How many Google reviews does a roofer need?
There's no threshold. What counts is being credible against the roofers currently ranking in your area, so look at what they have. Recency matters more than total: forty reviews from three years ago reads as a business that has stopped, whatever the number says.
Work out your own target in ten minutes
- Search your main roofing term from the middle of your patch, not from your yard.
- Write down the review count and average rating of the three roofers in the map pack.
- Note the date of their most recent review. This is the number most people skip and it's the one that tells you most.
- Your target is to be credible against that group, not to hit a round number.
- Check again in three months. If their recent count is growing faster than yours, you're falling behind regardless of totals.
Why roofing reviews behave differently
Two things make this trade unusual. Roofing customers are relieved rather than merely satisfied, because something was leaking and now it isn't, and relief produces better written reviews than satisfaction does. Ask on the day and you get detail.
The second is that roofing work is invisible once finished. The customer can't inspect it and knows they can't, which makes other people's accounts do more work here than in trades where the result is sitting in the kitchen to be admired.
Getting them without breaking the rules
- Ask when the job is done and the customer can see the water has stopped, not days later by email
- Keep the review link as a QR code on the invoice and on the van
- Ask them to mention the job and the town, because that reads as real and it is
- Reply to every review, including the good ones. It's visible activity and takes a minute
- Never offer anything in exchange. Incentivised reviews breach platform rules, can be removed in bulk, and in the UK also risk falling foul of consumer protection rules
What most roofers get wrong
The push. Emailing every past customer at once produces a visible spike, and a spike after long silence is the pattern most likely to attract scrutiny. Six months on you're dormant again. Asking every completed job, steadily, produces a profile that looks like a working business because it is one.
The other mistake is chasing removal of a fair negative review instead of replying to it. A calm, specific, non-defensive reply is read by every future customer weighing up three quotes, and it often does more for trust than the five-star ones above it. A profile with nothing but perfect scores and no replies reads as unattended.
Related questions
Is a 4.7 average worse than a 5.0?
Not necessarily. A perfect score across a small number of reviews can look less believable than a strong average across many, particularly for expensive work people are nervous about.
What about reviews on directories?
Useful for trust, but they sit on a profile you rent. Google reviews attach to the profile competing in the map pack.
How do I handle a review about weather delays?
Reply plainly and without defensiveness. Everyone reading understands that roofing stops in high wind, and a measured reply demonstrates how you handle problems.
Want to know where you stand locally?
We'll check your review position against the roofers ranking in your area, including how recent theirs are, and tell you what closing the gap would take.