LSA Reverification: What Google Requires Every Year to Keep Your Badge

Your Google Guarantee badge isn't a one-and-done checkbox. Google makes every Local Services Ads business go through reverification once a year — license, insurance, and background checks, all over again. Skip the deadline and your badge disappears. No warning banner on your dashboard. No big red alert. Your ads just stop running, and the leads that used to show up every week quietly stop too.

What "reverification" actually means

The first time you signed up for LSA, Google verified three things about your business: your license (if your trade requires one in Florida), your general liability insurance, and a background check on you and anyone else who shows up to a homeowner's door. Reverification is that same check, done again, roughly every 12 months.

Nothing about your business has to change for Google to ask. Your license could be in perfect standing, your insurance current, your crew the same. Google reverifies on a schedule, not because something looks wrong.

The three things Google re-checks

• License — Google pulls your license number again and confirms it's still active with the state or local licensing board.
• Insurance — your general liability policy has to still be in force, with coverage that meets Google's minimum for your category.
• Background checks — you and any employee whose profile is tied to your LSA account go through the screening again, through Google's third-party vendor.

Why this is easy to miss

Google sends the reverification request by email, usually 30 to 60 days before your deadline. If that email lands in a spam folder, or goes to an inbox nobody checks daily, the countdown runs anyway. Contractors are on job sites, not refreshing email. That's the whole problem.

There's no grace-period pop-up on the LSA dashboard warning you the badge is about to go dark. The first sign is usually a slow week — fewer calls, fewer messages — and by the time someone checks the Google Guarantee status, the badge has already been pulled for a week or two.

The math on a missed deadline

Say your business runs 10 LSA leads a week at roughly $100 a lead — about $1,000 a week in ad spend. At a 15% close rate, that's usually a closed job every week or two. Lose the badge for even 10 days while you scramble to resubmit documents, and you're not just pausing spend — you're pausing the leads that spend was producing. That's a lost job, sometimes two, sitting behind a paperwork delay that a five-minute upload would have prevented.

How to stay ahead of it

• Whitelist Google's LSA emails. Add the sender to your contacts so reverification notices don't land in spam.
• Check your Google Guarantee status monthly. The LSA dashboard shows your badge status and any pending requirements under "Business" settings — make it a five-minute habit, not a fire drill.
• Keep your insurance certificate current in one folder. When the reverification request comes in, you want to upload a PDF, not chase your agent for a new certificate.
• Add new employees to your LSA profile the day they start screening on your end, not after their first job, so their background check is already in motion before it holds anything up.

If your badge already dropped

Resubmitting is usually fast — most license and insurance reverifications clear within a few business days once the documents are in. Background checks can take longer, especially if a new hire is being screened for the first time. The leverage is in catching the email early, not in how fast you can scramble after the badge is already gone.

If you want a second set of eyes on your LSA account — reverification status, budget pacing, or why your badge disappeared last month — book a free discovery call and we'll walk through it with you.