Why Your Contracting Business Isn't Showing Up on Google

If a homeowner searches your service and town and cannot find you, it is almost never a mystery. It is usually one of eight things, and most are fixable in days rather than months.

Have you actually claimed your Google Business Profile?

This is the first thing to check, and the most common failure. An unclaimed or unverified profile barely competes. Claim it, verify it, and finish it — categories, service area, hours, services, photos.

Is your service area set correctly?

Contractors either leave it blank or claim the entire state. Both hurt. List the towns you genuinely serve. If you work Murfreesboro, Smyrna, La Vergne and Lebanon, say those four — search engines and homeowners both reward specificity. See growing into new service areas.

Do your details match everywhere?

Business name, address and phone need to be identical on your website, your profile and every listing. Three different phone numbers across the web is a quiet, constant drag on visibility. Pick the canonical version and fix the rest.

Do you have recent reviews?

Review count and recency are among the strongest local ranking signals there are. A business with nothing from the last year looks dormant. How to get more reviews covers the ask.

Does your website say where you work and what you do?

Many contractor sites never name a town or a service in plain text. If your homepage says "quality workmanship since 1998" and nothing else, there is nothing to match a search for "roofer Gallatin". One page per main service, one per main town, written in the words homeowners use.

Is your site fast on a phone?

Nearly all these searches happen on phones, often on mobile data. A site that takes six seconds loses most visitors before it renders — and slow pages rank worse too. Big uncompressed photos are usually the culprit.

Are you competing with pages you cannot beat yet?

For competitive phrases, the top results are usually directories and long-established companies. A new site will not outrank them soon, whatever an agency promises. That is why being on those directory pages, in the right service and the right towns, gets you in front of the homeowner while your own site matures. See how to show up on Google.

Did somebody keyword-stuff your business name?

"ABC Roofing Nashville Best Roofer" risks suspension and looks like what it is. Use your real business name.

What should you fix, in what order?

1. 1Claim and verify the profile.
2. 2Set the real service area.
3. 3Make name, address and phone consistent everywhere.
4. 4Get reviews flowing again.
5. 5Get listed by service and town.
6. 6Add service and town pages to your site, in plain words.
7. 7Compress your images.

How long until it changes?

Profile fixes can move within days to a few weeks. Reviews build over months. Your own site ranking for a competitive town-and-trade phrase is a year-plus project. Sequence accordingly — do not wait on the slow thing before doing the fast ones.

Where do you go next?

7 signs your contractor website is costing you customers, Google Business Profile vs. website, and how to get more customers.