If you are running Google Local Service Ads for your landscape or outdoor living company, you need to pay attention to this because Google sent out an email recently to every single advertiser that uses Local Service Ads, stating that starting October 1, 2026, you will be charged for missed calls.

If you’re reading this six months or 12 months in the future, this is still very important because this change is permanent.

Basically, what’s going to happen is if someone goes to the search results and they type in “yard drainage solutions near me” or “retaining wall contractor,” you know what they’re looking for, and they click to call right there from the ad. As soon as that call is connected, the timer starts ticking with Google, and if it reaches 20 seconds and you still didn’t pick up, it’s going to bill you regardless of whether or not you even got a chance to talk to them. They didn’t leave a voicemail. Nothing got booked. But you still got charged for the lead.

What Does This Mean for Your Landscape Company?

Lots of money is going to be going out the window, especially if you forget to call them back and completely lose out on that lead, and that is something we see very often.

The average cost per lead for Landscape Marketing Pros’ clients across five different regions of the country that are running Google LSA right now is about $79. That is a ton of money to be throwing away to Google if the call is missed outright.

And here’s where things get a lot worse.

Over the past nearly six years at Landscape Marketing Pros, we’ve generated tens of thousands of leads for landscape companies across the country. We see the same pattern year after year after year, and that is the time of day when leads actually come in.

Phone calls come in at about 8am. They ramp up at about 9, and they peak between 10, 11, and noon or so depending on the day, and then stay strong till about 5, and then drop off from there.

That means the majority of your LSA calls are coming in during business hours. When, depending on the size of company that you have, you could be operating equipment at that point in time. You don’t want to stop because you’re in a skid loader grading out a property before you guys throw down sod because there’s a storm coming that afternoon. You could be meeting with existing prospects or doing a final walkthrough of a project. Hundreds of different scenarios of what you could be doing, but then if you miss any of the calls that come in, you’re still going to get charged regardless of whether or not that was a good lead.

The Math on Missed LSA Calls

Just doing some simple math, if you miss only five calls a month, which from the data we’ve seen, so many contractors, even the ones that have dedicated office admin that they’re paying $5-6K a month salary to answer calls, still miss that many or even more than that per day, especially during peak season.

But if you take those five LSA calls at an average of about $80 per lead, you’re looking at $400 a month gone. Over a 12-month season, that’s $4,800 a year. Over a 7-month season, that’s $2,800.

Yes, some of those could be good leads, but there’s no way to know because the call wasn’t answered. There’s no way to know exactly what that lead actually wanted. We can kind of see the keywords, but sometimes consumers and prospects are looking for mowing but they type in “landscaper,” and so that’s what shows up.

And that’s why the context of the call and answering them is so important. Because if somebody does reach out to your company and you’re design/build only, you don’t do maintenance or one-time cuts, and somebody just wants their grass cut one time, you can go in and dispute it. The term is called “dissatisfied” and you say that the person was looking for something you don’t offer. And oftentimes Google will credit that lead towards your next month’s bill.

So What Can You Do About It?

Number one, you can try to answer every single call yourself. A lot of landscape contractors do this. Some are pretty good at it. However, there are going to be times where you still miss calls. Things come up. Maybe you’re eating lunch and you put your phone on Do Not Disturb and miss the call during that time. Whatever the case may be, it doesn’t really matter.

You can try to do that, and that can work. However, you still have to remember to make sure you’re answering their questions, qualifying them, getting all the details, getting the person booked onto your calendar, and make sure you have your calendar in front of you in order to get all that stuff in place. And if you’re someone who’s in the field maybe 50% of the time doing work with the equipment and your crew, the other 50% of the time you’re doing sales meetings or running around town getting material, that’s a lot of hats to juggle.

The other option, you can hire a part-time or full-time office assistant, which means you’re going to then need to have an office for them to work, provide them with a computer, the software, all the stuff needed in order to do that with the phone. Then they want vacation time, they want benefits, they want 401K, they have emotions, and them being unhappy could come out on the phone while they’re talking to a prospect. Lots of different variables there, and it’s very expensive.

Or you can put something in place that answers every single call 24/7, qualifies the prospect, and books the estimate directly onto your calendar, where you just get a notification saying so-and-so was booked for this time on this date, and it’s on your calendar with all the details for the project, the address, the services, all that sort of good stuff. You just show up and close the work.

What It Sounds Like When Verdapt Answers an LSA Call

In the video attached, that prospect called, Verdapt went through its process, led the conversation, got the project details, and most importantly, got that person booked onto the contractor’s schedule for them to go out and meet and measure up the project and sell the work from there.

The Double Penalty for Missing Calls

Starting October 1, there are going to be two penalties against you when it comes to missing calls if you’re running ads using LSA.

First, being the whole subject of this video, missed calls are still going to be charged regardless of what the intent was behind the call.

Second, your answer rate is a factor in LSA rankings, so where you show up against your local competitors. If you’re missing call after call after call, you are going to get pushed further and further down. That means less leads going forward, and then that becomes paying more to get less, and nobody wants to do that.

The whole reason behind this is because Google is all about making sure that their users, which is your prospects, going and searching for the service they’re interested in, if they are calling and reaching out and landscape contractors aren’t answering the phone, they are unhappy. Google is all about their users and how they can best serve the people using the search engine.

With SEO, it’s making sure that the best possible source of information, which is your company’s website, shows up at the top. With LSA, the best contractor that’s answering the calls, has a great review rating, and is getting consistent reviews week after week, month after month, they’re the ones that are going to be showing up at the very top of the search results. They’re the ones that are going to be getting the most leads.

Google is telling you exactly what they want. Just answer the phone.

The absolute best way to do this for your landscape or outdoor living company is to have Verdapt answer the phone and get the right prospects booked onto your calendar. That way you can wake up each morning, check your calendar, go out and meet with the prospect, measure up the project, and sell the work from there. And overall, run a much more efficient business that reduces waste thrown away to Google and a more profitable company as a result.

If you’re running LSAs or frankly any type of marketing to get more calls and leads into your business, and you know that your phone is ringing while you’re on job sites or meeting with existing clients and prospects, go below and book a demo for Verdapt. Let us show you exactly how this will work for your company so you can stop shelling out money for leads you never even got a chance to talk to.

Book a demo and leverage Verdapt to save $1000s each year on wasted ad spend to Google.