For professional firms, a familiar face was part of the pitch. Google is taking it out of Local Services Ads.
An in-account notice says featured professionals will stop appearing in ads during October 2026. Professional headshots are also becoming optional and will no longer determine whether an ad can serve.
Individual Professionals Are Disappearing From the Ad
Google’s notice gives advertisers a concise account of the change:
"Starting in October, featured professionals will no longer show on your ads. Headshot is optional and won’t affect ad serving."
The alert does not provide a specific implementation date, geographic scope or detailed explanation for the decision. It says the rest of the ad, including business photos and reviews, will remain unchanged.
Featured professionals gave certain advertisers a way to present an individual practitioner alongside the business. Google’s existing Local Services Ads requirements identify law, real estate and finance as categories that may use a main business headshot and individual professional headshots.
The feature was especially relevant to firms whose customers choose a person as much as a company. A prospective client comparing lawyers, for example, could encounter an individual practitioner before opening the advertiser’s full profile.
Google’s change shifts that initial presentation back toward the business.
Trust-Led Firms Lose a Point of Differentiation
A headshot does not establish that a professional is more qualified than another. It can, however, make an unfamiliar firm feel more identifiable when several advertisers offer similar services, ratings and verification badges.
That distinction matters in Google Local Services Ads, where customers can contact providers directly from the search results. The decision can begin before someone visits the firm’s website or reviews a detailed biography.
Law firms are an obvious example, but the change can also affect real estate and financial-services advertisers that have used an individual professional as the public face of a larger organization. Those businesses will retain their company name, ratings, reviews and other profile information, but the ad itself will offer less room to establish person-level familiarity.
The notice does not say that professional information will be removed from advertisers’ websites, Google Business Profiles or other Google surfaces. Its language is limited to featured professionals appearing in Local Services Ads.
Nor has Google published evidence that removing the feature will increase or reduce lead volume. Any performance effect will depend on how the revised ad is presented, which other assets appear and how customers respond within each service category.
Optional Headshots Do Not Make Other Images Irrelevant
The new treatment of headshots should not be read as a broader downgrade of photography.
Google’s photo guidance for Local Services Ads says high-quality business images can help customers understand a provider and may contribute to stronger ad rankings. Its examples include photographs of teams, completed work and equipment.
Google’s Local Services Ads ranking guidance also lists ratings, review volume, response time, high-quality images and completed verification checks among the factors contributing to profile quality. The latest notice separates professional headshots from those wider signals: a headshot will not control ad serving, while the quality of the overall profile can still influence how listings compete.
Reviews retain a particularly visible role. Google says star ratings and review counts affect ranking, while advertisers’ responsiveness and relevance to a customer’s search also contribute to the auction.
For marketers, the practical implication is narrow but important. Firms should stop treating an individual headshot as an eligibility requirement, while continuing to maintain accurate business details, compliant photographs, current service categories and legitimate customer reviews. Performance comparisons should separate the headshot change from concurrent adjustments to bids, budgets or lead handling.
Google’s Public Documentation Still Tells an Older Story
The in-account notice is ahead of Google’s public Help Centre.
As of October 21, Google’s business information instructions still state that law professionals can add featured professionals and education details through their Local Services Ads account. The requirements page also continues to describe individual professional headshots and says those professionals may appear on the profile page.
Those pages explain how the previous configuration worked, but they do not yet document the October removal or clearly distinguish between an ad listing and the deeper provider profile.
The discrepancy may create confusion during account setup. An advertiser could encounter public instructions for adding a professional while seeing an account notification explaining that the person will no longer appear in the ad.
Google has not said whether existing professional records will be deleted, retained without display or used elsewhere in the provider profile. It has only told advertisers that featured professionals will no longer show in their ads, and that headshots will be optional.
The Removal Arrives During a Wider Local Services Ads Transition
The change is landing while Google moves Local Services Ads into its main advertising platform.
Google’s official migration documentation says selected Local Services Ads accounts are transitioning to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. Migrated advertisers manage campaigns, assets and leads inside Google Ads rather than through the original standalone dashboard.
The migration preserves the core pay-per-lead model and keeps ads on Search and Maps, but it changes how campaigns and business assets are managed. Google has also continued experimenting with larger imagery and more prominent profile information in Local Services Ads, including a recently observed larger ad format.
Removing featured professionals fits that broader simplification of the product, although Google has not directly connected the two developments. Advertisers still have business photography, reviews, verification details and service information available to support the listing.
Google has not released performance forecasts for the revised format or specified when its public documentation will be updated.
