Google Guaranteed Is Now Google Verified

If you’re searching for the Google Guaranteed badge, you’re looking for something Google retired. In October 2025 Google folded Google Guaranteed, Google Screened and License Verified by Google into one Google Verified badge on Local Services Ads, and it ended the money-back guarantee that gave the old badge its name. Customers could file reimbursement claims only for services booked before December 7, 2025, and only within 30 days of the job.

For a business, the practical change is small: the screening is the same, it’s free, it still takes about 3 to 4 weeks, and anyone who was already verified got the new badge automatically. For a customer, the change matters more, because the checkmark now says “this business passed Google’s checks” and no longer says “Google will refund you if the work goes wrong”.

What Changed in October 2025

Before the change, a Local Services Ad carried one of three badges depending on the trade and the level of screening. After it, every verified advertiser carries the same one. Google’s help page describes the change in a few lines, and these are the parts that matter:

• One badge instead of three. Google Guaranteed (home services), Google Screened (professional services) and License Verified by Google were replaced by Google Verified.
• The Money Back Guarantee ended. Google stopped reimbursing customers for unsatisfactory work booked through Local Services Ads. Eligible claims had to concern services booked before December 7, 2025 and be filed within 30 days of the service.
• Existing advertisers did nothing. Anyone who had completed the screening earned the new badge automatically and kept serving ads.
• The badge travels. It shows on the Local Services Ads profile and, in Google’s words, may appear on other surfaces where it adds value, with the verification details visible on the profile.

The badge change was the first of two. On July 20, 2026 Google announced that Local Services Ads themselves are moving into Google Ads as pay-per-lead Performance Max campaigns, starting with a group of US advertisers in August 2026 and reaching non-US accounts in 2027. That affects budgets, bidding and reporting rather than the badge, and the Local Services Ads guide covers it in detail.

What the Google Verified Badge Means

Google’s own description is that the badge signals a business has passed Google’s proprietary screening process. In practice that means the following checks, applied by category:

• Identity and criminal background checks on every owner, and on every employee, contractor or temporary worker who performs the core service at a customer’s property. Google’s partners cross-check national sex offender, terrorist and sanctions registries in the US, and run company-level checks for civil judgments and liens. There is no credit check.
• Business and owner licenses, where the state or province requires them for the trade.
• Insurance appropriate to the category: general liability for most trades, professional liability or malpractice cover for some professional and health categories.
• A public, verified Google Business Profile, plus a minimum number of reviews in some categories.

What the badge no longer carries is a promise to pay. A customer who hires a Google Verified plumber and ends up with a bad job has the normal remedies, the review, the complaint to the licensing board, the small-claims court, and no claim against Google. If you’re a customer reading this, that is the single most useful thing to know about the checkmark.

Two limits apply. The badge is currently unavailable for businesses in the auto, beauty and dining categories, so a restaurant or a salon can run Local Services Ads without ever showing it. And Google lets most categories run “pre-badge” ads while verification is still in progress, as long as the license or registration, the required reviews and billing are in place; garage door services, health care and locksmiths are excluded from that, which suggests where Google has had the most trouble with fraud.

Google Guaranteed vs Google Screened vs Google Verified

People still search for the old names, and the old pages still rank, so here is how the three relate.

Badge	Who carried it	What it promised	Status
Google Guaranteed	Home service trades: plumbers, electricians, HVAC, locksmiths, cleaners, roofers and similar	Background, license and insurance checks, plus a money-back guarantee up to a lifetime cap per customer	Retired October 2025
Google Screened	Professional services: lawyers, financial planners, real estate agents and similar	Background and license checks, no money-back guarantee	Retired October 2025
License Verified by Google	Categories where only the license could be verified	License check only	Retired October 2025
Google Verified	Every Local Services advertiser that passes screening, except auto, beauty and dining categories	Background, license and insurance checks as applicable, with the details shown on the profile. No reimbursement	Current

Google Guarantee and Google Guaranteed were always the same program under two names, so if an old article tells you to pick between them, it’s describing a distinction that never existed, about a badge that no longer does.

What the Money-Back Guarantee Used to Cover

This section is history, kept because customers still ask and because old pages still promise it. Under the Google Guarantee, a customer unhappy with the quality of a job booked through Local Services Ads could ask Google for a refund of up to the cost of the initial service, subject to a lifetime cap per customer: $2,000 in the US, CAD 2,000 in Canada, £1,500 in the UK, CHF 2,000 in Switzerland and €1,500 in the eurozone countries where the program ran. Google reviewed each claim and paid the customer directly.

It never covered property damage, add-on or future work, trip and diagnostic fees, price disputes or cancellations, which is narrower than most people assumed and part of why the badge was always more of a trust signal than an insurance policy. Claims closed for services booked after December 7, 2025, and the 30-day filing window has long passed for anything before that.

How to Get the Google Verified Badge

You don’t apply for the badge on its own. You sign up for Local Services Ads, complete the screening, and the badge is the result. Google says the process takes 3 to 4 weeks on average once the documents are submitted, and recommends starting the screening the moment the account exists, because the background checks on field workers are usually the slowest step and each worker has to complete their own form.

• Create or verify the Google Business Profile first. Local Services requires a public, verified profile, and the star rating in the ad comes from it. The Google Business Profile setup guide covers verification.
• Gather the license and the insurance certificate for your category before you start. Google’s requirements page lists what each category needs, and a mismatch between the license name and the business name is the usual reason for a rejection.
• Invite every owner and every field worker to the background check as soon as the account is open. Google’s partners run the checks, the business is not charged, and the results stay between the business and the partner.
• In eligible categories, accelerated verification can show the badge quickly, with 14 days to finish the remaining steps before the ads stop serving.

The step-by-step account setup, job types, service areas and budgets are in the Local Services Ads setup guide.

What Google Verified Costs

Nothing, directly. The badge has no fee, and Google states that businesses aren’t charged for the background checks. What you pay for is the ads that carry it: Local Services Ads charge per lead, meaning a call, a message or a booking, and the price is set by your bid and the competition in your category and area. SearchLight’s February 2026 benchmark across 888 home-service contractors put the average at $53 a lead, with 43.9% of leads booking and a cost of about $233 per paying customer. Your trade and city will sit above or below that, and the Local Services Ads guide breaks it down by trade.

Is Google Verified Still Worth It?

The badge was never the asset. The placement was. Local Services Ads sit at the top of the results for the queries they cover, above the regular ads and the map pack, and the badge is what lets you appear there with a checkmark next to your name. The question is whether that placement produces jobs at a price you can live with, and that depends on things the badge doesn’t control.

I have read a lot of owners on Reddit describe the two ways it goes wrong. One is lead quality: spam calls, wrong-area callers and price shoppers, which Google now credits automatically in many cases but not all. The other is silence, an account with a real budget and no calls, which usually traces back to Google’s ranking factors rather than to the badge. Google says the ad’s position depends on your bid, how likely you are to get the lead (responsiveness, with missed calls counted against you, plus relevance and the contact options you enable), and profile quality, meaning your rating, review count, average response time, photos and completed checks. A business that answers the phone, has a strong Google Business Profile and bids sensibly tends to do well; a business that lets calls go to voicemail pays for the badge and gets little from it.

Where Local Services Ads Are Available

Local Services Ads run in the United States and Canada and in a group of European countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland, with the category list varying by country. They are not available in India. An Indian service business has the same intent to capture through the Google Business Profile, regular Google Ads with location targeting and local SEO, and the local online marketing guide compares those channels.

FAQs on Google Guaranteed and Google Verified