How to Get the Google Guaranteed Badge (Now Google Verified)

Google Guaranteed is now Google Verified and the money-back guarantee is gone. What Canadian contractors need to qualify, and how long it takes.

By Gavin Sevastian · Updated August 4, 2026 · 6 min read

Google Guaranteed still exists. The name does not. Google folded three separate trust badges into one, and from October 2025 the checkmark on a Local Services Ads listing reads Google Verified. The consumer money-back guarantee that sat behind the old badge is gone with it.

Everything below is about the current product: who can get it in Canada, what Google actually asks for, how long it takes, and whether it belongs in your mix at all.

How to get Google Guaranteed now that it is called Google Verified

What Google changed

Three badges used to do overlapping jobs. Google Screened covered professional services. Google Guaranteed and License Verified by Google were the other two. All three are now a single Google Verified check.

Google's wording on its own help page is blunt about why: it is simplifying advertiser badging by launching a single badge for all advertisers. The announcement went out in August 2025 and said the change would start in October. Trade press reported the switchover as October 20, quoting a Google advertiser email, so treat the specific day as trade reporting rather than documentation.

If you already advertise, nothing was asked of you. Google says eligible advertisers who had completed verification earned the new badge automatically and their ads kept running. New advertisers still complete the same screening process they always did.

The money-back guarantee is discontinued

This is the substantive change, not the colour of the checkmark. Google discontinued the Money Back Guarantee attached to the old Google Guaranteed badge.

That program was a consumer reimbursement scheme. It never protected the contractor and it was never contractor insurance. Consumers could claim on services booked before December 7, 2025, and requests had to be submitted within 30 days of the initial service completion date.

If you read a page quoting a dollar cap on that reimbursement, it is describing the retired program. Google's page for the old guarantee now serves the Google Verified content instead.

You do not apply for a badge. You apply for Local Services Ads

There is no standalone badge application form. You enrol in Local Services Ads, pass screening, and the badge is issued as a result.

That reframes the question. A contractor who wants the trust mark without the pay-per-lead channel attached to it is asking for something that does not exist. Everything below is really about getting through LSA onboarding.

Does your trade even have a category in Canada?

This is the hard gate, and it is the fastest way to save yourself an afternoon. Canada's category list is a fraction of the American one, and for several common trades the honest answer is that you cannot get this badge today.

The categories Google lists for Canada

Google's getting started page for Canada lists sixteen eligible service categories: appliance repair, carpet cleaning, cleaning, electricians, HVAC, junk removal, lawn care, locksmiths, movers, pest control, plumbers, roofers, tree services, water damage, window cleaning, and window repair.

If you run a plumbing or HVAC business in Ontario, you are covered. Same for electrical, roofing and pest control. That is the list Google publishes as of this writing, counted directly off that page.

The trades that are US-only

Painting, general contracting, handyman, landscaping and flooring have no Canadian category at all. Neither do the legal or medical verticals, which is why the old Google Screened badge was effectively an American phenomenon that Canadian contractors kept reading about and could never access.

If your trade is not on the list, this channel is closed to you for now and the question becomes what to run instead. That is usually a Search campaign, where you control the query and the message. The trade-offs are covered in LSA versus Google Ads.

Google's own Canadian pages disagree, so check the tool

Before you trust any list, including the one above, know that Google's two Canadian pages do not agree with each other. The getting started page and the Canadian screening and verification requirements page differ on garage door. One omits it. The other carries a full requirements block for it.

Both pages are genuinely country-filtered, not a global table leaking through. Pull the US version of that same requirements page and you get a document several times longer, with painters on it.

So do not resolve the garage door question from either page, and do not let anyone else resolve it for you. Google's documentation lags the sign-up product in both directions. The eligibility check inside the sign-up flow is the thing that actually decides.

1. 1

   Start the Local Services Ads sign-up for your service area

   Open Google's Canadian getting started page and begin the sign-up flow. It needs no sign-in and it settles the question in about a minute.

2. 2

   Read what it offers for your location

   The categories it presents are the ones available where you actually work. That is the answer that counts, because Google's own published lists do not always agree.

3. 3

   Stop there if your trade is not offered

   Do not carry on and pick something adjacent. Close the tab and plan a different channel instead.

The documents Google actually asks for

One caveat before the list. Google qualifies most of these checks with phrases like select users and select verticals, which means there is no universal checklist. Treat what follows as the likely document set. The authority on what you specifically will be asked for is the requirement list your own Local Services dashboard renders.

Insurance: general liability and professional liability

Google's Canadian requirements list general liability and professional liability insurance, and its screening process page says insurance checks apply to select users in the US, Canada and EMEA.

Three requirements catch people out, because none of them is obvious from the form.

The document has to be current with room to spare. Google requires it to be active and valid for at least 14 days after you submit it, so a certificate expiring at month end is a problem you create for yourself.

The name has to match. In Canada the preferred document is a valid certificate of insurance carrying a signature, and the name on it must match the name you used to sign up. If the policy sits under a different name, you supply a Doing Business As document to bridge the two.

The address has to reach far enough. The business address listed on the certificate must cover the service area you want to advertise in.

Licence and business registration

Google's Canadian requirements name a business licence at the provincial level and an owner licence at the provincial level, each footnoted where applicable by local law.

That footnote is doing real work. Whether a licence is required at all depends on your trade and where you operate, which is why your dashboard's own list is the authority rather than any published checklist.

Business registration is thinner ground. Google publishes document options for a list of countries that does not include a Canadian row, so there is no published Canadian business-registration document list to work from. Do not go hunting for one. Read what your dashboard asks for and supply that.

WSIB is not the same thing as Google's insurance requirement

These two get confused in Ontario, and they are not related.

If you work in construction, WSIB coverage is compulsory. It covers people who own or run a construction business whether or not they have employees, and it reaches independent operators, sole proprietors, and some partners and executive officers. Some exceptions apply. If you hire your first employee, you have 10 calendar days to register.

Several of the sixteen Canadian categories are not construction at all, so if you run cleaning or lawn care this obligation may not touch you. The distinction below still does.

WSIB is workers' compensation. It is a provincial legal obligation and it exists whether or not you ever advertise. A WSIB clearance certificate does not satisfy Google's insurance check, because Google is asking for commercial third-party cover. Sending the wrong one costs you a review cycle.

Your Google Business Profile is a hard gate, and so is who holds it

What Google requires

You must have a public and verified Google Business Profile, and it has to be linked to your Local Services Ads account. Ads cannot appear until that is done.

Google's screening documentation says the link step itself can take up to 24 hours to show as complete on the verification dashboard, so it is not something to leave until the afternoon you were hoping to go live.

The old agency problem

Here is the detail that strands people. Being the business owner is not enough. Google says the person completing the business checks must also be a profile owner or manager, even if the profile is already claimed and verified by someone else connected to the business.

In practice that someone else is often a marketing company you stopped working with two years ago, or a former employee whose personal Google account still holds the profile. Start the ownership transfer before you start anything else, because it runs on its own timeline and it does not care about yours.

Verifying your Business Profile is a different process

If you landed here searching Google Verified, you may be after profile verification rather than the badge. They are not the same thing.

Business Profile verification is a separate process that proves you operate the business. Local Services screening checks licences, insurance and criminal history. Completing one does not produce the other. You need the profile verified as an input, and screening then runs on top of it.

The background check, in plain terms

What it covers

Google says background checks are required for select users in the US and Canada, and points you at your own Local Services dashboard to confirm what applies to your business. Where they do apply, the check covers identity and criminal history. It does not involve a credit check or a credit pull.

One caution about what you will read elsewhere. Google's screening page goes into more detail about registry cross-checks and company-level civil litigation history, but that sentence is explicitly scoped to the United States in Google's own wording. Do not assume it describes the Canadian check. The safe Canadian summary is the narrow one: identity and criminal history, no credit pull.

Who has to take one

Where the requirement applies, all owners of the business complete a criminal background check. That part is not optional.

The roster question is where it gets bigger. If your business is in an applicable category, the requirement reaches past the owners. Every employee, independent contractor, temporary worker, contingent worker, vendor or other worker who performs core services for the customer must complete one too.

Google draws the line at doing the work. Office managers, clerical workers, customer support representatives and anyone else who does not service customers directly are excluded. So a solo operator is one check. A company with a dispatcher, a bookkeeper and six installers is seven checks, and the dispatcher and the bookkeeper are not among them.

There is also a multi-location rule. If one representative owns and operates more than one business under the same business name, Google requires a business entity background check for each location alongside the owner check per location. Two locations under one name means two sets of checks.

What happens if a check fails

Disqualification applies to the business, not only to the person who failed.

Google's screening documentation sets out what follows. Once errors and inaccuracies have been resolved and a final decision of disqualification lands, the business waits 30 days before it can reapply. If a second application is also denied, the wait becomes 180 days for any further attempt.

None of that is expensive in dollars. It is expensive in calendar. A rushed submission in March with a mismatched legal name can cost you the front half of your season.

Urgent categories and Advanced Verification

Which Canadian categories are treated as urgent

Five categories on Google's Canadian requirements page carry heavier screening: electrician, garage door, HVAC, locksmith and plumber. Garage door is the one those two Google pages disagree about.

Google's stated reason is demand pressure. Its note on electricians says consumers often call for time-sensitive, urgent needs such as exposed wiring and critical electronic failures, so the category gets an additional level of screening. In practice that means service professional background checks, which is the roster requirement from the section above rather than an owner-only check.

If you run plumbing or HVAC in Ontario, assume the roster is in scope and count your field staff before you plan a launch date.

Advanced Verification for locksmiths and garage door

Two of those five go further again. Locksmiths and garage door businesses also have to pass Advanced Verification, which exists to stop unauthorized businesses advertising on Google under false identities.

It is a different kind of check. Google describes it as combining a review of your Google Ads account where applicable, publicly available data, and video interviews conducted by Google. It also includes inquiries into the validity of your business registration and into evidence of unauthorized or misleading business practices.

A person from Google talks to a person from your business, on video. That is a scheduling dependency rather than a document upload, which is why these two categories should be planned with more lead time than the others.

One disambiguation, because the names collide. This is the Local Services program. Regular Google Ads has its own Advanced Verification policy covering certain restricted verticals, with different scope and different country coverage. They share a name and very little else.

What this means if you run crews

A solo operator submits one owner check and gets on with it. A five-truck operation in an urgent category submits the owner plus every person who sets foot on a customer's property, and the whole application moves at the speed of the slowest one.

Then there is turnover. Every new hire who performs core services is another check, which makes this recurring admin rather than a one-time hurdle. If you staff up seasonally, build the check into onboarding.

The application, step by step

The order matters more than the effort. One of these steps can end the project outright and two of them move at someone else's pace, so run them in this sequence.

The seven steps

1. 1

   Confirm your category in Google's eligibility check

   Run the sign-up flow for your own service area before you invest an hour in documents. This is the only gate that can end the project outright, so it goes first, and it takes minutes.

2. 2

   Get Business Profile ownership or manager access in your own hands

   If a former agency or an ex-employee holds the profile, start the transfer today. It runs on its own timeline and it does not go any faster because you happen to be ready.

3. 3

   Create the Local Services Ads account and link the profile

   Google says the link step can take up to 24 hours to register as complete on your verification dashboard. Do it early rather than on the morning you were hoping to go live.

4. 4

   Pull your certificate of insurance and licence documents before you submit anything

   Check the expiry date against Google's 14 day validity rule and check the name against your registration. Fixing paperwork now costs an afternoon. Fixing it later costs a review cycle.

5. 5

   Read the requirement list your own dashboard renders

   Not a generic checklist, including this one. Google scopes many of its checks to select users and select verticals, so the only accurate list is the one on your screen.

6. 6

   Submit owner and service professional checks together

   If your category needs the roster screened, collect everyone's details in one pass. Going back to your crew twice for the same information is how this stretches.

7. 7

   Set your budget and billing, then wait

   Google puts the review at 3 to 4 weeks on average once documents are in. Spend the window building reviews.

What to do while you wait

The screening window looks like dead time. It is not.

Reviews are the one input you can move while Google works through your documents, and they feed your Local Services position the moment you go live. Screening is also the cheapest stretch of time you will ever have for building them, because you are not paying for leads yet.

Work back through the jobs you completed this season and ask each customer directly.

How long it takes, and what 3 to 4 weeks actually measures

The published timeline

Google recommends starting screening as soon as you have created your Local Services Ads account, and says that on average the process takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete after you submit your documents. The identical sentence sits on both the Canadian and the American versions of that page, so it is not an American figure leaking across the border.

Now read the qualifier, because it carries a lot of weight. 3 to 4 weeks measures the review, not the project. Gathering licence documents, waiting on a broker to reissue a certificate in the right name, and getting Business Profile ownership transferred all happen before that clock starts. Planning a launch date off the review window alone means planning from the wrong starting line.

The 14 day accelerated path is US only

You may have read that Google offers an accelerated route that issues the badge quickly, with 14 days afterwards to finish the remaining steps and keep your ads serving.

That is a real thing and it is not available to you. Google scopes the risk-based verification process it belongs to, in its own sentence, to select users in the US.

Plan against the published 3 to 4 week average and treat anything faster as luck.

What makes it take longer

Four things commonly extend the timeline, roughly in the order they arise.

Business Profile ownership sitting with someone who has stopped answering your emails. Name mismatches between the insurance certificate, the registration and the sign-up. Documents that expire inside the review window, which is what the 14 day validity rule exists to prevent. And roster size, if you are in an urgent category with field staff to enrol.

Three of those four are fixable before you submit a thing. That is the whole argument for front-loading the boring part.

Pre-badge ads: taking leads before the badge lands

What you need to switch them on

You do not have to sit out the whole screening window. Google offers pre-badge ads, which let you receive leads once you have passed the preliminary checks and while you are still completing the rest of onboarding.

The bar for going live with them is shorter than full onboarding. A licence, or your business registration if you are not required to submit a licence. An acknowledgement that you hold all the appropriate business licences. Reviews, subject to category requirements. And billing set up with a budget in place.

On reviews, Google publishes no number. It says only that reviews are subject to category requirements, and third-party sources quoting a specific minimum contradict each other. Take the requirement seriously and ignore the numbers.

The ranking cost

Your listing does appear in consumer search results, but Google places it below every provider who has completed all onboarding requirements and holds the badge.

You are paying per lead for a position underneath everyone who finished. That can still be worth it if you have trucks sitting idle and the alternative is nothing at all. It is not a shortcut, and it is not the same product as being badged.

Who cannot use them

Pre-badge ads are not available for garage door services, locksmiths, or health care verticals.

Note the overlap. Two of those three are the same categories that require Advanced Verification and a video interview. If you are a locksmith there is no partial on-ramp: you complete the heaviest version of the process or you do not serve at all. Plan that one as a project with a start date.

What the badge does and does not mean

It attests to screening, not workmanship

Google checked identity, licensing, insurance and criminal history. That is the whole list. Nobody from Google looked at a roof you installed, called a customer to ask how it went, or inspected a single job.

That distinction matters for two reasons. The first is accuracy. If you tell a homeowner the badge means Google approved your workmanship, you are describing something Google never did, and in Canadian advertising terms that is a claim you cannot substantiate.

The second is that the honest version is a better pitch anyway. A verified checkmark says a real business with real insurance and a clean check is standing behind this listing, which is what the homeowner is worried about at 9pm with water coming through a ceiling.

It is not a ranking factor, and neither is your bid

When Google announced the consolidation it added a one-line note that saves a lot of wasted effort: Local Services Ads ranking would not be affected by the change.

If you are coming from Search ads, the instincts do not transfer. Position in Local Services responds to proximity to the searcher, your review score and review volume, how fast and how often you answer, whether your business hours cover when people are searching, and your complaint history. There are no bids, no keywords and no ad copy for it to respond to.

So there is no lever labelled spend more to rank higher. The levers are answer the phone, get reviews, and be close to the job. The full comparison of what each channel gives you to steer is in LSA versus Google Ads.

It does nothing for your regular Google Ads

Two separate products, one account login. The badge does not touch your Quality Score, does not improve your position in the Search auction, and does not lower your cost per click on a single keyword.

If your Search campaigns are underperforming, this project will not fix them.

What it costs, and whether it is worth getting

The badge costs nothing. The leads do

Google does not charge the business for background checks. The screening itself is free, which is genuinely unusual.

The channel behind it is not free, and it prices differently from anything else in Google. Local Services Ads charges per lead rather than per click. You are not buying traffic and hoping it converts, you are buying contacts directly, and the ones that arrive get charged whether or not you can service them.

The published numbers, and how to read them

Two public benchmark sets get quoted on this topic. One is a vendor sample of home services Local Services Ads campaigns. The other is a broader search advertising benchmark set covering home and home improvement. Between them they put a home services lead somewhere in the region of USD $50 to $90, depending on whose sample you read and which channel it measures.

Then the caveats, which matter more than the figures. Both are US datasets in US dollars, so neither is a Canadian expectation. They come from different vendors measuring different things, so setting one against the other is not a controlled comparison. And published benchmark numbers get restated and drift, so check them on the source pages before you build anything on them.

For how paid search pricing works in a Canadian context, what Google Ads cost for contractors covers the mechanics.

The two things that decide it for you

Capacity first. Because you are charged per lead rather than per click, a contractor who is already booked out is paying for calls he cannot take. If you are running near capacity, consider running this seasonally rather than year round.

Control second. There is no keyword to add, no query to exclude, no ad copy to test, and no landing page in the flow at all. If your margin lives in one specific service line, you cannot bias the channel toward it.

That is the real trade. Local Services buys you a verified trust signal and a listing in consumer search results, and charges you your steering wheel for it. Whether that is a good deal depends on how much your job mix varies, which is the same question underneath whether Google Ads are worth it at all.

The change coming next: Local Services Ads is moving into Google Ads

What is changing and when

The dashboard you are about to learn is being retired. Google is migrating Local Services Ads into a Performance Max campaign type with pay-per-lead goals, in phases.

Phase one starts August 2026 for select US home and storefront service advertisers. Service-area businesses without storefronts follow in late 2026. Non-US accounts and the remaining categories are scheduled for 2027, and that is the Canadian line.

You will get warning. Google says it sends an email 14 days before an account migrates, with a reminder a week before the switch. For a Canadian contractor starting today, nothing about the verification path changes, but the place you manage it will.

What carries over and what does not

The good news is the part you worked hardest for. Verification status and the Google Verified badge transfer automatically, and Google says insurance and licence re-verification is not required. You do not redo the project.

Lead history carries too. Past contacts, message threads and call recordings survive the move.

Historical performance reports do not carry over. Export them before your account migrates. That is the one genuinely time-sensitive instruction on this page, and it applies to anyone running Local Services Ads today. Once the migration lands, the data you would use to judge whether this channel earned its keep is gone from the interface.

What changes about running it

Several mechanics change at once. Weekly budgets convert to a daily average, with monthly spend capped at the daily figure times 30.4. Manual bidding and vertical-level target CPA are deprecated. BBB callouts are removed from listings.

Two operational notes. Significant changes to your linked profile name or address trigger a review of 24 to 48 hours, during which the campaign may pause. And Google says to allow up to two weeks after migration for performance to settle, which means the week you migrate is the wrong week to judge results.

If your badge disappears or your leads stop

Verification is a standing obligation, not a one-time hurdle, and the failure mode is quiet. Nothing alarms. The phone just stops.

Expired documents

An insurance certificate lapses, the requirement goes unmet, and lead flow stops without anything on your screen shouting about it.

The fix is unglamorous. Put your certificate expiry and your licence renewal dates in the same calendar you use for vehicle safeties, and set the reminder far enough ahead that your broker has time to reissue in the correct legal name.

Follow-up reviews and risk re-evaluation

Google can ask for additional review after you are live. Failing to complete one can cost you the badge, pause your ads, or suspend the account outright.

So the requirement list in your dashboard is not something you read once during onboarding. Check it when something changes, and check it when nothing does. If Google has asked for something and it is sitting unread in an inbox nobody monitors, that is a live problem rather than admin.

Profile and category changes

Changes to the linked Business Profile have consequences. Google's migration documentation notes that significant name or address changes trigger a review of 24 to 48 hours during which the campaign may pause, so a rebrand or a shop move should be planned rather than done on a Tuesday afternoon.

Category changes reset your requirements. If you add or switch a service category, the document set can change with it, and an urgent category brings the roster requirement with it. Open the dashboard's own requirement list and read what it says today.

Where to go from here

If you are in one of the sixteen Canadian categories, this is worth doing. The screening is free, the verified checkmark is a real trust signal even without the retired guarantee behind it, and the leads arrive already matched to the category you registered. Budget for it honestly: a few weeks of document chasing and waiting, plus a standing renewal obligation afterwards.

Sequence beats effort here. Run the eligibility check first, because it is the only step that can end the project. Start the Business Profile transfer the same day, because it moves at someone else's pace. Reconcile the names on your insurance certificate and your registration before you upload anything. Then work the requirement list your own dashboard renders rather than any published checklist, including this one, and build reviews the whole time you are waiting.

Getting verified answers whether you can run this channel. Whether you should is a separate question. Local Services gives you a trust signal and no steering. Search gives you steering and no badge. They are complements rather than substitutes, which is the argument for treating this as one channel among several rather than the whole plan. And if your trade has no Canadian category at all, the decision is already made for you: Search is the channel, and running it well in Ontario is its own job.