Google now charges for missed LSA calls (from 1 Oct 2026): what every unanswered lead costs in money and rank

From 1 October 2026, Google charges Local Services Ads (LSA) advertisers for some calls nobody answered. The rule covers calls during business hours where the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds. After-hours calls are exempt. Repeat calls from the same person within 15 days are charged once.¹ Missed calls and unanswered messages can also cost you position. Google's help page says: "If you regularly fail to answer calls or respond to messages, your ad ranking may be affected."² In plain English: an unanswered lead now costs you the fee, the job and some rank.

The question you are actually asking#

You are probably asking one of two things. "Why did my LSA bill go up when I didn't talk to anyone?" Or, if you run ads for clients: "What do I tell them about missed calls now?" Both come back to the same change. A missed call used to be free on the invoice and costly in lost work. Now, in some cases, it shows up on the invoice too.

PPC Land reported Google's notice on 25 September 2026. The key line is: "Missed calls during business hours will now be charged as valid leads if a user stays on the line for more than 20 seconds."¹

How does the LSA missed-call charge work?#

The LSA missed-call charge works like a filter with four gates. A call has to pass all four to be billed as a missed-call lead. Think of each gate as a yes-or-no check.

1. Gate 1: the call comes in during business hours. After-hours calls are excluded from the new rule.¹ Check which hours your account lists as business hours, because that line now affects your bill.
2. Gate 2: nobody picks up. If you or your staff answer, it is an ordinary call, judged under the usual lead rules.
3. Gate 3: the caller waits more than 20 seconds. This is the timeout. A caller who hangs up quickly is not charged under this rule. The catch is that Google's notice does not say when the 20-second timer starts, per PPC Land.¹
4. Gate 4: it is not a repeat. Google's Ads Liaison account said follow-up contacts from the same person within 15 days of an initial interaction are charged once.¹

Messages sit on a separate track. The new charge is about calls. But the ranking warning on Google's help page covers both: "fail to answer calls or respond to messages."² The same page asks you to "respond to as many of them as you can (even if you decline to provide the requested service)."² So an unanswered message does not trigger this new call charge. It can still pull your ad down.

What is still undefined?#

Google's notice leaves four boundary conditions open, according to PPC Land.¹ You should know them before you argue with a bill.

• When the 20 seconds start. From the first ring, or after a menu or greeting? Not stated.
• How voicemail counts. Not stated in the notice.
• How to dispute a charge. No procedure is described.
• How spam and robocalls are kept out. Safeguards are promised; how they work is not described.

Until Google publishes more, treat any number you calculate as an estimate. Save your call logs for the first two months so you can compare them with the bill.

A worked example with real numbers#

A worked example makes the rule concrete. PPC Land reported on a calculator called CallMath, built by Mahir Patel, an engineering student at the University of Illinois. Its example uses five inputs.¹

Source: PPC Land, 25 Sep 2026, reporting the CallMath example. Annual figure ($2,764.80) is our multiplication.

That is about $2,800 a year for calls nobody answered. PPC Land adds an important caveat. This is the gross charge, not the increase. Callers who left voicemail were already billable under Google's existing lead definition, so for many businesses the real rise is smaller.¹

Now add the part that never appears on the invoice. CallRail's 2025 report, covering 1.1 million conversations, found "up to 85%" of customers whose calls go unanswered will not call back.³ Say each of those 9.6 missed calls a month was a real job enquiry. If even a few were worth $500 jobs, the lost work dwarfs the $230.40. The fee is the visible cost. The silent queue of people who called someone else is the larger one.

How common is a missed call? Invoca's 2026 benchmarks, across more than 70 million calls, found 56% of callers to businesses speak with a person.⁴ The 70% answer rate in the example is, if anything, generous.

Where the simple explanation stops being true#

The simple version is "every missed call now costs you a lead fee." That stops being true in three places.

First, after-hours calls are not charged.¹ That sounds like good news. The catch is that it removes the one signal on your invoice that would show you how many evening and weekend callers you lose. Those callers still go somewhere.

Second, rank is not a simple counter. Google says ranking "may be affected" if you "regularly" miss calls or messages.² It does not publish a threshold. You cannot work out "three missed calls equals one position." What you can do is keep the share you answer high and steady.

Third, messages behave differently from calls. A message does not ring and stop. It waits in a buffer until someone opens it. The risk is not a 20-second timeout but a slow one: hours or days. Written leads are often answered slowly or not at all. Leadferno's 2024 test of 225 small-business website forms found 42.6% got no reply, and the first human reply took 17 hours 49 minutes on average.⁵ That study is about website forms, not LSA, but the habit carries across.

For a wider version that covers email and contact-form leads from every source, see the Lost Inquiry Calculator. For what paid leads cost once you divide by the ones you answer, see cost per answered lead.

What should you do about LSA missed-call charges?#

Your next step depends on where your leads slip. Use this if-this-then-that list. It assumes you keep LSA running.

Speed matters for both calls and writing. Jobber's 2026 report, surveying 1,050 owners, found that more than 70% of customers expect a same-day response and only 20% of pros respond within the hour.⁶ Our guide to how fast a small business should reply covers targets by channel, and after-hours and weekend inquiries covers the hours this rule leaves out.

Where Valet fits#

Valet does not answer phone calls and does not connect to the LSA dashboard, so it will not stop a missed-call charge. For calls, you need a person, a callback rule or a voice tool. Valet covers the written side: you forward an address such as info@ or hello@, and it answers email, website contact forms, listing and marketplace lead emails, and requests on your free Valet page, at any hour, from your own prices and calendar. It offers real times, follows up at most twice by default, and sends money questions and complaints to you. To see how many written leads slip today, start with the free lead check: forward 10 to 20 recent inquiries and see which went unanswered and what they were worth.