Google interviews locksmiths. Does your agency know why?

January is when a locksmith owner finally has a quiet morning to read the agency emails that piled up in December. Most of them could have been sent to a dentist with the noun changed. Before you take any of those calls, it helps to know the one thing about your trade that a competent agency will raise in the first five minutes: Google does not trust locksmiths by default, and it has good reasons.

This is the checklist we would give a locksmith interviewing agencies, ourselves included.

Why Google treats your trade differently

In 2017, researchers at Google and UC San Diego published a study of abuse on Google Maps. Across listings active from mid-2014 to late 2015, 11% of locksmith search results were fraudulent. In New York the figure was 15.6%, and in West Harrison, New York, it reached 83.3%. Locksmiths made up about a quarter of all the abusive listings the researchers found, more than any other kind of business.

It has not gone away. Last April, Google wrote that during 2024 it removed more than 10,000 listings run by one group that impersonated real locksmiths, took over unclaimed Business Profiles and overcharged customers, and that it filed a lawsuit against the people behind them. The same post said Google removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles that year across all categories.

So Google built gates, and every one of them affects your marketing:

• Search ads. Google restricts locksmith ads in the US until the advertiser passes Advanced Verification. In Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands it does not allow them at all.
• Local Services Ads. Locksmiths get an extra level of screening, including background checks on the technicians who go to customers’ doors, and Advanced Verification, which Google describes as a review of your Ads account, publicly available data and video interviews conducted by Google. The check looks at whether your business registration is valid and for evidence of misleading practices.
• No head start. Some trades can run “pre-badge” Local Services Ads while their checks finish. Locksmiths cannot. Google puts the average screening time at three to four weeks after documents are in, and nothing runs before then.
• The badge. Since October 2025 the only badge on those ads is Google Verified. The old Guaranteed and Screened badges are gone.

An agency that has worked with locksmiths will bring all of this up without being asked. One that promises your ads will be live next week has not.

Questions that sort agencies in one meeting

Ask these, and listen for specifics rather than reassurance:

1. Have you taken a locksmith through Advanced Verification? Ask what documents they gathered and how long it took. The right answer mentions your license where your state requires one, insurance, business registration and a name and address that match everywhere.
2. Where will our license number go? Texas requires the company name, the address on record with the Department of Public Safety (unless it is a home address) and the license number in every advertisement, business cards included. California requires the license number in paid ads and directory listings, and the fine is $500 for a first violation and $1,000 for each one after. New Jersey prescribes the wording that introduces the number. An agency writing your ads without asking for it is guessing about the law.
3. How many Business Profiles will you build? The only good answer is one per staffed location, with the other towns set as service areas. Google’s guidelines say a virtual office is not eligible. Listings at borrowed addresses are what the 2017 study found fake operators relying on, and a suspended profile takes your reviews with it.
4. How will you track calls? Tracking numbers belong on ads and the website. Extra numbers scattered across your profile and directories look like the disposable numbers fake operators use, and they confuse callers who are already wary.
5. How will you get reviews? The FTC’s rule announced in August 2024 bans fake and bought reviews. In a trade already crowded with fake listings, an agency offering “review packages” is handing you its legal risk.
6. Who owns the accounts? Your Google profile, the Local Services Ads account that holds your verification and the ad account should all be in your name, with the agency added as a user. Redoing verification because an agency kept the login costs you another month of no ads.

What the first ninety days should look like

A sound plan for a locksmith puts proof first, because nothing paid can run until Google is satisfied:

• Weeks 1 to 2: a profile audit against Google’s rules, the license number checked on every ad and page, and the Advanced Verification and Local Services Ads applications filed. The verification clock is the longest one in the plan, so it starts on day one.
• Weeks 3 to 6: pages on your site that prove you exist. Who your technicians are, your license, your vans, how pricing works and what an after-hours call costs. A review request after every job and an owner reply to every review.
• Weeks 7 to 12: ads switched on as approvals land, split by job. A lockout, a car key, a rekey and a commercial access-control job are searched differently and are worth very different amounts, so they should never share one campaign.

On cost, no one publishes a locksmith-only figure. The closest is the $90.92 median cost per lead across home service trades in the report LocaliQ published last June, built on search campaigns running from April 2024 to March 2025. Treat it as a rough neighborhood, not a target.

Red flags in a locksmith pitch

• “We’ll rank you in every city around you.” That means profiles you are not allowed to have.
• “We can get ads running this week.” Not for a locksmith.
• Any promise of a “guaranteed” badge from Google. That badge was retired in October 2025.
• A report built on impressions and clicks with no count of answered calls or booked jobs.
• No question about your license, your state or your vans. In this trade those are the marketing.

What to do this month

• Gather your license, insurance certificate and business registration in one folder before you talk to anyone. Verification will ask for all three.
• Search your own trade and town on a phone and count the listings with no street address, no photos of a real van and an out-of-area number.
• Read every ad, page and profile you run for your license number and the wording your state requires.
• Check who holds the logins for your profile and ad accounts, and move them into your name if they are not.
• Ask any agency you are considering to walk you through the video interview step by step. If they cannot, keep looking.

We have set out how we approach the trade, from verification to the license rules state by state, on our locksmith marketing page. If the paid side is where you want a second opinion, here is how we run Google Ads for service businesses, verification included.