Most UK home-services trades qualify for Google Local Services Ads, including electricians, plumbers, roofers, heating engineers, general contractors, handymen, carpenters, flooring, fencing, landscaping, lawn care, tree services, pest control, window repair and cleaning, garage doors, removals and several cleaning and repair categories. Qualifying is only step one: your business also has to pass Google's screening, which checks your registration, your insurance and, where the law requires one, your licence, a process Google says takes 3 to 4 weeks on average once your documents are in.
The UK trades on Google's list
Google publishes a category list for Local Services Ads, and it varies by country. In the UK, the home-services list currently runs to: appliance repair, carpenters, carpet cleaning, cleaning services, worktop fitting, electricians, fencing, flooring, foundations, garage doors, general contractors, handymen, home inspection, HVAC (heating and air conditioning), junk removal, landscaping, lawn care, removals, pest control, plumbers, pool cleaning and contracting, roofers, snow removal, tree services, water damage and window cleaning or repair.
There's a second, separate list for professional services, and it's only available to businesses in Greater London: several legal specialisms (contract, corporate, criminal, employment, family, immigration, insolvency, IP, litigation, malpractice, probate, property, tax and traffic law), estate agents, and personal injury services.
Google reviews and changes this list, so the only reliable way to check your own trade and area is against Google's current UK category list directly, not against a blog post or an agency's memory of it from last year.
Qualifying is the easy part. Screening is the gate.
Being on the category list doesn't put a fully badged ad live straight away. To earn the Google Verified badge, every UK advertiser has to pass Google's screening and verification process, and what it checks depends on your category. For most home-services trades, Google asks for a business registration check, a public or general liability, or professional indemnity, insurance document stating the coverage amount and your company or owner name and address (employer's liability insurance isn't accepted), and a business licence at a country level wherever UK law requires one for your trade. Legal professionals are checked differently, against professional indemnity insurance and active membership of the relevant Solicitors or Bar regulation authority. Google also offers pre-badge ads: once you've passed the preliminary checks, your listing can start receiving leads while you finish the remaining onboarding checks, it's just placed below providers who already hold the badge.
One requirement applies to everyone: you need a public, verified Google Business Profile before you can advertise with Local Services Ads at all. If yours is unclaimed, unverified, or hidden, that's the first thing to fix.
Google says the whole process takes 3 to 4 weeks on average once your documents are submitted, so it pays to have the paperwork ready before you apply rather than chasing it after.
What the Google Verified badge actually is
The badge shown on a screened Local Services Ads profile is now called the Google Verified badge. It replaces the older Google Guaranteed and Google Screened names you may still see mentioned online, and Google has discontinued the money-back guarantee that used to sit behind Google Guaranteed. As of writing, the badge isn't available for the automotive, beauty and dining categories, none of which affect the trades on the home-services list above.
The badge belongs to the business that passes screening. An agency can prepare your application, manage the ads and keep the profile in shape, but nobody can get the badge for you or hold it on your behalf, Google issues it directly to your business once you clear its checks.
How the pricing works
Local Services Ads run on a pay-per-lead model rather than pay-per-click: Google's own guidance is that you "pay only for leads related to your business and the services that you offer," not for every click your ad receives. That's the headline difference from a standard Google Ads search campaign.
If a lead looks wrong, wasn't a real enquiry, or was for work outside your services, you can dispute it. Google says a successfully disputed lead is credited back to the advertiser, but that crediting is currently limited to the US and Canada. UK advertisers don't get the same automatic credit, so keeping on top of every lead as it lands, and using whatever in-platform feedback tools Google does offer in the UK, matters more here than it would for a US-based business.
Should your trade apply?
If your trade is on the list, the honest answer is usually yes, worth trying, but budget for the wait. Three to four weeks is Google's average, not a guarantee, and a rejected document, an expired insurance certificate, a licence in the wrong name, can slow a first application down. Gathering your registration details, your current liability or professional indemnity insurance document and any licence documentation before you begin is the single biggest thing you can do to keep the process to that average.
It's also worth deciding whether Local Services Ads should sit alongside a standard Google Ads search campaign or replace one. They answer different questions: Local Services Ads put your Google Verified badge and a call or message button in front of someone who's already decided to book a home-services job, while search ads can send that same person to a website that shows off finished work, reviews and pricing before they commit. Plenty of trades that qualify run both.
If your trade isn't on the current UK list, that isn't necessarily the end of the road, Google adds and removes categories over time, and a standard Google Ads search campaign remains open to every trade regardless of Local Services eligibility.