difference between when people are comparing? That's one thing I used to joke with an agency before where they did pest control. they're talking about people comparing pest control. And I'm like, don't know what pest control. They don't know anything about pest control. So what are they actually comparing? Really, they're gonna be looking at reviews. They're gonna make sure that they're in their area. And they may look through a couple photos, but really that's it. And so for like home services, the types of photos that you wanna see is I wanna see the van, you know, in the driveway or the van parked out front. So I know, okay, they got a blue van. So in my head, that's what it's gonna look like. The guy walks up to my house wearing a blue polo shirt. You know, I can kind of picture what the experience is gonna be like. I'm more likely to convert. That's the idea.

Mike Blumenthal (03:21)

So within this, obviously you've standardized around headshots. I can understand why people like to see, get a sense of whether that person's in their tribe or not and a headshot close up is the best way to do it. I mean, Is there advice you can provide on providing the best possible headshots? I mean, if you have three lawyers in the firm, should it be the oldest one, the youngest one, the... You know, you know what I mean? It's like, how would one choose which lawyer to put up for Broderick, Broderick and Broderick or whatever.

Eric Levine (03:58)

That's tough. As far as why the headshot photos, like why they choose headshot versus just like on Google Business Profile where you can put any photo first is this looks more consistent. And Google cares a lot about the consistency and how it looks. As far as like who should be the face of your business, I mean, maybe run some user experience studies and do some A.B. testing on whose face is the best. But otherwise, likely with the business owner. Whoever is the managing partner at the firm, the face of the company. And yeah, that's who you probably typically want to go with.

Mike Blumenthal (04:32)

I did some user survey work years ago and Gravitas seemed the older the lawyer, the more people chose it. I'm just curious if that's still the case. That was 10 or 15 years ago I did that research. I don't know. Anyways, back to you.

Eric Levine (04:48)

When you've got the face next to reviews, I think you look at the face, but if I'm looking at these three people, I'm really, gonna be looking at the reviews. And to your point about the 5.0 looking a little fake, yeah, sometimes too perfect looks like, almost like plastic. It sometimes looks too perfect.

Greg Sterling (05:08)

Well, there there's different responses to that. There are some people who are savvy enough to say, hey, that doesn't seem realistic or that doesn't seem legit. But most people don't question. I mean, based on this user research that we've done, which is quite a lot of it, most people are looking at ratings and number of reviews and they're not doing any second guessing or reading of text. There's about a third of the audience that will go in and look at reviews, but most people don't. They just look at it at this level and they make a choice based on that. And.

Mike Blumenthal (05:38)

Which does raise another question for me, Greg and Eric, which is that typically when I see these, we always see more reviews in LSAs, even though they're based on their local business, than we see in the PACs. Again, another attribute that seems to drive people towards the LSAs, but I'm curious why or how that comes about. I mean, why does that happen?

Eric Levine (06:04)

So because lawyers are able to target statewide, these are likely the top performing lawyers in the state from like a reviews standpoint, let's say. ⁓ But based on the Brooklyn, so this, the map package is showing you the best people who are in Brooklyn near you. The LSAs, assuming that they're targeting statewide, are showing you best lawyers in the entire state. So I think it's just more of like a sample difference there.

Mike Blumenthal (06:14)

Greg Sterling (06:29)

Just a kind of a quick follow up and then we should probably shift into a different area. In our work with the legal vertical and personal injury in particular, there were just a lot of five star, 1,000 plus, 2,000 plus reviews, which are obviously not legit or not entirely legit. And what that does is it creates a a barrier to businesses that are not engaged in some sort of review manipulation, review gating or outright fraud because they can't get into that top group because they just don't have enough reviews, right? Or they don't have, they're not hitting the thresholds. How do you respond to that?

Eric Levine (07:13)

Yeah, so when you say reviews are not legit, you I mean you think that they're having somebody pay a farm to generate false reviews?

Greg Sterling (07:21)

There's a variety of ways that reviews can be manipulated, but seeing 2,000 plus reviews or 1,200 reviews that are all five stars, not one less than five star review, that's just on its face, prima facie, as they say in the legal profession, evidence of fraud to me or some sort of manipulation.

Eric Levine (07:42)

Sure, sure. Yeah, I think that's fair. One thing I would say to people who are like worried about competing, let's say, is that reviews aren't the only signal that are used to determine who's gonna be in that top spot. Review velocity, so not just the fact that you have 5,000 five-star reviews, but the fact that you are continuing to get reviews every day, or at least have a good....

Greg Sterling (08:08)

So not velocity precisely, but cadence and recency. Because I mean, I think velocity is a signal that Google is going to look at to flag the account. If I have 25 reviews and then all of a sudden 100 show up, that's going to be a problem, I think, for Google.

Eric Levine (08:13)

Yes, absolutely. that they're probably gonna be doing it based on some sort of baseline. So if you are 200 % above all the averages, that might give a flag. But I don't think that there's like a specific number that is gonna cause a flag, but outliers are likely gonna raise some signals. But yeah, reviews, review velocity, who's opted into the CTAs. There's been a lot of push to get the lawyers to opt into messaging. A lot of lawyers have call centers where an intake team that's somewhere else. And it was difficult for them to opt in a messaging. But as you can see, the top people have messaging turned on. And then responsiveness rates as well, making sure that they're being responded to consistently. yeah, reviews aren't the only thing that they take into account. And if somebody is doing some sort of review fraud, over time people get flagged and people do get pulled down. And so it's a game just like any other fraudster that may last for a season and people may make out like bandits for a while. But eventually people are gonna get caught. That's just my guess.

Mike Blumenthal (09:33)

I have one final question about design of these. They have slightly different ⁓ attributes. are these attributes, are they selectable and in the setup process, family-owned, free consultation, those kinds of things, or are they automatically assigned?

Eric Levine (09:51)

Yeah, so those inside the profile is what's called the business bio call outs. And I believe you can call out up to six different ones, know, Better Business Bureau approved back in COVID times, they had all the COVID call outs, like wears masks or something like that. So you can go inside the dashboard and select, believe up to six and then Google will choose whichever they think are the best.

Greg Sterling (10:08)

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Blumenthal (10:14)

And have you seen, are you, do you favor certain ones that you think are more compelling, let's say in the legal space?

Eric Levine (10:23)

Interesting. Not particularly. Free consultation, that calls out to me when I see that, because I know that a lot of law firms don't do free consultation. So the fact that they do, that's a big call out. Family owned, I'm not sure how that conveys. Years in business, that's a pretty important one. ⁓

Greg Sterling (10:29)

Yeah. Yes.

Mike Blumenthal (10:40)

Do you vet years in business? I mean, if I just make it up and said I've been in business 45 years, because that's how long I've been a lawyer, but my firm has only been here 10, do you actually check that? is it a trust? It's just ⁓ you trust that people aren't going to lie about it.

Eric Levine (10:55)

think it's probably more based on trust, but at a certain point, you know, cause Google checks a lot of your documents and stuff. They do business entity background checks. I haven't seen anybody, at least I can't remember anybody who's been flagged for that before, but yeah, it'd be kind of hard to, well, it wouldn't be impossible to figure that out, but yeah, I don't think people have been gaming that too much.

Greg Sterling (11:20)

In this last section that we're talking about, let's focus in on some tactical recommendations and maybe a little bit of prognostication. What are the most common mistakes that you have seen people make or agencies make with LSAs? Just so we can flesh those out.

Mike Blumenthal (11:27)

I'm gonna take this off the screen, Greg, okay.

Eric Levine (11:43)

man, making promises you can't keep. ⁓ We're going to help you dominate the top spot. ⁓ Yeah, we're going to help you improve your lead volume by 15%. A lot of this stuff that's just not possible. And I think a lot of people are frustrated with their agencies because their agencies make these big promises that they can't keep.

Greg Sterling (11:46)

such as, what does that I mean? I see.

Eric Levine (12:09)

the, you know, I know it sounds kind of simple, but that's, that's one thing when, when we started Leadwise HQ, which was that all we have to do is just not lie to people. Like if we, if we do a good job and we do not lie to people, we don't set false expectations. People aren't going to have a reason to be upset with us. ⁓ like, you know, retroactively. So that's a big one that I've seen just unfortunately I've heard a lot of podcasts where people are, you know, just making promises that they know what's happening on the inside. You know, this is what happened. with reviews, this is what's happening with SEO. And I'm always like, how do you know? And they say, well, we've run tests and we've looked at this. And I say, when did you run those tests? Between May and June? How do you know that Google wasn't running an experiment from April to July? And it's very, difficult to try to A-B test or try to get ahead of the algorithm or think that you know what's happening. yeah, so I would say try not to make any promises you can't keep. Try not to get inside the brains of what's happening at Google because it's very, difficult to do. And even people at Google, a lot of them don't know, which is why they call it experiments. They're running different tests to see what's going to happen. So that's probably the biggest piece of advice is try not to do that.

Mike Blumenthal (13:23)

Does your agency, clearly we're seeing a trend towards Google making local pay to play either through LSAs and or local location asset PPC or location asset in maps. Does your agency also offer GBP and organic optimization or you strictly LSA? And what would you suggest agencies going forward to best sort of protect themselves against a future

Eric Levine (13:43)

to work.

Mike Blumenthal (13:50)

in which they are sleeping with the elephant. And the problem with that is you never know when it's going to roll over.

Eric Levine (13:56)

So at Leadwise HQ, we're just going deep on LSA because that is really what I have the domain expertise at. I know a lot about GBP, but there's a big difference. There are people like you folks who have just been in the space for many, many years and have just seen all of the episodes of the TV show and you know what the evolution has been. So there are people who are better at it than me, but there's also a lot of There's also just a lot of basic stuff that you can be doing. And the future of AI search, I know, cares a lot about local. I mean, if you ask ChatGPT or Gemini, are the top three plumbers in the area, it will tell you. And you can't pay to rank based on how they're doing it. So they're pulling some sort of intent signals. And my guess is a lot of it is pulled from Google Business Profile. They're reading reviews. They're seeing how many of your reviews are responded to. You know, looking at the FAQs, things on your website. That's the other big one. Website is massive. They're pulling a lot of stuff from website. Even LSA pulls stuff from website. Promotions and other things that are not added inside the LSA platform are pulled from the website. So, yeah, again, it's a little bit of a golf score where they're kind of doing a lot of different things in order to try to infer.

Mike Blumenthal (15:05)

A Trumpian golf score or a regular golf score?

Greg Sterling (15:06)

Wha- wha- ⁓

Eric Levine (15:09)

A little bit of both, they're experimenting, that's the whole

Mike Blumenthal (15:10)

You

Eric Levine (15:11)

thing.

Greg Sterling (15:13)

What are the, I mean, you've already gone through a sort of a list of things in terms of relevance and ranking signals. For somebody who's setting up these profiles and trying to compete, what are the top things that must be done? I mean, you've already sort of talked about this a little bit, but I just want to make sure that we've gotten all these out.

Eric Levine (15:37)

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people believe LSAs are set it and forget because compared to PPC, there are so many fewer levers that LSAs just come across as much easier to manage. I would say that there's two components to LSAs. There's a part that's set in and forget it. So things like service areas, you're not really changing those on a daily or weekly basis. Bid mode, photos, those are things that are not really changing on a daily basis. The minimum for photos is four to six high quality photos. That's the recommendation, the best practices. The best bid mode is maximize leads. There are people who swear by using manual leads, but the best practice to use manual leads that just automatic bidding lets Google set the price. And then service areas is serving as wide as you can reasonably serve. So that's the sort of set it and forget it part. And then there's like the, what I call like moving targets component of local services. And that's reviews and responsiveness. So these are things that are constantly happening. Reviews, people have extraordinarily complex operations with how they handle reviews and review responses and reputation management, and there's a million apps for all of that. And then the responsiveness component too. There's a million different third party apps that are used to either answer and respond to message leads. There's Leadferno that does SMS message response. And in the world of AI, I think that's gonna take over answering the phone. Those are the two components that it's a little bit, you have to... Understand what Google cares about they care about that review velocity and they care that you're answering your phone But then also it's customer service right the response in this specifically I believe there's I can't remember the exact number but it is something like 40 % of people hang up if they are not connected to a human in the first 30 seconds something like that and then 90 % hang up if they're not responded, you know, if human is not answered the phone within the first 50 seconds, something like that. And so a lot of times when a mom calls with people, I'll show them and we'll actually call their business, whether it's this, you know, big enterprise business or just a mom and pop shop, we'll call and we'll actually count down how long it's taking to be connected. And a lot of people are shocked to find out that it's one minute or one and a half minutes or longer ⁓ until a person is actually, you know, answers the call. So That's two important parts, the set and forget it component and then the moving targets that require a little bit more handholding.

Mike Blumenthal (18:08)

In those moving targets, there anything more important than the other? I mean, obviously response rate and reviews, booking information. I mean, if somebody has to prioritize one over the other, or one is failing one and the other, do you recommend a direction there?

Eric Levine (18:27)

This is one where you have to do everything. With Google Ads, you can pay your way to the top. And it's almost simpler in that sense, which is how do I dominate Google Ads? Well, pay the most amount of money. That's your best chance. With local services, you cannot pay your way to the top. So there are all these non-financial mechanisms by which people have to display that they are the best advertiser. And what that means is you have to do a little bit of everything. So I wouldn't tell people just focus on reviews, responsiveness doesn't matter, or vice versa. I would say you have to think a little bit about everything.

Greg Sterling (19:00)

You alluded to something a second ago, which is the idea that AI customer service tools will be answering the phone. That's happening at a lot of restaurants now. Do you foresee some of these AI Google, like Google has this price investigation thing, and ask the maps about this place? Do you see Google integrating AI in some fashion into LSAs in the future?

Eric Levine (19:28)

My guess is of course, my guess is absolutely.

Greg Sterling (19:30)

So what form might that take in your mind?

Eric Levine (19:34)

I mean, it's just natural. let's say I want to remodel my kitchen. So I open up Gemini and I'm holding the camera right up to the kitchen and I'm saying, hey Gemini, want, show me what this new countertop is going to look like, what these cabinets look like and show me what a new stove is going to look like. know, superimpose them. Let's try a few different versions and then give me a price. And then it's going to tell you, here's what the average price is and say, great, find me somebody in the area who can do this. and it's gonna go, here's three different people. And you're gonna go, I don't want three different people. I don't know anything about home improvement. I need you to tell me who should I choose? And it's gonna think for a second, then it's gonna go, based on what we read on all these websites, blogs, based on all the reviews, we think that John's home improvement is gonna be the best match for you.

Greg Sterling (20:22)

that's going to be potentially drawn from an LSA, or that'll be an LSA. mean, LeadGen is an obvious ad model for local search, right? I mean, this kind of thing. I've got this job. Here's a practitioner. What I was asking really was about whether AI features would be incorporated into the ads themselves or behind the scenes in the ads.

Eric Levine (20:27)

That would be my guess. That would be my guess. This seems to make sense.

Greg Sterling (20:49)

as opposed to the consumer scenario that you just played out.

Eric Levine (20:54)

So like, what's an example that you could think of?

Greg Sterling (20:56)

Well,

Mike Blumenthal (20:56)

Well, an example would be, I am looking for a personal injury lawyer that his headquarters is in my county, and who is committed to the local community. And I want somebody who has at least 20 years of experience, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In other words,

Greg Sterling (20:56)

like- That's the same example.

Eric Levine (21:13)

100%.

Mike Blumenthal (21:13)

Well, I mean, but, it isn't in the sense that I want to constrain it geographically and I want to, I want to see a comparison. So there's an example and you're doing that in maps right now. you're doing it in Gemini and in AI mode. And, and I guess what Greg is asking is will that immediacy show up within the current version of LSAs? In other words, it's showing up in the current version of maps. It's showing up.

Eric Levine (21:18)

Yes.

Mike Blumenthal (21:40)

in the current version of search, will it show up within LSAs? That sort of inquiry mode, I guess.

Eric Levine (21:47)

My guess is absolutely, because what you're describing is that rich intent-based search, which is done inside of AI, versus just basic keyword search. yeah, absolutely, because if they can pull information, that rich content off your website and off your blogs and reviews of an LSA, and then they can match that to the rich intent-based search that you just did, yeah, absolutely, I could see that.

Greg Sterling (22:11)

Well, so ChatGPT has shown this mock-up of an ad, like a chat ad, where you've got the answer, then you've got this ad unit, and you can interact with the ad unit. I can imagine something like that in the LSA. So you can expand something, then you can start asking questions. It's sort of like Ask Maps or Ask About This Place, where all the information that's behind the scenes can be brought to bear on the question. I mean, that's kind of what I was getting at. Do we see the LSA unit itself starting to incorporate that kind of interactivity?

Eric Levine (22:44)

So we don't see it now, but as you've seen with the LSA where it's now pulling things like promotions or business hours or that business bio information off the website, yeah, I can see that happening as well. Or even more of like a drill down. Because one thing, let's say, for example, with personal injury lawyers, a lot of people don't like, if you were to ask 10 people on the street, what does a plumber do? 10 people will tell you. If you ask 10 people, what does a personal injury lawyer do? How many people are going to know what a personal injury lawyer does? So not as many. So what I see a version of this as is things like follow-up questions. So yeah, like I was personally injured by my neighbor.

Greg Sterling (23:15)

Not as many. Right. That's what I was suggesting. Right.

Eric Levine (23:27)

Right? And then they go, no, you need a criminal lawyer, not a personal injury lawyer.

Greg Sterling (23:30)

Right. these ads will, some version of these things will show up in AI. They're going to show up in AI mode in all likelihood because this is a natural ad unit to put at the back of a local search, especially if it develops this interactive capability.

Eric Levine (23:47)

Yeah, if it works.

Mike Blumenthal (23:47)

So quick question going forward. I how many categories is LSA in now and how many do you think will be next year this time when we have you back on the show?

Eric Levine (24:00)

Sure, so ⁓ there are over 100 right now, home services, healthcare, professional services, education, people care, pet care, auto. There's a miscellaneous category like with storage and cell phone repair. My guess is that they're gonna try to keep going.

Greg Sterling (24:17)

Every category.

Eric Levine (24:19)

Yeah, yeah, every category. Yeah, I'm not sure about how they think about the prioritization. I mean, you know, a lot of times they run things in tests and pilots. I mean, if you look, please, please.

Greg Sterling (24:28)

What the? No, go ahead. I was just gonna make a cynical remark, you go ahead. You got the real information.

Eric Levine (24:37)

They want to do everything. That's my guess. Or at least everything that's a fit for local services.

Greg Sterling (24:44)

OK, we should probably wind up. We've been doing this for long time. I mean, there's a bunch of questions that we didn't get a chance to ask that maybe we'll ask at a later point. But what is your big takeaway? If somebody wants to know the one or two nuggets here about LSAs, what would you leave them with?

Eric Levine (25:06)

The only time I would not use LSA or when I would tell people don't use LSA is if you are too niche. So if all you're interested in is say one job type of a vertical. Or what you do is maybe adjacent and it's close But it's not exactly the types of job types that you would see inside of LSA. I would say don't do it the vast majority of You know searches for any of the verticals are gonna be for that broad the general category personal injury laywer near me that's like the vast majority of searches and Yeah, so if it's too niche then I wouldn't say that Otherwise, know what one big that we would get from people is, especially from personal injury lawyers, is they would say, hey, I just got a phone call for a dog bite. We put on our profile, we don't do dog bites. Why did Google send me this and why did they charge me for that? ⁓ And how do I get credit? Yes, exactly. Who do I sue? Exactly. And...

Mike Blumenthal (25:58)

And how do I get credit? Yeah.

Eric Levine (26:07)

This is where some of the like expectation setting comes from. And just letting people know that again, the vast majority of these searches are gonna be for personal injury lawyer near me. So probably 80%, maybe more of the searches or for that broad category. So somebody's doing a search for personal injury lawyer near me. They call and they tell them, hey, I was bitten by a dog. So they didn't search for dog bite near me. They searched for the broad category. They called in and that's why that happened. But yeah, very similar to like if it was PPC. ⁓ right, and somebody called and clicked, they wouldn't then expect to get that click money back. But anyway, that's the idea.

Greg Sterling (26:38)

So are there any circumstances now where you can get a credit or refund? I guess there are no refunds, but where you get a credit?

Eric Levine (26:47)

So Google has now moved to the auto-crediting system where they try to essentially infer whether or not that's a legitimate lead or not. The only time I've ever seen any real recourse, it's extraordinarily rare. Sometimes when you leave lead feedback, it will give you a credit, but very rare. And I tell people,

Mike Blumenthal (27:08)

Can you tell us the secret words that the AI is looking for in that lead feedback form?

Eric Levine (27:10)

Well, that's the point. When you're leaving that feedback, sometimes people will say, I was very dissatisfied with this lead over and over, thinking that it's the same thing as a lead dispute. But essentially, you're training the system to say, hey, we shouldn't send you any leads. So tell people to just be careful with that. Try to be honest with the system.

Mike Blumenthal (27:28)

Eric Levine said this word should work.

Eric Levine (27:31)

Yes, exactly. Exactly. ⁓

Greg Sterling (27:36)

The magic language.

Mike Blumenthal (27:38)

Yes.

Greg Sterling (27:38)

All right, that, Mike, do you wanna throw in one final thing or should we let him go? Let him off the hook here.

Mike Blumenthal (27:42)

No, no, just want to thank Eric for appearing on our show and putting up with us. We're not the easiest hosts in the world to live with, particularly when you work for Google. well, it's like three Jews at a table, right? There's no different. And you're welcome to my table anytime.

Greg Sterling (27:47)

Absolutely. We talk over each other. We interrupt each other. Yeah.

Eric Levine (27:59)

you

Greg Sterling (28:00)

Well, yes, thank you very much for your generosity and your time. We'll include a link to your website. And if people want to reach out to you directly, where's the best place to do that?

Eric Levine (28:02)

Amazing. head on over to leadwisehq.com, send us a message, we'd be happy to take a look, happy to do some audits for you guys. And yeah, just really appreciate the time. This means a lot, we're early in this. We've been in the LSA game for a while, but the agency is new. And just really, really appreciate the opportunity.

Greg Sterling (28:30)

Thanks for all your advice and your insights. It was very helpful. And yeah, we will do it again. And as always, thanks for listening, and we'll see you

Eric Levine (28:36)

Yeah, of course. We'd happy to do this again if you get more questions.