The Option Local Businesses Have Been Asking For
For as long as Google Ads has existed, a local business had to send paid clicks to a website. If the website was good, fine. If it was slow, outdated, or built by a nephew in 2016, every dollar of ad spend paid for a click that landed on the weakest part of the business.
Meanwhile, the place local customers actually convert has been the Google Business Profile the whole time. They read the reviews, look at the photos, check the hours, and tap Call or Directions. Advertisers have spent years trying to route ads to that experience through workarounds. It never quite worked, and it never tracked properly.
That just changed. Performance Max campaigns now offer two choices for where people go after they click your ad:
- Your website
- Google Business Profile (optimized for ads)
Pick the second one and your ads land on a Google-hosted page built from your Business Profile, with conversion tracking for the local actions that matter built in. No landing page to build, no tracking to wire, no developer.
What "Google Business Profile (optimized for ads)" Actually Is
The option appears during Performance Max setup, alongside your conversion goals. When you select it, Google generates an ad-optimized version of your profile page and uses it as the campaign's destination. The page carries what the profile already has: name, address, hours, photos, reviews, services, and the call, directions, and message actions.
The important part is the tracking. Because Google hosts the page, calls, direction requests, and messages register as conversions without a pixel, a tag manager container, or a call tracking vendor. Smart Bidding gets clean signal from day one, which is the thing local campaigns have always lacked.
The rollout is gradual. Google is moving the option out of beta account by account, so two accounts in the same manager account can look different today. Here is how to check yours in under a minute:
- Start a new campaign and choose the objective Local store visits and promotions.
- Choose Performance Max as the campaign type. You will see a note that Performance Max has replaced Local campaigns. This option is the successor to those.
- Name the campaign and scroll to the bottom of the first page.
- If you see two cards under "Where should people go after clicking your ads," Your website and Google Business Profile (optimized for ads), your account has it. If all you see is a Final URL field, it has not been switched on yet. Check again in a few days.
Who Can Use It
Every local business with a physical address qualifies. Whether your account has the option yet is a separate question, and the check above answers it.
It does not matter whether you have a great website, a bad website, or no website at all. If you have a verified Google Business Profile with a physical location, you can point a Performance Max campaign at it as soon as the option reaches your account. Restaurants, clinics, dealerships, law offices, gyms, salons, repair shops, retail stores, dental practices, storage facilities, veterinarians. If customers come to you, this is for you.
We manage Google Ads for local businesses across dozens of categories. The moment we learned this was leaving beta, we checked every account under our management, found that some had it and some did not, and started setting up every client who could benefit. There is no category where sending a local searcher to the profile they were going to check anyway is the wrong move.
The access gotcha
One thing we learned on day one. Even if your Business Profile is already linked to Google Ads, the email you use to log into Google Ads must also have access to the profile itself. Otherwise the correct profile never appears in the picker during campaign setup. The fix is one step: in Business Profile, add that email as a manager, then start the campaign again.
What you get that Local campaigns never had
Because this is a Performance Max campaign, you get the Performance Max controls. Search term reports, which means negative keywords. Age, gender, and household income exclusions. Brand exclusions for competitor names. Better geo targeting. And every report Performance Max carries. Expect to use them: on one client the first search terms report was full of hot springs, hot tubs, float pods, and competitor names, and the negative list started on day two.
Why It Matters
The landing page is now the thing customers trust
A Business Profile with 400 reviews and a 4.8 rating does more conversion work than any landing page a local business will ever build. Reviews, photos, hours, and a map are the decision. Ads used to interrupt that decision by pulling the customer away to a website. Now the ad drops them into it.
Tracking is finally native
Local campaigns have always been optimized on partial data. Website calls need call tracking. Directions never tracked at all. Store visits were modeled. With the profile as the destination, the three actions a local business actually cares about are first-party Google conversions. That means Target CPA works properly, and the August 17 bidding update applies in full.
Speed
A local business can go from no campaign to a live, tracked Performance Max campaign in an afternoon. The profile is the creative, the destination, and the conversion tracker at once. The work moves from building pages to keeping the profile excellent, which is work the business should be doing anyway.
Why Now
The option is days old. Most local advertisers have not seen it. Most local agencies have not written a word about it. The businesses that launch this month will be bidding on local intent with a destination and a signal quality their competitors do not have, and they will keep that gap until everyone else catches up.
That gap closes. It always does. The advantage belongs to whoever moves first, and right now that is anyone reading this.
How to Set It Up
- Get the profile in order first. Verified, correct primary category, complete hours, services listed, at least 20 recent photos, and a live habit of answering reviews. The profile is the landing page now, so treat it like one.
- Create a Performance Max campaign and choose the local goals you care about: calls, directions, messages, or store visits where available.
- At "Where should people go after clicking your ads," choose Google Business Profile (optimized for ads). Confirm the linked profile is the right location. If the right profile is missing from the list, your Google Ads login does not have manager access to it yet. Multi-location businesses should run one campaign per location, or per cluster of locations that share a service area.
- Set the location targeting tightly. Start with the real service radius, not the metro. Expand once the campaign proves it can convert the core.
- Load assets that match the profile. Headlines that name the city and the service, photos consistent with the profile, and a short video if you have one. Google will pull profile content, but the campaign performs better when the ad assets and the profile tell the same story.
- Bid for volume first, then set a target. Maximize Conversions until the campaign has 30 or more conversions in a month, then move to Target CPA and manage it weekly.
- Watch the profile insights alongside Google Ads. Calls and direction requests in the profile should rise in step with campaign spend. If they do not, the campaign is landing the wrong people.
What to Expect in the First 30 Days
Expect calls and direction requests to show up as conversions within the first few days. Expect the campaign to spend toward the budget quickly, since local intent is deep and the profile converts well. Expect the cost per call to drop over the first two to three weeks as Smart Bidding learns which searches turn into contact.
Do not expect the website to matter for this campaign. That is the point.
Our Position
We have managed local Google Ads for over a decade, and the gap between where the ad landed and where the customer decided has always been the biggest leak in a local account. This option closes it. Every local client of ours with a physical address will be running it, and every local business reading this should be too. The businesses that wait will be paying more per call than the ones that did not, and they will not know why.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a website to use the Google Business Profile landing option in Performance Max? No. The campaign lands on a Google-hosted profile page. A website is not required.
Which businesses qualify? Any business with a verified Google Business Profile tied to a physical address.
What conversions does it track? Calls, direction requests, and messages from the profile page register as Google Ads conversions without additional tracking setup.
Can I run it alongside my existing Search campaigns? Yes. Keep your Search campaigns on the website if they are working. Run the profile-landing Performance Max campaign for local intent and compare cost per call between the two.
I do not see the option in my account. Why? The rollout out of beta is gradual. Follow the four-step check near the top of this post. If the bottom of the first campaign page shows only a Final URL field, your account has not been switched on yet. Check again in a few days.
The right Business Profile does not appear in the list. Why? The Google Ads login you are using is not a manager on that profile. Add it as a manager in Business Profile and start the campaign setup again.