Topic

Google Maps and reviews

For a home-service business, two questions decide a lot of calls: do you show up on Google Maps, and do your reviews make people trust you? This page gathers Mindflow's resources on both: practical guides, plain-English definitions, our own research on home-service companies, and the services where we do the work for you.

Where a guide states a Google rule, it quotes Google's own help pages and links to them.

Guides

Local SEO for contractors: how Google picks map results, what you control, and what to do first.
Google Business Profile handbook: setting up, verifying and running your profile as a service-area business, with Google's current rules.
How to respond to reviews on Google: the reply steps, and what to say to good, mixed, bad and fake reviews.
Can you remove a Google review?: what Google takes down, how to report and appeal, and what to do when a review stays.
Local Services Ads: how Google's pay-per-lead ads work for contractors, what they cost and when they pay off.

Definitions

Local pack: the block of three businesses on Google's results page.
Prominence: how well known Google considers a business to be, one of its three local ranking factors.
Proximity: how distance from the searcher affects map results.
NAP: your business name, address and phone number, and why they should match everywhere.
Local citation: any online listing or mention of your business name, address and phone number.
Service-area business: a business that serves customers at their location, and Google's rules for it.
Review gating: asking only happy customers for reviews, and why Google prohibits it.
Google Verified: the badge Google shows on Local Services Ads for businesses that pass its screening.

Research

Home-service review patterns: how many Google reviews home-service businesses have, how fresh they are, and how that differs for businesses ChatGPT names.
Home-Service Visibility Study: Google Maps, the local pack and ChatGPT compared across 8 trades in 50 US metros.

Services

Local SEO: our local search work for home-service companies.
Google Business Profile management: we keep your profile complete, accurate and active.
Reputation management: our review program, with requests from your own system and replies drafted for you to approve or post automatically.

Want to know where you stand on the map and how your reviews compare with your top three competitors? Get a free AI Visibility Review.