We scored 41 contractors on their Google reviews. The star rating barely mattered.
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We scored 41 remodeling contractors in one county on their public Google review data. The intention was to rank them. The more useful finding was what did not separate them.
Disclosure: these rankings are published by Next Division Consulting, the same company that publishes this article, at contractorstandings.com. Placement cannot be bought, no company in the rankings has paid us anything, and the full scoring method is published so any placement can be checked against the public data.
What we did
We ran 36 searches against the Google Places API, every combination of six trade terms and six cities in Thurston County, Washington, collecting up to 20 results each. That produced 60 companies. We joined them to public Washington State contractor registrations and collected the data on 22 August 2026.
Of those 60:
- 41 had enough public data to be scored
- 3 had fewer than three reviews, our minimum to score anything at all
- 16 could not be confidently matched to a state registration
Each company was scored out of 100: 35 points for reputation quality, 35 for review volume, 25 for review recency, and 5 for profile completeness.
Finding 1: almost everyone has five stars
The average adjusted rating across the field was 4.859 out of 5.
That is the whole story of the star rating. When nearly every company in a market shows close to five stars, the rating stops being a point of difference. A homeowner comparing three contractors sees 5.0, 5.0 and 4.9 and learns nothing from it, so the decision moves elsewhere.
This holds at both ends. In the bottom five of our rankings, four of the five companies had a perfect 5.0 rating. They finished at the bottom anyway.
What this means for you: chasing your rating from 4.9 to 5.0 is close to wasted effort. It is already matched.
Finding 2: stale reviews cost more than a bad rating
This was the sharpest divide in the data.
Every company in our top ten had a review within the previous six months. In the bottom five, the most recent reviews dated from 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Our recency scoring gave full marks for a review inside 30 days and tapered to zero for anything beyond a year. That means a company whose newest review is two years old surrenders 25 of 100 points before anything else is counted, no matter how good its rating is.
One company in the field had a flawless 5.0 rating and finished 39th. Its most recent review was from February 2023.
The spread between first place and last was 44.7 points. Recency alone accounts for more than half of that.
What this means for you: one review this month will do more for you than ten more five-star ratings collected three years ago.
Finding 3: the first reviews matter most
We scored review volume on a logarithmic scale against the highest count in the field, which was 122.
A logarithmic scale means the gap between 0 and 10 reviews is worth far more than the gap between 60 and 70. The first handful of reviews move a company a long way. After that, each additional one adds less.
This produced the result that surprised us most. The company with the most reviews in the entire county, 122 of them, finished second. It was beaten by a company with 42 reviews, because that company had a more recent one.
Further down, a company with 15 reviews finished tenth, ahead of several companies with twice as many, on the strength of recency and a complete profile.
What this means for you: if you have fewer than about ten reviews, getting to twenty is the highest-return thing available to you. If you already have sixty, more volume is not your constraint. Recency is.
Finding 4: a quarter of companies could not be matched to a registration
Sixteen of the 60 companies we collected could not be confidently matched to a Washington State contractor registration.
Most of these are legitimate businesses. The usual cause is a Google Business Profile name that does not match the registered legal entity, often because the company registered under an owner’s name or a holding company and trades under something else.
It still matters. A homeowner checking whether you are licensed, which is exactly what a careful one does before a large job, has to find you in the state database first. If the name on your profile does not lead there, some of them will stop looking.
What this means for you: make the name on your Google profile match the name on your registration, and put your license number on your website.
What we would do with this, as a contractor
In priority order, based on what actually moved companies in the field:
- Get a review this month, and every month. This is the single largest available gain for most companies, and it costs nothing.
- If you have under ten reviews, push to twenty. The early ones carry the most weight.
- Make your profile name match your state registration. A ten-minute fix.
- Finish the profile. Website and hours were only worth five points in our scoring, but they were the easiest five points in the field, and plenty of companies left them on the table.
- Stop worrying about the difference between 4.9 and 5.0. It is not where the separation happens.
The limits of this data
Worth stating plainly:
- One county, one quarter. 41 companies in Thurston County, Washington, as of 22 August 2026.
- Our scoring is not Google’s. We weighted rating, volume, recency and completeness because those are publicly checkable. Google’s ranking also uses proximity to the searcher, category, website signals and much more that we cannot see.
- Google reviews only. A company with a strong presence on another platform would be undervalued here.
What we would not hesitate to generalise is the rating compression. A field where the average sits at 4.86 is not unusual in home services, and wherever that is true, the same conclusion follows: your rating is not what sets you apart, and your most recent review date probably is.
Check your own market
This takes about ten minutes and gives you the version of this that matters:
- Search your main service plus your city, in an incognito window.
- Look at the three companies in the map results.
- Write down each one’s review count and the date of its newest review.
- Compare yours.
That tells you whether your gap is volume, recency, or neither.
The full rankings and the complete scoring method are published at contractorstandings.com.
Where to go next
If you want this done for your market rather than ours, book a free 15-minute call. We will look at who comes up ahead of you where you work and where the gap actually is.
For the practical side of fixing a profile, see how to set up a Google Business Profile as a contractor.
Frequently asked questions
How many Google reviews does a contractor need?
There is no universal number, because it depends on your local field. In the 41-company field we scored, the most reviewed company had 122 and the median was far lower. Because volume was scored on a logarithmic scale, the first ten reviews moved a company further than the next fifty did. The practical answer is to count the review totals of the three companies in your local map results and treat that as the target.
Do old Google reviews still count?
They count for less, and in our scoring they eventually counted for nothing. Reviews inside 30 days earned full recency points, and anything older than a year earned zero. Several companies in the field held perfect 5.0 ratings and still finished near the bottom because their most recent review was from 2022 or 2023.
Is a 5-star rating enough to stand out as a contractor?
No, because almost everyone has one. The average adjusted rating across the 41 companies we scored was 4.859 out of 5. When nearly every company in a market shows five stars, the rating stops being a point of difference and the decision moves to how many reviews there are and how recent they look.
What is more important, review quantity or review quality?
In a field where nearly every company sits near five stars, quantity and recency do almost all of the separating. That does not mean quality is irrelevant, it means it has already been matched. The company with a 4.1 rating in our field finished last, so a genuinely poor rating still hurts, but going from 4.9 to 5.0 changes very little.
How often should a contractor get new reviews?
Often enough that your most recent one is always within the last month or two. In our scoring, a review inside 30 days earned full marks and the value tapered from there. For most contractors that means asking every customer at the end of every job, which produces a steady trickle rather than occasional bursts.
Why do contractors with fewer reviews sometimes rank higher?
Because recency and consistency are worth more than raw totals past a certain point. In our field, the company with the most reviews in the entire county, 122 of them, finished second to a company with 42, because the smaller company had a more recent review. Volume compounds slowly; staleness costs you immediately.
Where does this data come from?
Public Google Business Profile reviews and ratings, joined to public Washington State contractor registrations, collected on 22 August 2026. The companies were found by running 36 searches against the Google Places API, every combination of six trade terms and six cities in Thurston County, Washington. The full method and the complete rankings are published at contractorstandings.com.
Does this apply outside Thurston County?
The specific scores do not, but the pattern almost certainly does. Rating compression, where nearly every local company shows close to five stars, is common in home services anywhere. The sensible move is to check your own market: search your main service plus your city and compare the review counts and recent dates of the three companies in the map results.