The 2026 Google Strategy for Home Service Companies

The GBP is like the storefront. It's almost like the new website.

It's all about being active on your profile. You don't want a week where you're getting 30, 40 reviews and then your GBP is dead for 2 to 3 weeks.

Owner responses, make 'em professional.

With responses, even if you get a 1-star review, you still do wanna respond to it.

You're wrong.

Yeah. Do not argue.

Definitely blame the customer.

Definitely not.

What is a good amount of reviews for me to go launch my next GBP?

I would say...

Welcome back to Owned and Operated, a top 200 business and entrepreneurship podcast. I'm your host, John Wilson, and on this show we dive into the home service industry and how to grow your home service company inside it. Today I'm joined by Julie from Big Reputation, which is a service that we use to measure and drive more Google reviews and make our Google Business Profiles even better. This is a frequently requested topic inside our community and our Facebook groups, so I'm sure you're in for a great conversation. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, this is gonna be fun.

This will be fun.

My bud Jules, you ready to dive deep into Google reviews and how to make local search show up better?

I'm not, but we will fly by the seat of our pants.

Yeah, yeah, I think we're gonna do great here. So I think first off, let's start off with like, Google Reviews, what's the latest haps? You know, you brought up, we're at our Breaking 5 workshop. You talked yesterday a little bit about this like algorithm thing that everybody hates where like the technician name reviews are starting to get deleted. Like, is that real? Like, what do we think?

Yeah, so I would say about a month ago we started seeing the updates. I think Google's algorithm is still indexing all of the changes. However, we have seen it start to affect home service contractors. It started in the restaurant industry, What I have been seeing, and I have talked to a few potential clients and—

So we've got like Google's notes saying like, this is real.

Google hasn't officially said like, hey, we're officially doing this, but we noticed the change across the restaurant industry. And then in terms of like technicians, I did talk to a few people and they're like, wow, our review count has gone down, but the 1-star reviews have remained the same. Why would it be getting removed? And after just having conversations with some of our partners, That's what we've noticed, that the reason, the common denominator in why reviews are getting hidden is the technician name.

Yeah, that's crazy. I feel like most of our reviews have technicians.

Yeah, unfortunately I don't agree with it, but I don't work at Google.

Yeah, that's all right.

Yeah.

All right, cool. So why today, like 2026, why are reviews like more and more important? I, I, we've noticed it in our business.

So reviews are important just because it signals trust. So for example, when a customer goes to look up your business, What your review says about your company, whether you have a bunch of 1-stars— Wilson, I know, has a ton of 5-star reviews. It just signals trust and to the customer. So why would they choose you over a different company?

Yeah, and it makes you show up better on Map Pack.

Yes. Yeah, so with Map Pack, I know that again the algorithm is changing, but it's all about relevancy now. So in terms of reviews, it's all about consistency and how relevant you are. So when the customer is looking up water heater, who is the best contractor that will best fit their search? So based off of Google, it goes off of trust and like who has the highest trust signals.

One of the topics that came up, I think people get really interested in this because people are talking about on the internet, but like driving new GBP profiles, like what do you— I don't know, what do you think? Like, is there a risk there? Because I think that's what most people are concerned about. Like, hey, if I go open a new profile, Get some more leads. Like, is that bad? Is that good? Am I allowed?

Overall, it's good. Um, you are allowed right now. Google is cracking down. So as long as it matches the business name, yeah, um, it has to be the same all across. So you can't, like, for example, Wilson Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, it has to be the same across all of your GBPs.

You can't just open a new one and it just be Wilson Sewer or something.

Correct.

I think that's called what, keyword stuffing?

It's, it's, you should put keywords. There's contradicting reports that say that you that you shouldn't stuff your keywords. However, like for example, if you put Wilson Services, it doesn't really signal that much trust. But whereas you put Wilson Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, and Electric, when you add those verticals in, you should do a DBA to change your name.

Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like people are doing, uh, like, that is interesting because I feel like we tripped and fell into that one where it's Wilson Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, and Electric. Yeah, so that was That was a happy accident.

Yeah.

Most marketing agencies will show you clicks, impressions, and maybe even traffic, but none of that really matters if the phone's not ringing. And that's why we partner with Service Scalers. They are built specifically for home service companies and they focus on one thing, which is driving real high-quality calls and book jobs. This is a no-brainer. They're offering a 60-day money-back guarantee on LSA management. Google Business Profile optimization, and website builds. If you don't get more visibility, more calls, and better leads, then you don't pay. If you want more booked jobs without the marketing headache, click the link below and book a free strategy call with Service Scalers. That's interesting. All right, so like what else, what else are you seeing on reviews that matters? Like what velocity or number? Like does number matter as much as we think it does?

It does matter. However, The name of the game is going to be your consistency and your velocity. So quantity does matter, but out of those, for example, a company that has 500 reviews may outrank a company that has like 10,000 reviews just because they are very consistent. In the name of Google, it's all about being active on your profile.

Yeah.

So how often are you getting reviews? Is that consistent? So you don't want a week where you're getting 30, 40 reviews and then Your GBP is dead for 2 to 3 weeks.

Yeah. I think the thing that makes sense, like Google My Business profiles or Google Business, it's GBPs now, I guess.

Yes.

I think it's kind of funny because it like just generally makes sense except for the technician name thing.

Yeah.

I think it just like makes sense. Whereas like the review frequency thing, I like, there's contractors with like 20,000 reviews. I think we have 5 or 6 or something on our main page.

Mm-hmm.

But it makes sense why a smaller contractor could beat them because if it was 20,000 reviews, but it was like 5 years ago, and it's just been like nothing in the past year, like that totally logical that it would rank less than someone that got 500 in the last year and a half.

Right, so when you think of it in like a restaurant term, you don't wanna, if you're looking for, let's say, Mediterranean restaurant, you don't wanna know which restaurant—

I know, sounds great actually.

Sounds amazing. You don't wanna know which restaurant is relevant 8 years ago, you wanna know— What's the best now? Like, where can I have dinner and expect quality service?

Yeah, yeah.

Same thing for the home service industry.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, so count a little bit. Recency is gonna matter a lot, which I think that makes sense, 'cause I think I remember a couple years ago, we were like really beating the hell outta GBPs, and we would look, and there was like a plumber with like 50 reviews or something, and they were ranking higher on the map pack than we were with like, 4,000, right? And it's just like, what the fuck's going on? But like, they probably got 50 reviews like last week, or, you know, correct, whatever. All their, all their friends, uh, left a review. How much do you think responses actually matter? This one comes up a lot.

Responses are important. So with responses, um, you do want to respond within the first 24 hours. Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's 5, 10, 5 to 10 minutes, or 5 and 30. Okay, as long as it's within that 24-hour window. You definitely want to respond. Definitely don't have any type of copy and paste. It should be unique to the customer.

Okay, like, hey Betty Sue, thanks for whatever. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

With responses too, you always want to mention the service that was provided, the location that it was performed in, any type of context. That will all feed into Google's algorithm. So in your response, it's as important— not— it definitely is important. But getting that in the initial review as well and the content is extremely important.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So GBP, number of reviews matters, but velocity and frequency are currently more important, which I think that makes sense. I think that's like a fun thing to highlight because I think people get caught up on, hey, the big company down the street has 20,000 Google reviews. How am I supposed to compete with them? And like, this is like, hey, there is a way to compete with Yes. It's just like more frequency.

Correct.

And, uh, and like, is it increasing or is it decreasing?

Yep.

Okay, that makes total sense. Um, owner responses, make them professional, make them bespoke.

Correct. Okay. Yeah, with owner responses, even if you get a 1-star review, you still do want to respond to it, but obviously—

You're wrong!

Yeah, definitely do not argue.

Definitely flame the customer publicly.

Definitely not.

Okay, all right, I'm gonna flame the customer publicly. Got it. Um, you had shit on your floor, you know, really like dive deep. Um, any other activity on Google profiles that matters? Photos, posts?

Yes, photos and, and updates and posts are very important. So in terms of just the overall profile, if you're zooming out, you do want to update it regularly. Yeah, Big Reputation, we automate one post, one photo per day. If you, if you haven't done it, start with a baseline. So a good place to aim is 3 to 5 per week. And just so that everyone's aware, because I got this question, GBP is Google Business Profile, not Great British Pound.

That's funny. Oh, that is funny. Yeah, Google Business Profile. I don't, I don't know when they switched it. It was like last year you stopped— they stopped saying GMB. And yeah, personally, I still like GMB.

Okay.

Um, but I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I feel— my feeling, not a fact, my feeling in 2026 is that the GBP is like the storefront. It's almost like the new website because I feel like with AI, your website is becoming less relevant. Uh, like SEO lets you show up inside AI search. But like customers aren't probably going to like beep boop their way through your website to like figure out if you do HVAC services. But the service page on Google My Business Profile probably will, or their AI that they're like asking questions to will. Like what's your take on that?

So Google My Business, or I'm sorry, GBP, Google Business Profile is very important. However, it What you're saying is a little contradictory, mildly, just because your website is on your GBP and the SEO does— that SEO does help the SEO of your GBP as well. So although—

So they build on each other?

Yes. So although the signals are not similar— or I'm sorry, although they're not identical, they are similar.

Okay, like how?

Meaning like you could rank 1 in GBP on your map pack and you could be 3rd on Google, or you could be on the 2nd page of Google and still rank high, vice versa.

Got it. Okay, so like more signals to the gods of Google that like we're a real business.

Yes.

Okay. All right, cool. Aside from like the technician name thing, anything you're seeing like popping up as upcoming changes?

Yeah, something that I saw that was interesting, um, after running a few heat maps for clients. Yeah, starting about 2 and a half months ago, we've been seeing that SABs, which are service area-based GBPs, start to close the gap between stores. So, okay, depending on your market, um, your— the heat map tool, if you have a form of that, or if you're a big reputation client, we have that built in. When you're running a map pack scan and let's say you're looking to open up a new GBP, yeah, um, when you look at the map pack, we've been seeing SABs break top 10, top 5, and top 3 recently. So they are really closing the gap, and depending on what market you're in It's hard to say whether a storefront is more beneficial than a service area base. So for a super metro area, a storefront location is probably going to weigh a lot heavier just because a lot of the companies that rank are going to be the ones that have the storefront locations versus a more rural area, like a service area base GBP, you could probably get away with.

Okay, I don't understand how to I don't like— I understand the difference in what you're saying because like one has an address and like sometimes when I've looked up GBPs, it's like, like a, like an— yeah, it's like a fence on, uh, Google. So I understand what you're saying. I don't understand how to set up a service area business. Like, is it the same process where you go in and like you need a storefront, you have to do the verification?

Um, so it might have changed since I've worked in an office, but For, from what I know, you still have to have an address. It could be residential, but it's hidden, so it doesn't have—

So it's not a public-facing address.

Correct.

Okay.

Correct.

Okay. So that could be good for like, yeah, if somebody runs out of their house.

Right.

Yeah. I know, I know some people put GBPs like in their, on their tech homes. So like maybe that's the example of when that's useful.

Yes.

Is like we're running out of some dude's home. We don't want a customer to show up to like little Jimmy's house.

Correct. Okay. Yep.

All right. That makes sense. And previously it was not successful or less successful.

Yeah. We— you would not see prior, like 3 months ago, you would not see an SAB break top 20 even.

That's interesting. Does it matter? Like you meant— you mentioned like, like Metro. Does it matter? Like if it is it You said you're watching it like get better. Is it getting better in metros and rural or only rural or like just getting better period?

It's getting better period. Like I've run a few, for example, South Florida.

Okay.

It's a very competitive market for let's say HVAC.

Yeah.

I've seen SABs break top 10 but not top 5. In more rural areas, I've seen them in the top 3. So it just depends. That's where that heat map SEO audit tool comes in handy just because you get visibility of if you're deciding to launch in a new market, who your competitors are, what they're doing, and if a storefront location is even more beneficial than having a service area based.

Yeah, that's interesting. Do you like— what's your take on like heat mapping?

I—

the rural thing is kind of interesting. We've talked about this a bunch on the show, and some people are starting to sort of gravitate to more rural. Like, obviously there's a lot of opportunity inside a big city. Like, there's a lot of opportunity inside Dallas or Cleveland or Chicago or pick a whatever.

Yeah.

But there's also a lot of competition. And I, we've had people on the show who are like smaller contractors and they're rural and they have like 50 reviews or 100 reviews or whatever. And they're like the top freaking dog wherever they are.

Yeah.

Like any take on rural versus metro?

Um, if it's easier to break out obviously in a more rural market.

Yeah. And once like 10 reviews, you could be at the top of the chart.

Right. And then once, so the benefit to opening in a rural market versus like launching a flagship in a metro is that you build that brand authority. So As you continue to, let's say that your second location is in a metro area, there will be more branded searches. Google has already have— you've already established that trust signal with Google.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We, um, what we're thinking about doing is like launching offices in rural areas because like the main— I, we have, um, I mean, all in probably like 20 profiles now. I don't actually know, but like Uh, there's, there's areas that are like an hour away that the biggest competitor has like 200 reviews, and it's like, dude, we could take that over in like a week.

Yeah. And like, with— obviously you're in Big Rep, so you know about the review routing feature. So that's something that will help build that profile. And in a more—

Well, that, that came up yesterday at the workshop, so like, let's just hit that for a second. So if you have multiple GBPs, Uh, I think the question was coming up like, how do I launch a new one? So I'll give my context for the listener. You— Google has terms of service and you follow them. That's like most of the context.

Okay.

So like you have to launch an office, somebody has to go there, you have to have a sign on the door, you have to have a phone number, you have to have a lease, you have to have maybe a utility bill.

Yeah.

And then launch it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then when you launch it, you can like funnel All of the other GBP reviews to that new one. I talk to a ton of home service owners, and if you're anything like the one to five million dollar shops that I know, you're probably getting hammered with AI pitches right now. Most of them sound great until they hit the real world and just completely fall apart. The one that we keep coming back to is Voca. What stands out is they actually understand how contractor businesses operate. This isn't just another AI answering service. A Voca handles inbound calls. Outbound follow-ups, texts, web leads, even dispatching, all in one system built specifically for service companies. If you're on ServiceTitan, then this is a big deal. Their integration is deep, so you're not duct taping together 5 different tools and hoping that nothing breaks during your busy season. I also respect that they're realistic about AI. When a call needs a human, they've got a 24/7 live transfer built in, so nothing slips through the cracks. And your customers don't get stuck in a bad experience or like an AI loop. Owners using Avoca are seeing hold times basically disappear and booking rates jump, some by 30% or more. If you want an AI partner that actually helps you book more jobs without creating more chaos, this is worth checking out. Book a demo at the link below.

Yeah. So what's exclusive to us and I believe Service Titans Marketing Pro has this as well, but it's not super automated. It's a little bit more of a manual process. Yeah, but let's say you launch a new G GBP, um, as you well know, on your— on your, for example, Wilson.

Yeah.

You guys have 4 profiles with us, and if you decided to launch a 5th, we could turn off the routing to all of your locations and route it all to that 5th one. That way you build the authority pretty quickly. Because, for example, if you're— if you're trying to break out in a rural area, it'll be very easy because you guys get high review volume and flow. And whereas, like, in a metro area, let's say That's okay. If you did want to open up in, let's say, a big city like Chicago where there's a lot of competitors, yeah, you might need more—

It takes some work.

Right. You might need more review volume to even start to rank. So again, it's helpful either both ways.

Yeah. What do you think? I'm just like going through the questions that people had yesterday because I'm sure if the people at the workshop had them, like the public has them, what is a good amount of reviews for me to go launch my next GBP? Like, when should I be like, it's time?

I would say in the 500 and above, truthfully. Um, again, it depends on your area. So if you're in a small town, very rural, maybe it would start at like 100.

Yeah.

But if you're in a very dense city like Dallas or Chicago or Miami, I would say like 500 to 1,000, anywhere between there before you start to see traction. I would definitely focus on building that and making sure you rank there first before you start to open up a new location because then you start to dilute the signal a little bit.

Yeah, totally. Because I think back to your point on, um, it was like frequency and velocity. Like the more GBPs you have, the more you have to keep up with frequency and velocity on multiple GBPs.

Correct.

Which I think is kind of hard. Like you have to keep it equal spreading and then maybe focus as you launch a new GP, but then equal spread again. So if you get 10 reviews a week and you have 5 GBPs, it's only 2 each, which is not a lot of frequency or velocity.

Yeah, correct. So then at that point, that's where it'll start counting against you because then you'll start to drop in ranking.

Yeah, you diluted too much.

Correct.

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that makes sense. I think, yeah, that comes up a lot. I think people see it on X or hear like, go launch a billion GBP profiles. And yeah, the logistics are kind of a lot. You have to pay for rent. We do it. So I'm not going to tell people not to do it, but You have to follow Google terms of service. You need a lease. Someone needs to visit that office. The lease is probably expensive. Like, yeah, I know some people paying like $3,000 a month for that lease. And then it also dilutes your active energy for reviews.

Yeah.

So correct. Yeah. Make sure you're ready. 500 feels like a good number to me. I think it like— so sort of in tune with that, it sounds like 100 is when profiles start to rank.

Correct.

Okay. Like how often are they ranking under 100 or only if you're rural or?

It's, it's, it's hard. It just depends on the area.

So like, for example, like LA, you're probably not going to rank with 90 or something.

Yeah, correct. Yes. You're going to, you're probably going to need 500 or above. That's where you'll be in that bracket. Same thing. Cleveland is a little bit smaller market, but it's still very metro. There's a lot of competitors here. South Florida, very competitive market. But let's say that you go to some small city in Kentucky, not hating on them or anything, but if you go to a small city there, it— you might be able to rank with 10, 15, 20. So it just depends on the, the market. So definitely when you're looking to launch a new GBP, make sure you're strategic. Is what's the population there? How many competitors are there? Is an SAB more beneficial than having a physical location? What do my competitors' reviews look like?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They, uh, like, what are you seeing as the difference between like a 5,000-review business, a 500-review business, a 20,000-review business? Like, what's the difference?

It's, it's hard to say because like, for example, the 20,000-review business, they might not be keeping up with their reviews or they might not be updating their profile. They, they might not be staying relevant. So somebody with a 20,000 review count, although they have a lot and it seems hard to compete, let's just say that they really fall off the wagon in terms of getting reviews. A company with 500, 600 reviews might easily outrank them.

Yeah.

If they're— if they have good trust, Google sees that. Like, for example, any type of engagement on your Google Business Profile, whether it's call, directions, they click on your website, they scroll through your photos, they scroll through your updates, service, products, whatever. Um, all of that feeds into Google's algorithm. It says like, hey, a lot of clients like this company, um, so then we'll start to refer them more. So for example, a 20— a company with 20,000 reviews, they might be ranked top 5, they could rank top 5, or they could not even show up in the top 10 just because a company that has 600 reviews is getting 5, 10 reviews a day, 20 a week, whatever the case is. And they're staying up to— they're, they're keeping their profile active is the best way to explain it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think what happened, you know, early on, I remember putting a big focus on reviews and this was like 2016 or something.

Yeah.

And it was just like, what's the automation? How do we post? I like the automated posting of photos thing that somebody said yesterday. They're like, 3 to 5 a week. I do one every 6 months. And I was like, That's funny. I think that was Ray.

Yeah.

And yeah, responding to reviews, honestly, that takes a lot of energy. So I don't know, like, so can you walk through BigRep? Like, what's— what does Big Reputation do?

Yeah. So we're an AI-based platform. What we do is a lot of— we automate a lot of what your technicians are already doing on the field.

Yeah.

So we take that lift off of your plate. We're not review management by any means because we don't update your services. We don't dispute reviews, although Like I tell all my clients, feel free to lean on me as a resource. I will point you in the right direction. But in terms of big reputation, we manage your reviews, we'll respond to them. We have a follow-up drip campaign. We use all of the photos from your CRM and we will post it as to your photos and updates just because Google's Gemini is smart enough to determine a stock photo from a—

yes, a real photo.

So once you upload all of that, all the signals compound together to create an active profile.

Okay, cool. So photos, review requests, responding, updates.

We also have a heat map function built in. We have a location health scanner. So that feature is just to help you spot very quick gaps of what updates can be made.

Yeah.

To your GBP.

Sweet. All right. What, what, what's coming next? Like, what are you guys working on?

So with the tech mention review thing, we're working on— unfortunately, this is, this is going to go back to manual. However, we still want our contractors to be able to easily spiff out their technicians. So they're going to be able to assign the reviews manually to their technician now that they're not named. Where ideally the goal is this year, big focus this year is to start to integrate with other review platforms. So although Google still owns about 86 to 90% of the market share, Yeah. When you start to diversify your platform, review platforms like Yelp, which is controversial, Facebook and Angie, that's when you'll start to show up in AI search. So as the world continues to slowly pivot over to AI, we want to stay ahead of the curve.

Yeah. I mean, I think that makes sense. I think AI has brought like all of everything in, like Indeed reviews start to show up now. That'd be kind of interesting if you could. Yeah, that'd be funny. But yeah, Indeed reviews, like employment reviews plus customer reviews are all Showing up as I look for companies, which I think is kind of interesting. Yeah, we had one where it was like Brandon Niro is known to be patient leader or something like that. We also had one where like Brandon Niro was an asshole, you know. So we've had it show up on both sides, but it was kind of funny. It was like, okay, interesting. It's like well more than just Google or customers. Yeah, but yeah, it was kind of funny.

And the biggest takeaway about BigRep too that I forgot to mention is that what we do is we try to mimic human behavior. So like when we do any type of uploads, it's not just 8 AM every single day. We stagger all the post times and the response times so that it's as human sounding as possible. That way you don't trigger any type of—

And it's pulling the photos from like your CRM?

Your CRM. Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. We, we used a service for this, um, before we started using you guys, and I don't— well, I remember the name now, but I don't want to bash them on the internet. And, um, Yeah, it wasn't great. Yeah, yeah, Automate's great. Cool. All right, any, any like closing thoughts on Big Reputation or like Google reviews in general, how to drive this part of your business? Your Google Business Profiles are either printing money or they're losing it, and that's where Big Reputation comes in. Big Reputation turns your GBP into a true lead machine without adding more work to your plate. It runs in the background with automated posting, review generation, and fast responses so that your reputation compounds over time. And this is huge if you're multi-location. They make it dead simple to manage and scale your reputation across every branch so every location shows up and wins in the map pack. I'm actually using Big Reputation right now as I grow and scale my newest acquisitions. Plus, you get real insight into what's actually happening. You get to spot gaps with location health monitoring. track reviews and sentiment, and see which zip codes you're winning and which ones you're losing. Better insights, stronger trust, more calls from an asset you already own. Go check it out at bigreputation.ai/oao.

Um, with Google Reviews, when you are prompting the customer, my biggest key takeaway of like— well, I guess what your biggest takeaway should be is, yeah, when prompting the request from a customer What you're looking for is photos are going to weigh the heaviest.

However, it is like a photo review.

Correct.

Okay.

It is difficult. It's— we found that it's difficult to prompt the customer to leave a picture on the review.

We have to talk to the team and train a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes we are trying to figure a workaround where possibly we can send the client the picture and they can just upload the one that you already took on site. That is some in the roadmap somewhere. And then When you're again with reviews, aside from photos, it's going to be the service location and any type of context. So what that looks like is—

Like you did a water heater in Akron and it was awesome.

Yeah, or any other type of context, whether it's in your basement, your backyard. So that way you start feeding into Google's algorithm. In terms of the location, you could get as granular as neighborhoods as you'd like, but just make sure that each response is— yeah, it could get as super targeted as you'd like, but make sure each response is cater to that custom. Yep.

Thanks for coming on. We appreciate you coming on. If people want to hear more about Big Reputation, how can they get a hold of you?

So my email is julie@bigreputation.ai, and our website is www.bigreputation.ai. And sometimes I'm on the Owned and Operated webinar, so you can always catch me there.

Yeah, awesome. All right, thanks, Julie.

Thank you.