Bad Leads and Credits in Local Services Ads

TL;DR: Yes, you can still dispute an invalid Local Services Ads lead from your leads inbox, and if Google agrees, the credit goes back to your account. It covers wrong numbers, spam, and jobs or areas you don't service. The credit benefit is US and Canada only, and disputes aren't available for health care verticals. Google also reviews leads automatically, but some reasons that once carried more automatic weight, like wrong job type or outside your service area, have been tightened.

Every business running Local Services Ads eventually gets a lead that shouldn't have counted, a wrong number, someone outside your service area, a job you don't actually do. Here's what you can actually do about it.

Yes, you can still dispute a lead

If a lead genuinely isn't valid, you can dispute it directly from your leads inbox, and if Google agrees, you get credited back. This works for callers who dial a wrong number, spam, leads for jobs or areas you don't service, and similar clear-cut cases. It's worth doing every time something looks off, disputing a bad lead takes a minute and the credit goes straight back to your account.

A couple of limits worth knowing before you assume every bad lead is disputable:

The credit benefit is US and Canada only.
Lead disputes aren't available for health care verticals. If you're in a health-adjacent category, this path may not apply to you at all.

Google also runs automatic review in the background

On top of manual disputes, Google reviews leads for quality automatically and can issue credits without you doing anything. This isn't a replacement for disputing something you notice yourself, think of it as a second layer that catches some bad leads you might not have flagged.

One thing that's changed over the past couple of years: not every dispute reason that used to qualify for an automatic credit still does. Reasons like "wrong job type" or "outside my service area" used to have more automatic weight than they do now, so it's worth actually reading the outcome when a dispute gets rejected instead of assuming the system is broken. Google's guidance is genuinely that the overall volume of credits issued is meant to go up, even if a few specific reason categories got tightened.

What to actually do when you get a bad lead

Dispute it right away, don't let it sit. Include enough detail that it's obvious why the lead wasn't valid.
Use the lead feedback option even when you're not disputing for a credit, marking a lead as low quality feeds back into how Google reviews future leads.
Don't expect every marginal lead to get credited. A lead that answered the phone but wasn't ready to hire isn't the same as a wrong number, and won't be treated the same.
Track your dispute rate over time. If a specific job category or area keeps generating bad leads, that's a signal to adjust your service area or job type settings, not just keep disputing the same problem every week.

Full detail is in Google's own documentation on Local Services Ads leads.