A business with three hundred reviews and none in the last four months is in a weaker position than one with sixty and four this month. Review volume and recency both carry weight in how Local Services Ads are ranked, and recency is the half contractors ignore, because the total is the number that feels like an achievement.
A burst is worse than a trickle
Most contractors get reviews the same way: someone decides it matters, there is a push for a fortnight, forty arrive, and then nothing for a year.
Reviews collected in one campaign age together. Six months on, every one of them is old at the same moment, and the profile that looked strong in March looks dormant in September. You cannot fix that with another push without repeating the cycle.
A routine that produces two or three a week never has that problem, because there is always something recent in the window. It also produces a more honest picture: a steady record of ordinary jobs reads as a working business, where forty reviews inside a fortnight reads as a campaign, to Google and to the person scrolling.
The routine that actually works
Every part of this is about removing the decision from the moment.
- The technician asks on site, before packing up. The customer is pleased, the work is visible, and there is a person in front of them. An email sent three days later is asking a stranger.
- The ask is one sentence and it is the same sentence every time. Something like: we live on Google reviews: the office will text you the link, it takes a minute. Scripted, so nobody has to improvise while carrying a toolbag.
- The office sends the link the same day. Not the technician’s personal phone. If it depends on a tech remembering after his fifth call, it will happen on the good days and stop on the busy ones.
- One message, no chasing. A second and third reminder buys a handful of extra reviews and costs you goodwill with everybody else.
- One named person counts them weekly. Not a target, just a count that somebody looks at. Routines that nobody counts stop within a month.
Do not offer anything in exchange. Google’s policies prohibit incentivised reviews, and a review bought with a discount is also the one most likely to be reported or withdrawn later. It is a bad trade even when it works.
Do not ask everyone
Asking every customer regardless of how the job went produces refusals, and refusals are what kill the habit, technicians stop asking because they have been turned down three times in a row.
The judgement is the technician’s and it takes a second: did this go well and does this person seem pleased. On a job that went sideways, the right move is a conversation with the office, not a review link. You will collect fewer, and the ones you collect will arrive without friction, which is what keeps the routine alive.
What to do about a bad one
Reply once. Briefly. In public. With a name and a direct phone number, and no version of events.
The reader you are writing for is not the reviewer; it is the next customer, who is deciding whether a business that gets one thing wrong deals with it like an adult. A short, unbothered, specific reply does that. A paragraph of rebuttal does the opposite, and it is the single most reliable way to turn one bad review into the thing everyone notices.
Then stop looking at it. A bad review is not removed, it is diluted. The answer to one is four good weeks of the routine above, which is another reason the trickle beats the burst: a business collecting three a week absorbs a bad one in a fortnight, and a business that collects nothing sits with it on top of the profile indefinitely.
What reviews will not do
They will not win the job on their own. Every business shown alongside you in that block has been screened and carries the same badge, and most of them have decent ratings: the trust question is levelled rather than settled, and the decision moves back to who answers the phone and what they say.
Reviews get you into the block and keep you there. What happens next is a conversation.
Frequently asked questions
How many reviews do I need?
There is no threshold to clear. What matters is that some of them are recent, which means the useful question is not how many you have but how many arrived this month.
Can I ask customers to remove a bad review?
You can resolve the underlying complaint and some customers will update it themselves. Asking directly for removal rarely lands well, and pressing it turns a review problem into a second review.
Do reviews on other sites help my Local Services Ads?
Google is what ranks the ads. Reviews elsewhere matter to people comparing you and are worth having, but if the routine only has capacity for one destination, point it at Google.
Should the technician send the link himself?
Better that he asks and the office sends. The ask needs to be face to face; the sending needs to be reliable, and reliability is not something to hang on a phone that is in a van door pocket.
Where to start
Count how many reviews you received in the last thirty days: not your total. If the answer is nought or one, your profile is ageing regardless of how impressive the lifetime figure looks, and the fix is a sentence for your technicians and somebody in the office who sends the link.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our Google Business Profile management or book a strategy call.
