A search for a nearby professional in Fresno could now surface a business that never chose to serve the city.

That mismatch is raising questions about Google Local Services Ads and whether their location settings are working as intended.

The apparent Local Services Ads bug involves listings appearing in places outside the service areas selected on advertisers’ profiles.

Examples described this week include businesses based in New Jersey appearing in searches tied to Fresno and Arizona.

Other unexpected listings reportedly came from Illinois, Florida, and Texas, suggesting the concern may extend beyond one market.

A review of the service areas shown on some affected profiles found no indication that those businesses had selected Fresno.

That matters because LSA location targeting is supposed to connect customers with professionals who serve their area.

For someone dealing with a broken appliance or another urgent household problem, an out-of-area result is more than an annoyance.

It can mean extra calls and time spent discovering that a promising business cannot take the job.

Local advertisers have reason to pay attention, too, if businesses outside their service area appear alongside them.

The immediate question is whether these appearances reflect a technical error or a change in how locations are matched.

There has been no confirmed explanation for the mismatch, so it would be premature to call it an intentional expansion.

It is also unclear whether affected advertisers are receiving leads from those searches or facing any related charges.

For now, businesses using Google Local Services Ads can check where their listings appear and compare results with their selected service areas.

Keeping a record of unexpected locations could make it easier to describe the problem if support is needed.

Customers, meanwhile, may want to confirm that a business serves their address before assuming a nearby search result does.

In a city like Fresno, where local availability is often the whole point of a service search, that distinction counts.

Until the mismatch is explained, both customers and businesses are left questioning results that should feel dependable.