What five months of GBP work actually looks like, three contractors at a time
Thomas Hassett
What's in this doc
I pulled the last month of data from our active client dashboards and picked three to walk through. Different verticals, different stages, real numbers. Names changed for privacy, results not. If you've read other stuff from me and want proof the rhythm actually moves the needle, this is that proof.
Heads up: a few things changed in 2026
Review coaching got banned in April 2026
You can't script keyword reviews, can't ask for specific staff by name, can't run per-tech quotas. Ask everyone, neutral language, that's it.
The Q&A feature on your profile is gone
Google killed the API in November 2025 and phased out the public feature in December. The answers now live in your business description, your services list, and your posts.
AI review moderation got aggressive
Deletions are up six times over 2024 levels. If your review approach looks engineered, Google catches it now.
The honest version of how long this takes
2026 local SEO guides put the typical window at 3 to 6 months for visible movement, longer in competitive verticals. The three clients I'm walking through are at different points in that window. One started in December 2025. One started in November 2025. One started in March 2026. You can see the shape across all three.
March 2026, across some of our active clients
Lead Actions
Calls, direction requests, and website clicks combined
Estimated Lead Value
At market search rates, not closed revenue
Lead actions means someone tapped the call button, asked for directions, or clicked through to the website. Estimated lead value is the market size for those actions, calculated from search volume and average job value. It's not what closed. It's what the doors looked like opening.
Meet Larry. General contractor, Pacific Northwest.
For the sake of privacy I'm going to call him Larry. He came to us in early December. Mid-size market, eight competitors who all had more reviews than him, ranking around position 10 for "general contractor" in his city.
Five months later he's holding the top 3 in three-quarters of his service area. Here's what that looked like.
Same business. Five months apart.
December 5
Average Ranking
Top 3 Share
May 1
Average Ranking
Top 3 Share
The heatmap is the visual version of how often you show up in the top 3 across the map grid we track. Larry went from showing up in the top 3 about one in four times to about three in four.
What changed, month by month
Month 1
Foundation. Primary category, business description, services list, photos audit.
Months 2–3
Posts and photos. Built a weekly cadence. Geotagged real job site photos, not stock.
Months 3–4
Review velocity. Got him asking everyone, responding inside 24 hours.
Months 4–5
Citations cleanup. Fixed his name, address, phone across 40-odd directories that still matter.
The boring fixes carry the first 60 days. The compounding starts month three.
What Larry got in April from their GBP
Lead Actions
Phone Calls
Direction Requests
Website Clicks
$1.6M
Estimated lead value at market rates
Estimated lead value is calculated from his market's search volume and the average job value for general contracting work in his region. It's not closed revenue. It's the size of the door that opened that month.
Inside our weekly client process
Here's a walkthrough of what a week actually looks like inside our dashboard. The cadence, the dashboard view, what we touch each week. Worth seven minutes if you want to see the work behind the numbers.
Meet Jamie. Carpet cleaning, LA area.
Jamie's been with us since November 2025. Different vertical, different competitive landscape. His top competitor has 34 reviews, which sounds beatable until you realize they've been collecting them for nine years.
That's the part most owners don't see. What looks like a review count is really nine years of someone doing the work week after week.
Three more months of the same rhythm and he gets there...
Baseline Avg Ranking
Latest Avg Ranking
Lead Actions Last Month
Lifetime Calls
Website Clicks
Two of Jamie's keywords showed over 80% improvement scores in our tracking. "Area rug cleaning" and "sofa cleaning" both moved meaningfully. He's not in the top 3 yet. He's two positions away. Three more months of the same rhythm and he gets there, assuming his competitors don't suddenly start doing the work they've been ignoring.
Meet Henry. Residential painter.
Phone Calls Up
Website Clicks Up
Maps Views Up
Henry's been with us since March. This snapshot if from month two. The heatmap data hasn't caught up yet, which is normal this early. But the phone's already doing different things.
Phone calls up 200%. Website clicks up 53%. Maps views up 60%.
From the same profile, the same business, the same crew.
The pattern across all three
Calls move before rankings do.
The phone gets busier before the heatmap turns green. Henry's the proof of that, still early in the work with no heatmap shift yet but calls already up.
The boring fixes carry the first 60 days.
Category, description, services list, photos audit. Nobody wants to do them. They're what actually moves you in month one.
Reviews and photos compound from month three onwards.
This is where the work pays off. The owners who quit at month two never see this part. The ones who stay see it for years.
The review thing nobody talks about honestly
Larry's top competitor has 410 reviews. Jamie's has 34 but they're nine years deep. Henry's has 26. You don't close a gap like that by spamming review requests. You close it by being the contractor whose reviews are the most recent and the most responded to. That's what moves Google in 2026, and it's the part that depends on you, not your agency.
Asking for reviews well, after April 2026's policy changes, is its own thing. I wrote up the full rhythm including the review side in another doc.
The five pillars of the rhythm
Categories
Primary one matters most. Secondaries should fill all nine slots.
Posts and description
Weekly posts, description refreshed every few weeks. These now answer the questions the dead Q&A feature used to.
Reviews
Ask everyone. Respond inside 24 hours. Neutral language only.
Photos
Two to three a week, on-site, geotagged, real work.
Citations
Quarterly cleanup across the directories that still matter.
Every client we work with runs this rhythm. The verticals change, the markets change, the rhythm doesn't.
What you should actually expect
Positions 8 to 15, moderate market
Three to six months is the realistic window for a meaningful move. Six to nine months in, working it consistently, you're going to be at the forefront of your market for the right keywords.
Competitor with 400-plus reviews and ten years of history
The ceiling is lower and the window is longer. We can still get you into the top 3. Beating the guy at position 1 might take two years and a different strategy.
The bonus most owners don't think about
The work bleeds out into your website too. A lot of what we do helps your site rank, helps your conversion, helps your overall presence. The map pack is the headline. The whole engine is what's actually running.
Why most owners can't do this themselves
Owners are running crews. Quoting jobs. Chasing checks. Going on consults. The rhythm I described needs someone whose only job is this, every week, without fail. Most contractors I know would do a perfectly fine job of it if they had eight extra hours a week. Nobody has eight extra hours a week.
What working with us looks like
What we carry
Categories, posts, photos, citations, dashboard tracking, weekly activity updates, monthly ranking reports.
What stays with you
Reviews stay on you because they have to. But everything that supports them is ours.
The website side
The GBP work, the local SEO work, the content work, the schema, the conversion side, it all moves together.
We pick up the weekly rhythm. You stay on the tools. If you want the full breakdown of what's included, that lives in a separate doc. We send it after the audit so you're not reading a sales pitch cold.
Get your free GBP audit
Two minutes, no credit card, no email follow-up unless you want one. We screen-record a full walkthrough of what's actually working on your profile and what's slipping. If at the end you want to talk about us running the rhythm for you, we will. If not, you've got the audit either way.
Real Clients, Real Numbers