The Contractor's Guide to Reviews That Actually Convert

For a homeowner choosing between two contractors, reviews are one of the few things they can check before they call. This guide covers what consumers say they look for in reviews, where they read them, how to ask for them within Google's and the FTC's rules, how to show them on your own site, and what to fix first. Where a claim comes from a survey or a policy page, we link to it. Where we don't have evidence, we say so.

What Consumers Say They Look For

The most recent broad data is BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, which surveyed 1,002 US adult consumers. It asks about local businesses in general, not contractors specifically, and it measures what people say they do, not what they do. Treat the numbers as reference points, not targets. It found:

• 47% of consumers won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews.
• 31% will only use a business rated 4.5 stars or higher, up from 17% the year before, and 68% will only use a business rated four stars or higher.
• 74% look for reviews written in the last three months, and 32% look for reviews from the last two weeks.
• 41% say they always read reviews when browsing for businesses, up from 29%.

Three things follow from those numbers: enough reviews, a strong rating, and recent ones. The recency figures suggest that a steady flow of new reviews serves customers better than a large pile of old ones.

Where Consumers Read Reviews

The same survey asked where people look. Google was the most common answer at 71%. 45% said they use ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations, and 27% use Apple Maps. The average consumer uses six different review sites when choosing a business, and 54% check the business's own website after reading positive reviews, up from 32% in 2019.

Our reading of those figures is that your Google profile comes first, that your details should match wherever customers might check, and that your website is where many of them go next. The Google Business Profile playbook covers keeping those details consistent.

How to Get Your Review Link

Google's help pages give the steps. In your Business Profile at business.google.com, select Read reviews, then Get more reviews, which has a share icon. From there you can copy the link or download a QR code. Google says review QR codes can currently be generated only on a computer browser, not on mobile devices (create a review link or QR code). Google suggests putting the link or code on receipts, in thank-you emails, at the end of chats, or displaying the QR code in-store.

Asking is worth doing. BrightLocal reports that 83% of people asked to leave a review went on to leave one this year, and that 28% say they'll always write one if asked, up from 16% the year before. Those are consumers' own reports across all local businesses, so measure your own ask rate before you plan around it.

What Google and the FTC Allow When You Ask

Asking is allowed. The rules are about how you ask.

• Google says you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code to leave a review (Google Business Profile Help).
• Google's content policy prohibits offering incentives, "such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services", in exchange for a review or for changing or removing a negative one (Google Maps policy).
• The same policy prohibits trying to "selectively solicit positive reviews from customers", and it describes acceptable asking as encouraging genuine experiences "without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review."
• The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, effective October 21, 2024, covers fake reviews, review suppression through threats or intimidation, and undisclosed insider reviews (FTC guidance). This is general information, not legal advice.

The last point in the Google policy has a practical consequence: don't tell customers what rating to give or what to write. Ask for an honest review and leave the content to them. Consumers see fake reviews as a serious matter: BrightLocal found that 97% think businesses should face punishment for them.

Showing Reviews on Your Website

Since 54% of consumers check a business's website after reading positive reviews, showing reviews there makes sense. The FTC's rule sets limits on how. Its provision on review suppression applies to a part of a website dedicated in whole or in part to receiving and displaying consumer reviews. The FTC's guidance says:

• Organizing reviews is not suppressing them under the rule. Organizing them in a way that makes negative reviews difficult to find could still be an unfair or deceptive practice.
• A business can't use false accusations, physical threats, intimidation, or unfounded legal threats to get reviews removed. It can remove reviews that are patently false, such as ones about the wrong business, or that violate stated policies applied equally to positive and negative reviews.
• A business can't misrepresent that the reviews it shows are independent or represent consumer opinions generally when they don't.

The FTC also says that selectively using positive reviews in marketing materials could raise problems under the FTC Act more broadly. Our suggestion, not legal advice: if you show reviews on your site, show a representative selection from your real profile, don't hide the bad ones, and link to your Google profile so visitors can see the rest.

How Reviews Relate to Ranking

Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and prominence, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking (Tips to improve your local ranking on Google). It doesn't say how much weight reviews carry.

Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors report is a survey of 47 local search experts who scored 187 factors. It is practitioner opinion, not something Google publishes, but it is the most detailed public view of how experts weigh review signals for the local pack and Maps:

• High numerical Google ratings ranked 6th.
• Quantity of native Google reviews ranked 9th.
• Recency of reviews ranked 11th.
• Review velocity, meaning a sustained flow of reviews rather than bursts, ranked 14th.
• Keywords in Google reviews ranked 36th.
• Owner responses to most reviews ranked 122nd.

Ratings, quantity, and recency sit in the upper tier for ranking. Owner replies do not. That doesn't make replies pointless, because they serve a different reader.

What Replies Do for the Customer Reading Them

Replies are for the person deciding whether to call you. BrightLocal found that 80% of consumers say they're likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews, and that generic or templated replies put off 50% of consumers. When a business responds only to negative reviews, the share who say they'd use it drops to 47%. On timing, 81% expect a response within a week and 19% expect one on the same day.

Google says your reply is posted publicly under the customer's review and appears as your business, without your personal name (Google Business Profile Help). A peer-reviewed study of hotels found that responding was associated with a 0.12-star increase in ratings and a 12% increase in review volume (Proserpio and Zervas, Marketing Science, 2017). Hotels are not contractors, so read that as a reason to test replying, not a promise.

Reviews and AI Assistants

BrightLocal reports that use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45% among the consumers it surveyed. Whether AI answers quote review text is something we haven't tested. It's one of the questions behind the query test described in the guide to AI search visibility, and we'll publish results only when they're backed by a real sample.

What to Fix First

Work through these in order:

• Make sure your Business Profile is complete and accurate. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search results. The playbook and the checklist cover the setup.
• Ask every customer the same way, soon after the job, with your link or QR code. Timing is our suggestion, not a Google rule.
• Never offer incentives, never filter who you ask, and never tell customers what to write.
• Reply to every review in your own words, including the positive ones.

A Simple Monthly Routine

Once the basics are in place, a routine keeps it going:

• After every job: send the same ask, with the same link, to every customer.
• Every week: reply to new reviews, keeping BrightLocal's one-week expectation in mind.
• Every month: record your total reviews, your average rating, and how many arrived in the last three months, and compare them with the profiles above yours in the map results.
• Every quarter: recheck your profile details against the checklist.