How people actually find a contractor now.

There's no pitch on this page. It's what we'd tell you on the phone if you asked how any of this works, written down so you can read it whenever.

Someone's gutters are overflowing. They pick up their phone, type gutter cleaning near me, and three businesses appear on a map above everything else. One of them gets the call.

That box is where nearly all of it is decided now, and it's worth understanding what Google is doing when it picks the three.

Google tells you what it's deciding

You don't have to guess at this. Google publishes it:

“Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.”

Google Business Profile Help — Improve your local ranking on Google

In plain terms:

Relevance is whether what you do matches what they typed. If your profile says “contractor” and they typed “gutter cleaning”, you're a worse match than the company that says gutter cleaning.

Distance is how close you are to wherever they're standing. You cannot change this one. Nobody can, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Popularity is how well known Google thinks you are. Reviews are a large part of it.

So of the three things deciding whether you appear, one is fixed and two aren't. Everything worth doing lives in those two.

What Google says about reviews

Again, straight from Google rather than from us:

“More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking.”

Google Business Profile Help

“When you reply to customer reviews, it shows that you value their feedback. Positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out.”

Google Business Profile Help

That second one surprises most people. Replying to reviews is itself worth doing — and almost nobody in the trades does it.

The part nobody tells you: reviews go stale

This is the thing worth taking away from this page.

Reviews don't bank. Somebody deciding who to call doesn't just look at how many you have — they look at when. Surveys of consumers in the US consistently find that a large majority want to see reviews from the last few months, and that a rising share won't consider a business below four and a half stars at all.

97%read reviews for local businesses
74%want to see reviews written in the last three months
68%won't use a business rated under four stars
80%are more likely to use a business that replies to its reviews
42%would avoid one that ignores them entirely
Where those came from, and what's wrong with them. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 — 1,002 US adults, surveyed via SurveyMonkey. Three things you should know before leaning on any of it: it's a US sample, not Canadian; it's what people say they do, which is never quite what they do; and BrightLocal sells local search software, so they aren't a neutral party. We think it's directionally right and we're showing you the caveats rather than the headline, which is more than you'll usually get.

Put that together and something uncomfortable follows. Forty five-star reviews from 2022 are worth very little. The rating still shows, but to most of the people looking, a business whose last review is three years old reads as one that might not be trading any more.

Which means getting reviews isn't a job you finish. It's a thing that has to keep happening, quietly, in the background, forever. That is the single most useful thing on this page and it's the reason a one-off push never works.

What to actually do about it

None of this needs us. If you've got an hour, here's the honest list:

  • Fill your Google profile in completely. Every service, real hours, the areas you cover, and photographs of actual jobs. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up.
  • Ask every customer for a review, on the day. Standing in front of finished work is the only moment anyone will actually do it. A week later they've forgotten.
  • Ask everyone, not just the happy ones. Filtering who you ask is against Google's rules and it's illegal here. It also doesn't work — a perfect five with no imperfect reviews reads as fake.
  • Reply to every review, including the bad ones. Say something specific about the job. Copy-pasted replies are worse than none; around half of people say a templated reply puts them off.
  • Put your prices on your website. Not to win on price — so the people who call you have already decided they can afford you.
  • Answer your phone, or make sure something does. An unanswered call is a job that goes to the next name on the list, and you already paid for that call with twenty years of reputation.

That last one is the one that costs most people the most money, and it's the hardest to do when you're up a ladder.

Doing all of it, every week, forever, is what we do for people. But it's your list either way — it works whether we're involved or not.

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