The 90-day review cliff for contractors

Most contractors think of reviews as a pile. Homeowners don't read the pile. They read the top of it, check the dates and decide if you're still in business and still any good. A review from last spring doesn't answer that.

Say you do kitchens in McKinney with a three-person crew, one job at a time, seven weeks each, call it eight finished kitchens a year. You have 41 reviews and a 4.9, and the newest one is dated February. It's September. To the woman comparing you against two other remodelers tonight, you might as well have closed.

How often should a contractor get new reviews?

Often enough that the top of your Google page is never older than a few weeks. TrueReview's 2026 benchmarks put 6-12 new reviews a month in the competitive band for home services. Fifteen or more a month is what a market leader looks like.

18%

of consumers want a review from the last week

That's a higher bar than most small shops hit. TrueReview puts the home-services average at about 85 total Google reviews. A shop that took six years to get there is adding one a month, which means the newest review on the page is usually stale before the next one lands.

The homeowner's clock is short. BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 32% of consumers want to see a review from the last two weeks, up from 20% a year earlier.

And 18% want one from the last week.

Count weeks, not reviews.

Why do old reviews stop working?

A review answers two questions, and only one of them ages well. "Is this crew any good?" holds up for years. "Is this crew still doing good work right now?" expires. BrightLocal's data says the second question is the one most homeowners are asking.

WorkBrag modeled estimate: built from those recency figures, a review's weight in a homeowner's eyes falls to about 50% at 90 days and about 20% at 12 months. Call it the proof half-life. We argued about the shape of that curve for a week and still don't love it.

The filter makes the cliff steeper. BrightLocal found 31% of consumers will only consider a business rated 4.5 or higher. If your last ten reviews are old and your most recent one is a complaint, that complaint is the first thing a homeowner reads and the rating is the second.

What happens when the reviews stop?

You fall off the shortlist and never learn why. Roofing Contractor magazine's 2026 homeowner study found 66% of homeowners get three quotes, and strong reviews and testimonials break the tie 20% of the time. A dead review page loses those ties quietly.

Remodelers get this worse than anyone. A slow trade isn't an excuse for a slow review page. Eight kitchens a year is eight asks and most shops make two.

Timing is most of the fix. TrueReview reports that asking more than 48 hours after the job cuts response by about 40%, and that 30-50% of all reviews come from the one reminder sent 3-5 days later. The shop that asks late and never follows up is leaving most of its reviews on the table.

12 jobs a month, 1-3 people on the crew. WorkBrag modeled estimate: that shop gets about 1.7 new reviews a month asking when it remembers, and about 5 a month texting every job the same day. The first shop is below the cliff every month of the year. The second sits inside the competitive band without anyone thinking about it.

What this means for a remodeler

Count weeks, not reviews. Pull up your Google page and find the date on the newest review. More than 14 days old and you're outside what a third of homeowners want to see.

Ask at the walkthrough, never at the final invoice. Remodels run long. The day the homeowner sees the finished kitchen is the day she's happiest, and the day the link should hit her phone.

Send the one reminder. Three to five days later, one text. That single follow-up is where 30-50% of reviews come from, per TrueReview. Skip it and you're working at half pace.

Make the cadence automatic. This is the job WorkBrag does for you: one text after the job, the review and the video come back, and the clip is posted for you. The reminder goes out whether or not you remember, and you only approve by text.

Methodology

Recency and rating-threshold figures come from BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. Quote and tiebreak figures come from Roofing Contractor magazine's "The Homeowner's Roofing Journey in 2026," produced with Owens Corning and myClearInsights. Review cadence and request-timing benchmarks come from TrueReview's 2026 benchmarks.

Figures marked as WorkBrag modeled estimates, including the proof half-life curve and the monthly review counts, are projections built from those public benchmarks and our own launch assumptions, not measured results. We will replace them with measured data from live accounts and update this page.

Frequently asked questions

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