Reviews

What to do when your roofing company has no reviews

By Asaf Shamly, founder · Last updated November 3, 2026 · 7 min read

85% of consumers say they're less likely to buy from a business with no ratings or reviews. 67% of homeowners call online reviews extremely or very important when picking a roofing contractor.

A blank review profile doesn't read as neutral, it reads as a warning sign. The fix isn't clever, it's asking every customer, every time, starting with your next finished job.

Is it normal for a new roofing company to have no reviews?

Yes. Every company starts at zero, that part's normal. What matters is how long you stay there.

98% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in the past year, and 76% regularly read reviews before choosing a contractor. Every day you sit at zero is a day most searchers compare you against someone who already has them.

A roofing company with zero reviews looks different to a homeowner than one that asks after every job

	Zero reviews	Asks after every finished job
Trust signal to a homeowner	85% of consumers are less likely to buy from a business with no reviews at all	97% of consumers read reviews before choosing a local business, so new ones get seen
Rating bar homeowners expect	Nothing to meet a bar with	68% of consumers now require at least a 4-star rating before they'll consider a business
Roofing-specific importance	67% of homeowners call reviews extremely or very important, a blank profile answers nothing	76% of roofing contractors already feature reviews on their site, so you're matching the norm
Response expectation	Nothing to respond to	80% of consumers are more likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews

BrightLocal 2026 (via SocialPilot) and Roofing Contractor 2025 Homeowner Survey

Will homeowners trust a roofer with zero reviews?

Not easily. 85% of consumers say they're less likely to buy a product or service with no ratings or reviews at all. That number isn't specific to roofing, it's how people shop everywhere, and a new roof is a bigger purchase than most.

In your trade it gets sharper still. 67% of homeowners say online reviews are extremely or very important when choosing a roofing contractor, and only 5% say reviews don't matter to them.

Referrals still lead the way homeowners build trust, but reviews sit right behind and they're the thing a stranger checks before they ever pick up the phone.

What's the fastest way to get the first reviews in?

Ask on every finished job, not just the ones that went perfectly. Timing matters more than most contractors think.

Ask right after the walkthrough, while the new roof is still the best thing on the block.
Ask the same way every time, so it's not something you remember to do, it's just what happens.
Don't offer anything for the review. Google prohibits incentivized reviews, and the FTC's testimonial rule applies here too.

You can ask for a review. You can't promise what rating comes back and you can't confirm it posted, you can only confirm it was asked for.

Should you pay for reviews to fill the gap?

No. And setting the risk aside, it's getting less common anyway. Only 27% of consumers said they were offered a discount in exchange for a review in the past year, down from 36% the year before. The market's moving away from it, and both Google and the FTC treat paid or incentivized reviews as a violation, not a growth hack.

The better move is volume of real asks. Consumers are also getting more comfortable deciding based on fewer, newer reviews. 60% now prefer a business with fewer but more recent reviews over one sitting on a big pile of old ones. A handful of genuine, recent reviews beats a stack of purchased ones you can't defend if someone asks.

What matters more, review count or review recency?

Recency, increasingly. 90% of consumers regularly consider how recently a review was written before deciding whether to buy, and 77% expect reviews to be no older than three months.

That changes the math for a new roofing company. You don't need forty reviews on day one, you need one from last week, because that's what a homeowner is actually checking for.

80% of consumers also say they're more likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews, so answering the ones you do get matters just as much as collecting new ones.

What this means for a contractor

For a roofing company sitting at zero reviews right now, here's the order that actually works:

Pick one moment in the job, the final walkthrough, and ask for a review every single time from here forward. Consistency beats a one-time push.
Never offer a discount or incentive for a review, and never promise a rating. Ask for the review, nothing more.
Respond to whatever comes in, good or mixed, since 80% of consumers say that responsiveness alone makes them more likely to use a business.
If texting every homeowner after every job sounds like one more thing nobody on the crew will remember to do, that's the exact gap WorkBrag's done-for-you review and video service is built to close, by handling the ask automatically after each finished job.

Methodology

Consumer trust and recency figures come from BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey, both the 2025 report published on brightlocal.com and the 2026 figures aggregated by SocialPilot, along with PowerReviews 2025 data cited on the same SocialPilot page.

Roofing-specific homeowner attitudes toward reviews, referrals, and pricing come from Roofing Contractor's two 2025 homeowner survey writeups, run with research partners ROOFLE and myCLEARopinion Insights Hub.

General internet and review-reading rates for home-services shoppers come from SchedulingKit's 2026 roofing industry statistics collection, which itself cites BrightLocal's 2023 survey for those two figures.

Frequently asked questions

How many reviews does a new roofing company need before it looks credible?

There's no fixed number in the data, but recency matters more than volume. 60% of consumers now prefer a business with fewer, newer reviews over one with a large pile of old ones, so a handful from the last month beats forty from two years ago.

Can I offer a discount to get my first reviews faster?

No. Google prohibits incentivized reviews and the FTC's testimonial rule covers this too. It's also a shrinking practice, only 27% of consumers were offered a discount for a review in the past year, down from 36% the prior year.

What's the single biggest trust gap a zero-review roofing company has?

85% of consumers say they're less likely to buy from a business with no ratings or reviews at all, and 67% of homeowners call reviews extremely or very important specifically when hiring a roofer. A blank profile reads as a missing answer to the first question they ask.