How to Get More Google Reviews for Your Contracting Business

76% of consumers will leave a review when asked directly. Only 7% leave one on their own. That gap between 76% and 7% is the difference between a contractor with 23 reviews after five years in business and one with 300.

Most contractors know reviews matter. Fewer understand that how fast you collect them matters more than the final number on your profile.

Google’s algorithm weighs review velocity, the rate at which new reviews come in, as a ranking signal in local search. A business adding 8-10 reviews per month consistently will outrank a competitor with a higher total count but only 1-2 new reviews per month.

This article covers the mechanics of getting reviews: when to ask, how to ask, what to say, and how to build a system that generates them on autopilot. For the broader strategy behind review generation for home services, we’ve covered that separately. Here, we’re focused on execution.

Why the first 100 reviews change everything

A BrightLocal study found that businesses with 100+ Google reviews get 3x more clicks from the local map pack than businesses with fewer than 10 reviews. The jump from 10 to 50 reviews increases click-through rates by 25%. From 50 to 100, another 15-20%.

After 100, the returns diminish. Going from 100 to 200 reviews adds about 5-8% more clicks. Going from 200 to 500 adds even less.

The first 100 reviews represent the steepest part of the trust curve. A homeowner comparing two HVAC contractors, one with 37 reviews and one with 112, will call the one with 112 almost every time, assuming similar star ratings.

Your star rating matters less than you think once you cross 4.2 stars. Below 4.0 and you lose significant traffic. Above 4.5 and the difference is marginal. But review count is a different story. Count signals volume of business and gives homeowners confidence that you’re established.

The milestone to focus on is 100 reviews. Everything else is secondary until you get there.

Review velocity: why speed matters more than count

Google tracks how frequently your profile receives new reviews. A business that earned 150 reviews over five years but hasn’t gotten a new one in three months sends a signal that business has slowed down, or worse, that quality has dropped.

A competitor with only 80 reviews but 10 new ones in the last 30 days signals active, healthy demand. Google favors that freshness.

Review velocity directly impacts your map pack ranking. Google’s algorithm now treats review recency as a stronger signal than total count. A business getting 10 reviews per month will outrank one sitting on 200 total reviews but only adding 1-2 per month. Whitespark’s 2025 Local Search Ranking Factors survey confirmed reviews are the #2 local pack factor after primary business category. Contractors who maintain a steady flow of 8-12 reviews per month consistently rank higher in local search results than those with sporadic review patterns, even when total review counts are similar.

We’ve detailed exactly how review velocity affects your rankings and why a stalled review profile can tank your local visibility.

The practical takeaway: you need a system that produces reviews consistently, not a one-time push that generates 20 reviews and then goes quiet.

When to ask: the 1-hour window

Timing is the single biggest factor in whether a customer actually leaves a review. Research from Podium shows that review requests sent within 1 hour of service completion get a 70% higher response rate than those sent 24 hours later.

After 48 hours, response rates drop by over 50%. After a week, you might as well not ask. The customer has moved on, the emotional high of a completed project has faded, and your request gets buried under other notifications.

The optimal sequence looks like this:

First request: Within 30-60 minutes of completing the job. Send a text message with a direct link to your Google review page. Not your website. Not a generic review site. A direct link to leave a Google review.

Second request: 24-48 hours later for anyone who didn’t respond. A brief follow-up text or email reminding them. Keep it short: “Hi [Name], we’d appreciate a quick review of the work we did yesterday. Here’s the link: [link].”

Third request (optional): 5-7 days later. Only for customers where the job went exceptionally well. A personal email from the owner or lead tech.

We’ve mapped out the exact review request timing that produces the best results. The data shows two touchpoints is the sweet spot for most contractors. Three works for large jobs. More than three risks annoying the customer.

How to ask: the exact script

Most contractors who do ask for reviews do it wrong. They say something vague like “If you get a chance, we’d love a review” at the end of the job. That converts at maybe 10-15%.

A direct, specific ask converts at 50-70%. The difference is in the framing.

The in-person ask (before you leave the job site)

“[Customer name], I’m glad we got this taken care of for you. We’re a small business and Google reviews are the biggest thing that helps new customers find us. Would you be willing to leave us a quick review? I’ll text you a link in the next few minutes that takes you right to the review page. It takes about 30 seconds.”

Three things make this work. First, you personalize it with their name. Second, you explain why the review matters to your business. Third, you remove friction by promising a direct link and setting the expectation that it’s quick.

One tactic worth stealing: a plumber on ContractorTalk shared that he pays his techs a $20 bonus every time a customer mentions the tech by name in a 5-star review. His review count jumped from 3-4 per month to 12-15 per month within 60 days of implementing the incentive. The techs started asking on their own because they had skin in the game.

The text message (sent within 1 hour)

“Hi [Name], thanks for choosing [Company Name] for your [service type]. If you have 30 seconds, we’d really appreciate a Google review: [direct link]. It makes a huge difference for our small business. - [Tech Name]”

Text messages get a 98% open rate compared to 20% for email. For review requests, SMS consistently outperforms every other channel by a wide margin.

The email follow-up (24-48 hours later)

Subject: “How did we do on your [service type]?”

Keep the email to 2-3 sentences max. Include the direct link. Don’t bury the ask behind a paragraph of thanks.

Building a direct review link

Google makes it unnecessarily complicated to find your review link. Here’s how to get it.

Search for your business on Google. Click “Ask for reviews” in your Google Business Profile dashboard. Copy the link Google provides.

Alternatively, find your Place ID at Google’s Place ID Finder and construct the link: https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=YOUR_PLACE_ID

Shorten this link using a service like Bitly or your own custom short domain. A clean URL like “review.yourcompany.com” looks more trustworthy than a 200-character Google link and gets higher click-through rates.

Make sure your Google Business Profile is fully optimized before you start driving review traffic to it. A half-completed profile with missing photos and no service descriptions wastes the trust that reviews generate.

John Wilson of Wilson Companies (Owned and Operated podcast) reported generating 900+ inbound calls in a single week from optimized Google Business Profiles. His strategy: consistent review velocity combined with complete profile optimization, including weekly photo uploads and regular Google Posts. Reviews alone won’t carry a bare profile. The combination of a complete, active profile and steady review flow is what drives the algorithm.

What stops customers from leaving reviews

Understanding friction points helps you remove them. The top reasons customers don’t leave reviews even when asked:

They forget. This is why timing matters. Ask while the experience is fresh. The text message link removes the step of them having to search for your business later.

They don’t have a Google account. About 15% of homeowners, particularly older demographics, don’t have Google accounts or don’t know their login credentials. You can’t do much about this except acknowledge it and focus your efforts on the 85% who do.

They don’t know what to write. Give them a prompt. “If you could mention the specific service we did and anything that stood out about the experience, that helps future customers know what to expect.” This guidance produces longer, more detailed reviews that also happen to include keywords Google values for local SEO.

The process feels complicated. A direct link that opens the review form immediately reduces abandonment. If customers have to search for your business, find the review button, and then write something, you’ll lose most of them along the way.

Handling the volume: systematizing your review engine

If you’re completing 20+ jobs per week, you can’t manually text every customer. You need a system.

Option 1: CRM-based automation. Most field service CRMs like ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, and Jobber have built-in review request features. When a job is marked complete, the system automatically sends a text or email. Set it up once and every completed job triggers a review request. Sera Systems reports that contractors using CRM-integrated membership management features see 40% higher maintenance agreement sign-up rates, and the same automation logic applies to review requests. The system handles what techs forget.

Option 2: Dedicated review platforms. Tools like Podium, Birdeye, and NiceJob specialize in review generation. They handle the timing, follow-ups, and even monitor which customers haven’t responded. These typically cost $200-400 per month.

Option 3: Manual with a checklist. For smaller operations doing 5-10 jobs per week, a simple checklist works. Your tech or office staff sends the text with the review link as part of the job close-out process.

One HVAC contractor on Reddit reported setting up a simple automation in ServiceTitan that sends a review request text 45 minutes after job completion, with a follow-up email 24 hours later. His response rate went from 8% (when techs asked manually) to 34% with the automated sequence. The key was removing the tech from the equation entirely. No asking, no remembering, no awkward conversations.

The method matters less than the consistency. A system that runs on every single job will outperform a sophisticated tool that gets used sporadically.

What not to do

Never offer incentives for reviews. Google’s terms of service prohibit offering discounts, gift cards, or any form of compensation in exchange for reviews. Violations can result in review removal or profile suspension.

Never ask only happy customers. This is a subtle violation of FTC guidelines and Google’s policies. Your process should ask every customer, every time. If you’re doing good work, the positive reviews will vastly outnumber the negative ones.

Never respond to negative reviews with anger or defensiveness. A thoughtful response to a 1-star review can actually increase trust. Homeowners reading reviews expect to see an occasional negative one. How you respond tells them more about your character than a wall of 5-star ratings.

Contractors on r/hvac and ContractorTalk consistently warn against responding with technical jargon or blame. One contractor shared that a single defensive response to a 1-star review cost him an estimated 15-20 calls over 3 months, based on his call tracking data showing a drop after the review response went live. He rewrote the response, kept it professional, and the call volume recovered within weeks.

Never buy reviews or use review farms. Google’s detection algorithms are increasingly sophisticated. Purchased reviews get flagged and removed, and the penalty can extend to legitimate reviews being stripped from your profile.

Responding to reviews: the multiplier effect

Businesses that respond to every review get 12% more reviews than those that don’t respond. Responding signals to customers that their feedback is valued, which encourages others to leave reviews too.

Keep responses professional and brief. For positive reviews: thank them, mention the specific service if possible, and sign off. For negative reviews: acknowledge the issue, take responsibility where appropriate, and offer to make it right offline.

Response time matters too. Responding within 24 hours of a new review shows attentiveness. Letting reviews sit unanswered for weeks sends the opposite signal.

Tracking your progress

Set a monthly review target based on your job volume. If you complete 40 jobs per month and 76% of asked customers leave reviews, you could theoretically add 30 reviews per month. In practice, expect 25-50% of that after accounting for customers who don’t see the text, don’t have Google accounts, or simply forget.

A realistic target for most contractors is 8-15 new reviews per month. Track this weekly. If the number drops, diagnose why. Did the automated system break? Did a new tech stop asking in person? Did the text message template get flagged as spam?

Your review count directly correlates with lead volume. Contractors who go from 40 reviews to 100 reviews typically report a 20-30% increase in inbound calls from Google Maps.

The compound effect of review velocity

Reviews compound. Each new review slightly improves your ranking, which increases visibility, which drives more traffic, which produces more jobs, which generates more review opportunities.

A contractor adding 10 reviews per month will have 120 new reviews after a year. Combined with the velocity signal this sends to Google, their map pack position improves steadily. More visibility means more calls. More calls mean more jobs. More jobs mean more review opportunities.

A roofing contractor in r/roofing tracked his leads before and after crossing the 100-review threshold. His Google Maps clicks increased 47% in the two months after hitting 100 reviews, with no other changes to his marketing. No new ad spend, no website redesign. The reviews alone moved the needle.

A restoration company tracked their Google Maps impressions before and after crossing the 200-review threshold. Their impressions increased 62% and calls from Maps went up 38% within 60 days. The jump from 100 to 200 reviews showed diminishing returns on click-through rates, but the Maps visibility boost was significant enough to generate measurable call volume increases.

The contractors dominating local search in your market didn’t get there with a better website or more ad spend. They got there by systematically asking every customer for a review, every time, with a direct link, sent within an hour of job completion.

Start with the first 100. Build the system. Then let velocity do the rest.