Reviews are the single biggest input to where you rank in the map results. Volume matters, recency matters, the platform matters, and the timing of the ask matters most. We build the post-job SMS sequences that catch customers at the exact moment they're happiest — and pass Google's authenticity filters.
Get a free audit →Google's local pack — the three map results that show above organic — is ranked by a combination of relevance, distance, and prominence. Prominence is mostly your review profile: how many you have, how recent they are, how often you respond, and what platforms they live on. Of those, Google reviews specifically carry the most weight because they're inside Google's own ecosystem.
The trades businesses dominating the local pack in your city aren't there by accident. They have hundreds or thousands of recent Google reviews, replied to by name, generated by a deliberate process — usually an SMS to the customer 30 minutes after the job is invoiced.
We don't buy reviews, fake reviews, incentivize reviews with discounts, or use offshore review services. Google detects all of these and the penalties — at minimum review removal, at maximum suspension of your Google Business Profile — wipe out years of legitimate work. Authentic volume from real customers is the only durable strategy.
Most trades businesses we work with go from 5–10 reviews per month to 25–60 per month within the first 90 days. Local pack visibility improvements are visible in Google Business Profile insights within 60 to 90 days. The compounding effect over a year — going from 80 reviews to 400 — is typically what closes the gap with the established competitors who've been doing this for a decade.
Yes — asking is allowed and encouraged. What's not allowed is incentivizing reviews (offering discounts in exchange) or filtering by sentiment before asking (only sending the link to customers you know are happy). Our playbook stays inside Google's guidelines.
You will. Every business does. The playbook includes a response template for 1- and 2-star reviews that acknowledges the issue, offers a path to resolution, and demonstrates to future readers that you take feedback seriously. A handful of bad reviews handled well actually increases overall trust.
Most trades CRMs have a basic review-request feature. The reasons it usually underperforms a managed setup: the timing is off (often sent days later when the customer has moved on), the link points to a multi-platform page that splits volume away from Google, and there's no intercept for unhappy customers. The mechanical part is easy. The configuration is the work.
Two weeks for most CRMs. Week one: integration setup, message templates, and intercept routing. Week two: testing and launch. Reviews start landing within days of go-live.
The audit benchmarks your review count, recency, and response rate against your top 3 competitors — and shows you the gap.
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