Local Services Ads vs Yelp Ads before the spring rush

The last week of February is when trade owners start doing the spring arithmetic. The first warm weekend brings the air conditioning tune-ups, the frozen pipe backlog finally clears, and the roofers who spent January on insurance paperwork want the phone ringing again. Two ad options come up in almost every one of those conversations this month: Google’s Local Services Ads and Yelp Ads.

They get talked about as if they were two versions of the same product. They are not. One charges you for a lead and the other charges you for a click, and they reach people at different moments in choosing a contractor. Here is how we explain the difference to owners, and which one we would start with in which situation.

Who is choosing, and what decides it

This decision usually lands on the owner of a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, garage door, cleaning or roofing company with a modest ad budget and nobody on staff who wants to manage ads. Four things decide it more than any feature list:

• Where your customers go to pick a trade. In some cities and categories plenty of people open Yelp first. Others go straight to Google and pick from whatever sits at the top, and most owners already know which habit their customers have.
• Whether you want to pay for contact or for attention. A lead is a phone call or a message. A click is a visit to your page that may or may not turn into a call.
• How fast someone picks up. Both platforms reward a business that answers. A missed call on either one is money spent sending a customer to a competitor.
• Where your reviews already live. A company with a long Google review history starts ahead on one platform, and a company with a strong Yelp page starts ahead on the other.

Local Services Ads, in plain words

Local Services Ads are the listings with a verification badge that appear at the very top of Google for eligible service searches, usually above the regular text ads. Each one shows the business name, reviews, hours and service area, and the customer calls or messages straight from the ad.

You pay per lead rather than per click. A lead is a call or message about a job type you offer, in an area you serve. Before the ads can run, Google screens the business, and depending on the trade that can mean license checks, insurance checks and background checks on the owner and the technicians.

Where you appear depends on factors Google has named in its own help pages: how close the customer is, your reviews, how responsive you are to calls and messages, and whether you are open when the search happens. Leads land in their own inbox inside the account, where you can review each one, and Google has a process for crediting leads that were not valid. Read how that process works before you start, because the rules are Google’s to change.

Yelp Ads, in plain words

Yelp Ads are bought by the click. Your ad appears in Yelp search results for the categories and area you choose, and on the pages of other businesses in your category. People who click land on your Yelp page, where they can call, send a message asking for a quote, or go on to your website.

Yelp also sells upgrades to the business page itself, such as a call to action button. What comes bundled with an ad program and what costs extra varies, so ask for the list.

The audience is people who have already opened Yelp to choose someone, which is valuable because they are comparing rather than browsing. Yelp’s policy is that businesses should not ask customers for reviews, so a Yelp page tends to build slowly and favors the company that has been doing steady work for years.

The two side by side

	Local Services Ads	Yelp Ads
How you pay	Per lead: a call or message about a job you do	Per click on your ad
Where it shows	Top of Google for eligible service searches	Yelp search results and other businesses’ Yelp pages
What it takes to start	Google screening, which by trade can include license, insurance and background checks	A claimed Yelp page and an ad setup
What decides placement	Distance, reviews, responsiveness and hours	Relevance to the search, your budget and your Yelp page; ask Yelp to walk you through it
Who should own the account	The business, inside its own Google login	The business, on its own Yelp login
What to ask first	How invalid leads are credited	Which page upgrades come with the ads, and how billing works

What each does well, and where each falls short

Local Services Ads

• Pros: you pay for contact rather than curiosity; the placement sits above everything else on the page; the badge gives a nervous homeowner a reason to call a company they have never heard of; the ad works even if your website is weak.
• Cons: screening takes time, so start weeks before you need the calls; you control very little of what the ad says; a lead can still be a wrong number or a job you do not do, which means reviewing leads and following up on credits; responsiveness counts, so a slow office drags your placement down.

Yelp Ads

• Pros: reaches people who are already comparing businesses; shows your photos, reviews and full page rather than a two-line ad; strong in categories and cities where Yelp is part of the habit; page upgrades such as a call to action button make the listing easier to act on.
• Cons: a click is not a call, so you pay for some visits that go nowhere; results lean heavily on how your Yelp reviews look; you cannot ask customers for reviews to catch up; reach varies a lot by city and trade.

Which one fits which business

A plumber or HVAC company with strong Google reviews and someone answering the phone all day. Start with Local Services Ads. Your reviews and your responsiveness are already the things that decide placement.

A cleaning, moving or handyman company in a city where customers talk about Yelp. Yelp Ads deserve a proper test, especially if the Yelp page already carries a long run of good reviews.

A new company with few reviews anywhere. Neither platform will carry you yet. Put the first months into earning Google reviews and filling out the profile, then add Local Services Ads once there is something for the badge to sit on.

A company already running both. Compare them on booked jobs, not on leads or clicks. The platform with more activity is not always the one that fills the calendar.

Where Beyaoshy fits

We run both, and we usually run them alongside the Google profile, the review requests and the search campaigns around them, because a Local Services Ad with a thin profile underneath it and a Yelp ad pointing at a neglected page both waste money. One team handles every piece, so the person adjusting the Yelp budget is also the person who notices that Tuesday’s Google leads went unanswered.

Both ad accounts are opened in the owner’s name on the first day, and the call data belongs to the owner too. What we report is calls answered and jobs booked from each platform, which is the only fair way to settle the argument between them. We have worked with local businesses since 2015, we size the plan to a small trade’s season, and other marketing agencies hand us the same work to deliver under their own brand.

Before you commit to either

Screening for Local Services Ads can take a few weeks, so if the spring calls matter, start the paperwork now. Ask Yelp for the program terms in writing, including billing and how cancellation works, before you agree to a program. And decide who answers the phone at 7:30 on a Monday morning in April, because both platforms will send the calls whether or not anybody picks up.

For the detail on how we run each, see our Google Ads and Local Services work and our Yelp ads management. Trades have their own page as well, on marketing for home service companies.