Does Google Own Your Local Services Ads Assets? April 2025 Terms of Service Say They Do

On April 22, Google notified advertisers of a significant update to its Terms of Service for Local Services Ads (LSAs) and asked them to accept the new terms by June 5, 2025. If advertisers don’t accept, their Local Services Ads will stop running after June 5th.

What’s New in the LSA Terms of Service?

Google is asserting the right to use, modify, and analyze all content from your LSA profile, including phone calls from prospective customers, across all Google platforms, products, and services, as well as its affiliates. It also grants agencies (like TCMS) the authority to accept the terms on your behalf.

The Specifics: What These Changes Mean

Here’s what the specifics of the new LSA Terms of Service mean, in plain English.

1. “Google may display, modify, or use your business content (photos, hours, services, etc.)”

When you fill out a Local Services Ads profile (business name, photos, phone number, services, hours) or add business photos, Google stores all of that information and uses it to populate your ad. With this change, they can now use this content for other purposes. For example, they may:

• Show this information across other Google platforms (Search, Maps, Business Profile, etc.)
• Modify the way content is displayed, such as shortening text, standardizing terms, or reformatting images

Example: You write “Tree Removal & Pruning – Emergency Services” → Google may show “24/7 Tree Removal Services” instead.

2. “Google may extract content (like pricing, special offers, or services) from calls/messages routed through Google.”

Calls and messages routed through LSA are recorded and transcribed (with legal disclosures). Google may scan these transcripts for useful info like:

• Pricing
• Discounts
• Services offered
• Hours of operation
• Names and qualifications of team members
• Experience and expertise in specific services
• Areas where you do and do not work

Then, they may display that information in your profile or ad if they believe it “adds value to users.”

Example: If you say on a call, “We offer 10% off for seniors,” Google might display “Senior Discounts Available” on your ad.

3. “Google may use content from URLs connected to your LSA account.”

If you add your website to your LSA account (which you should do), Google can crawl any indexed pages on your site (which they already do so they can show your site in the search results for relevant queries). Now, however, they may pull and use information from your site, such as:

• Service descriptions
• Details about promotions
• Pricing
• Business highlights and experience

This information may be used to auto-fill parts of your profile or enhance how your ads appear.

Example: Your homepage says “Free Estimates Available” → Google may display that in your ad.

4. “Google may link your LSA account to other Google services you use.”

Google may link your LSA profile with your other Google accounts (like Business Profile, Gmail, or Ads) to make sure the business info is consistent. According to Google, this also helps with attribution and content syncing.

Why Google Is Doing This

Google claims that this change will make LSA ads more complete and relevant without requiring more manual input from advertisers. 

What This Doesn’t Do

• It doesn’t give Google ownership (copyright) of your content
• It doesn’t allow them to make changes to your website or Google Ads
• It doesn’t change billing, targeting, bids, or budgets

What Happens if You Say “No”

• If you do not accept the new terms, your LSA ads will stop running after June 5, 2025.
• Regular Google Ads (Search, Display, etc.) are not affected.
• You can choose to opt out, but you will lose placement in Local Services Ads.

In other words, if you want the visibility and leads generated through LSAs, you have no choice but to accept the new terms. 

For many of our clients, Local Services Ads provide a steady stream of quality leads at a reasonable price. Cutting this off could severely impact their lead flow and revenue.

How The New LSA Terms of Service May Affect Your Tree Service

The biggest change is that you may now see information appear in places you didn’t intend. For example:

• Your Local Services Ads may show things you don’t want to advertise, such as limited offers or services you agree to perform on a limited, case-by-case basis (such as a one-off stump grinding job). 
• You may see your LSA tracking number appear on other platforms, making attribution less reliable.
• Information gleaned from conversations with customers who call from your LSAs may now be shared publicly, such as in AI Overviews. This makes it critically important to keep conversations professional and stick to consistent and accurate company messaging during these conversations.
• Google may change how your services are described, such as by saying “tree trimming” instead of “pruning.”
• If your hours of operation differ between your website and LSA profile (for example, if you list your hours on LSAs as 24/7 to generate more visibility for your ads but your website only shows your hours as 8 am to 4:30 pm Monday through Friday), Google may change the hours on your LSAs or show your LSA hours on other Google platforms (such as your Google Business Profile). This could cause a poor user experience for customers who now aren’t certain when you are or are not open.
• Google may modify and use photos uploaded to your LSA profile.
• If you are working with an agency — like TCMS — Google’s new terms now explicitly state that both the agency and the advertiser are bound by this agreement. That’s why we’re providing this update and will work even more closely with you to manage your ad accounts.

Privacy Concerns

The updated LSA Terms of Service indicate that Google is moving from simply monitoring calls to using AI to analyze call content and synthesize it with other information about you, your company, and your customers.

Anything you or your customers say during those calls can be used to build an in-depth understanding of your business (which could be a positive), but also to create profiles of individual callers (Big Brother has arrived?). 

Google hasn’t been fully transparent about what it will do with the information, raising concerns about the ethical use of data and the responsibility of advertisers to warn callers about the possible use of their information. The jury’s still out on that one – at least for tree care companies. Lawyers and medical professionals are already questioning whether they can legally continue to use LSAs given their duty to protect confidential information.

Our Recommendation

There are 6 weeks until the deadline to accept the new terms, and things are still evolving. We recommend doing nothing for the time being. We are actively monitoring the situation and will make a final recommendation before June 5th.

Until then, do what you can to ensure that all details on your Google Business Profile and Local Services Ads account are accurate and remove anything you don’t want to have modified/edited and publicized on other Google platforms.