If you are looking for the Dispute Lead button, stop. Google removed manual lead disputes from Local Services Ads in July 2024. Credits are now assessed automatically, and two of the most common dispute reasons are no longer credited at all.
Most guides ranking for this question still walk you through the old three-dot menu. One of them was updated in mid-2026 and still describes a button that isn’t in the interface.
If you have been screenshotting bad leads and hunting for somewhere to submit them, that is why you can’t find it.
Here is what actually happens now.
What replaced the dispute flow
Google moved to automated credits. Their own announcement email was titled “No Action Required: Automating Google Local Services Ads Lead Credits.” In Google’s current documentation, the mechanism works in two stages:
“Leads are first assessed when the potential customer makes initial contact, and leads determined to be invalid or low quality are not charged. Charged leads get reassessed by our models over time, and may be issued credits automatically if later determined to be low quality.”
“In most cases, credits will be applied to your account balance within 30 days.”
— Google, About automated Local Services Ads lead credits
So there are two filters. One runs at the moment of contact and prevents a charge. A second runs over the following weeks and may hand back a credit as a balance adjustment rather than a reversal against the individual lead.
That second detail catches people out. You will not see a line item saying “lead #4417 refunded.” You will see your balance change.
Two things Google stopped crediting completely
This is the part almost nobody has written about, and it is the part that changes what you should do.
“Google no longer supports credits for ‘job type not serviced’ and ‘geo not serviced’ leads. Additionally, lead credits aren’t available for health care verticals, tax specialists, or advertisers in EMEA.”
Read that against the guides still ranking for this question. The two dispute reasons they tell you to select — “service you don’t provide” and “location you don’t serve” — are precisely the two categories that no longer produce a credit.
Google also acknowledged the direction of travel plainly when announcing the change: it may mean fewer credits for some advertisers.
The fix moved upstream, and that is the real lesson
When you could dispute after the fact, a sloppy profile was an annoyance you cleaned up monthly. Now it is a permanent cost.
If you are charged for a job type you don’t do, you no longer get that money back. Ever. The only remaining lever is making sure the lead never reaches you.
What manual input you still have
One thing survives: the lead feedback survey. Google’s documentation says that if you believe a lead was poor quality you can report it there, and that they may occasionally credit leads reported that way.
May and occasionally are Google’s words, not a paraphrase. Treat the survey as feeding the model rather than as a refund request — worth doing consistently, not worth building a process around.
As for how often automated credits actually arrive, Google publishes nothing. The only figures in circulation come from agencies reporting on their own managed accounts, in the region of 15% to 25% of flagged leads. Those are anecdotes from interested parties, not a benchmark, and we present them as such because nothing better exists.
Your effective cost per lead went up without your bid changing
This is the consequence nobody connects.
Your real cost per lead is what you spend divided by the leads you can actually use. If the share of bad leads you recover has fallen, that denominator shrank — and your effective cost rose — while your bid stayed exactly where it was.
Worth recalculating before you conclude the channel got more expensive. It may be that recovery got harder rather than that leads got dearer, and those two problems have completely different fixes.
The lever most contractors are ignoring
While you can no longer recover money after the fact, you can still influence how many leads you get for the same spend — and Google is unusually direct about how.
From Google’s ad rankings documentation, on the factors behind the auction:
“Your responsiveness to customer inquiries and requests: Missed calls may negatively affect your responsiveness.”
— Google, About ad rankings, Local Services Help
Profile quality, in the same document, includes your average response time. Note the exact wording — Google says responsiveness and average response time. It does not say “response rate,” whatever you may have read elsewhere.
Google also documents the recovery path: a missed call with no voicemail counts as handled if you return it by call, text or email and either speak to the customer or leave a voicemail. So a missed call is survivable — an ignored one isn’t.
The practical version: every call that rings out is charged, doesn’t convert, and quietly works against your ranking. That is three costs from one missed call, which is why answering is worth more than optimising bids for most contractors.
Paying for leads that ring out?
Answering every LSA call on the first ring costs a fraction of the lead itself. See inbound AI call answering, or count what you’re actually missing first with an AI opportunity audit.
A short monthly routine
Ten minutes, once a month, replaces the dispute process you used to run:
Check your balance for credits applied since last month, since they appear there rather than against individual leads. Skim the leads you were charged for and note any pattern — a job type you thought was off, a suburb outside your area, a run of calls at an hour nobody covers. Fix the setting rather than reporting the lead. Then submit feedback on the genuinely bad ones and move on.
What you should not do is keep hunting for the dispute button. It went away in July 2024 and it isn’t coming back.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I dispute a Google Local Services Ads lead?
You cannot. Google removed manual lead disputes in July 2024 and replaced them with automated credits. Leads are assessed when the customer first makes contact, and invalid or low-quality ones are not charged. Charged leads are reassessed by Google’s models over time and may be credited automatically, usually applied to your account balance within 30 days rather than reversed against the individual lead.
Which LSA leads no longer get credited at all?
Google no longer supports credits for ‘job type not serviced’ and ‘geo not serviced’ leads. Credits are also unavailable for health care verticals, tax specialists, and advertisers in EMEA. Those first two are the most common reasons contractors used to dispute, which is why fixing job types and service area in your profile now matters more than reporting leads after the fact.
How long do Google LSA lead credits take?
Google states that in most cases credits are applied to your account balance within 30 days. They arrive as a balance adjustment rather than a per-lead refund, so check your balance rather than looking for a reversal against a specific lead.
Can I still report a bad LSA lead?
Yes, through the lead feedback survey. Google’s documentation says they may occasionally credit leads reported as poor quality this way. Treat it as feeding their quality model rather than as a refund request — ‘may’ and ‘occasionally’ are Google’s own words.
Do missed calls affect Local Services Ads ranking?
Yes. Google’s ad rankings documentation lists responsiveness among the factors behind the auction and states that missed calls may negatively affect it, with average response time also feeding profile quality. Google documents that returning a missed call by phone, text or email — where you speak to the customer or leave a voicemail — counts as handling it.