28 September 2026 · 7 min read · Oscar Markham
The Google Business Profile setup that wins roofing calls
When somebody in Ireland searches for a roofer, the first thing on the screen is the map pack — three local businesses with stars, distance and a call button. A very large share of roofing enquiries never get past it. Getting that right is free, and most roofing profiles are set up badly or abandoned after the first week.
Service area, not a shopfront
A roofer is a service-area business. You go to the customer; they do not come to you. Set the profile up that way and hide the street address, which Google allows and which stops your home address appearing in search results.
Then set the service area to the towns and counties you genuinely cover. This does not make you rank in all of them — proximity still decides that — but it does tell Google what you do and where, and it stops you appearing for places you cannot reach.
Categories decide which searches you appear in
The primary category is the single most influential setting on the profile. For most roofing businesses it should be 'Roofing contractor'. Not 'Contractor', not 'Construction company', not 'Home improvement'.
Add secondary categories for the things you actually do — gutter service, chimney service, roof repair — but only for work you genuinely carry out. The primary one does the heavy lifting and a vague primary category is the most common reason a roofer is invisible in the map results.
Photographs, weekly, from the phone
Profiles with a steady flow of recent photographs perform better than profiles with a big batch uploaded once. Google reads activity as a signal that the business is alive.
Upload from the phone on site, where the location data supports the listing. Before and after pairs, the van, the crew, finished ridges and valleys. Ten minutes a week.
It also converts. A customer choosing between three map results looks at the photographs, and a profile with forty real roofs beats one with a logo and nothing else.
Reviews, and replying to them
Volume, recency and rating all count, and so does replying. Reply to every review, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing.
The reply is read by the next customer far more than by the reviewer. A calm, specific response to a complaint reassures people more than a wall of five stars with no replies at all.
Ask on the day, in person, with the page open on your phone. Every other method is a fraction as effective.
Use the parts nobody uses
Most roofing profiles never touch these, which is exactly why they are worth doing.
- Services: list each one separately with a description — roof repair, re-roofing, flat roofs, gutters, chimney work
- Posts: a short update with a photograph every couple of weeks
- Q&A: you can ask and answer your own questions, and should — cover call-out charges and areas covered
- Hours: accurate, including whether you take emergency calls, because 'open now' filters the results
- Messaging: turn it off unless you will genuinely answer it quickly
What you cannot change
Proximity. If the searcher is twenty kilometres away and a competitor is two, the competitor wins that search, and no amount of optimisation changes it.
This is worth accepting early. The goal is to dominate your own catchment, not to rank across a county. Roofers who chase county-wide map rankings waste years on something Google's design does not allow.
If you need work outside your catchment, that is what paid advertising is for — it is not bound by proximity in the same way.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.