Starting this month Google removed the ability to dispute leads in the local services ads platform. Prior to this removal ,a cool feature of local services ads was the ability to dispute leads that you were charged for and get those bad lead costs credited back to your account. 

The new system is an automated one that uses ai to filter out bad leads. The problem is that bad leads are still getting through and these can be very expensive in certain verticals, especially in legal the vertical I work in exclusively. 

So enter the new automated ai dispute process and the FEEDBACK form! The feedback form is now what will be used as a last ditch attempt to dispute bad leads after they have been charged and missed in the automated ai dispute system. 

So here is what you do! If you have bad leads in your account that have been charged and are out of the “in review” status and now say charged in your account, using the feedback form gives you a chance to still get that bad lead credited back to your account. 

The feedback form is now in the same spot as the dispute option used to be located and says “Rate this lead”. On bad leads (and possibly on good leads, will explain later) you can press the feedback form button and select either dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied. When you select either of these options, it will trigger a new form to pop up the has the old dispute lead options. Select the appropriate bad lead option and press submit. Doing this will in some cases get the lead credited back to your account. So far we have had this work on about 20% of bad leads so far. So while this is not ideal and they are still severely limiting the credits back on bad leads, it’s at least something I guess. 

Good leads. So with everything currently going on with Googles current efforts in the “new ai automation error….sorry era” LOL. There may be something to also submitting the feedback form for good leads. Google ads has recently introduced new value based bidding strategies and enhanced conversions to use your business data to “help steer” the “new ai” towards providing more good leads. I suspect that this is the way they are going with the new feedback form in LSA as well. Do I think this will work? Or that you will not still get bad leads? Nope! Not at all LOL. However I do think that this is the intent of the feedback form and perhaps in the future this will be the case or will at least be the messaging that Google will push with this automated system. Do I think it will work like that? Nah LOL, but who knows? We shall see. 

To submit positive feedback and why the lead was a good fit for your business, you need to select the “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” option on the feedback form. This will trigger a new form that contains options on why this lead was a good lead for your business. Pressing the “nether satisfied nor dissatisfied” option does nothing at this point, however it may and remember “may” be data that Google will eventually try to work into its algorithm to “help steer” the “ai” although Im still very skeptical of that and I know there are still a ton of flaws in Googles current automation push. With that being said, it is clear and visable in the platform that they are gathering data based on these feedback forms as Google does. So this could be all used at some point to help with lead quality based on each specific users feedback on leads in this platform. Hope this helps! Good luck everyone! Advertise judiciously!