Ep 74 – The GBP Update That’s Crushing Roofing Call Volume

Google’s changed the rules. Again. Roofing contractors are scrambling because Google has decided to take away the direct call button, and it’s no longer showing in the initial Local 3-Pack for roofing searches.

Yep. This is just one more click between a homeowner and reaching your business. And while organic visibility gets a little harder, paid placements like Local Services Ads are still making it very easy to call and making the whole thing feel a lot like Google is saying that you have to pay to play.

You can’t control Google or what it changes next, but you can make sure Google, and your customers, have plenty of reasons to trust you. In this episode, we talk actionable steps you can do.

Amanda Joyce (00:00)
Hello

Devon Hayes (00:02)
my

gosh. Guns ablazing. Lookout roofing contractors. Google has has got your number. Yeah. Yeah. Feel like your calls

Amanda Joyce (00:09)
They’ve done it again.

Devon Hayes (00:12)
just like a light switch went off at late June, like the last week of June, maybe early July, you really felt it. You’re you’re not imagining things. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (00:17)
You’re Yeah, you are not alone. Yeah.

We’ve been hearing from roofers all over the country that are like it feels like somebody just turned off turned the lights off on their their call volume. So if this speaks to you, if you’re feeling this, this is your episode. And if it hasn’t impacted you yet, we encourage you to go ahead and listen.

Devon Hayes (00:35)
Okay. my gosh. This is wild. Okay. We we must have gotten calls from, I don’t know, like I would say like eight, ten roofing con of our roofing contractor clients within the same two days and asking us like guys, what’s going on? Like literally, it feels like a light switch. Like my phone stopped ringing, like nothing is happening. Like what’s going on? You’re not crazy.

Amanda Joyce (00:54)
what’s going on. And it’s kind of crazy too.

Yeah, because we w it was right around late June. So we were kind of like, it’s seasonal. and turns out

Devon Hayes (01:04)
Yeah, like maybe people

taking off fourth of July. Like maybe that’s what’s going on, just no demand now. I mean, maybe a little bit of that, but what we’re seeing now is like a massive fallout. So we’re doing huge I mean, we’ve we’ve talked to our clients, talked to our roofers specifically, like and that if you’re another exterior contractor, look out because it’s coming for you. what’s coming for you? So

Used to be you would Google like roofing contractor or roofer near me, roofing companies on your phone, local three-pack. We see we see the little map and then we see the three companies listed. Obviously, they’re always putting in, you know, some of those Google local service ads, those sponsored links and the map pack results. Like we see them, okay, whatever. but it used to be you Google a con, you know, roofing contractor, however, people got to you, map pack appears on your phone, and then it has those top three businesses, which we’re always striving for.

High value right there, high transactional value. Well, there was a little button that said call, and people would just like look at what they saw briefly, look at your reviews probably, and then pick one of the three to call or call all three, who knows? But they would push the button and call you. Well, that last week of June, they took, they changed the user interface for the Google business category where your primary category is roofing contractor. They took that call button away. And now

The only the only thing you see, I think it’s like website. You can click website or directions, maybe even, or website and reviews, something like that. In any case, it’s not the call button. Now you have to click on a business name and then you can see call, directions, reviews, like all that good stuff. But the paid feature, like the LSA, it does have the call button now. So

Amanda Joyce (02:41)
And one of the other things that I’ve been noticing

too is for a long time, in the middle of the workday, like the prime business hours, we would see LSA and it would go straight into the three-pack. They were really not even favoring giving Google Ads much love at all in that section. And now it’s click the call buttons in the LSA, right underneath it. There’s I’m keep getting served at least one Google Ads.

Add as well that also has a click to call button in it. And then you come down to the local three-pack and the call buttons are gone. So it really feels like there’s this big shift to really force people to pay to play to monetize that section of the search results that we’ve all been just, you know, fighting over. And it’s not that the call button’s completely gone. You click through and you can get it, but

To your your average person that doesn’t dig in the data like Devon and I do all day long, that doesn’t seem like it should have too big of an impact. But what was that number that Jim and I gave us that it dropped off

Devon Hayes (03:31)
Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (03:31)
by?

Devon Hayes (03:31)
Yeah, Gemini said it’s been reported that 50 to 70 percent of call volume has dropped off, is being reported as dropped off. And this they started rolling this interface change out in early 2026, but they’re doing it kind of category by category. So our contractors hadn’t really felt it. And even now, if your primary category is siding contractor, Amanda just did a search and siding contractor, there’s still that call button right there.

in the SERPs, the search engine results page right there in the three-pack, there’s that call button. But if you but she did the same search in her same market, she typed roofing contractor and that call button is hidden. But it sure is all over the LSA, those little paid ads right there sandwiched it on top and beneath the local three-pack organic results. So it’s coming for you. That and then on top of like that UI like user interface interface like change

There was also the massive like June spam update around June 24th to the 26th, they finished rolling it out, that targeted websites that had invaluable AI content. So if you used AI to churn out like, you know, 30 service area pages because you’re trying to game the system and expand your your footprint and but you didn’t put take the time to put unique project photos.

give an expert’s quote about your service, like talk about different landmarks in the area, then you you likely got targeted. So your website lost visibility and you lost the little area, you lost that call button. And that click that, my God, it’s like, it’s horrible. Weird. So of course we’re diving in, doing all this research, and all these different agencies have reported like this huge call volume that completely dropped off. So it’s

You’re not imagining it. It’s not in your head, Roofers. Look out every other exteriors contractor, because who knows when they’re going to roll out this UI change to you guys too, where they just take that call button away. Well, at least from the initial SERPs. It’s good when you click your business name on your phone, it’s still gonna be on your Google Business Profile. It’s the part before when they’re just like recommending

Amanda Joyce (05:34)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (05:34)
the top three in that local three-pack that the button is gone.

Amanda Joyce (05:37)
button’s gone. And you think about someone like my mother’s age that would maybe be looking to replace her roof, she’s gonna she’s gonna take the path of least resistance. And if they’ve got five stars up in the LSA and there’s a clickable call button, she’s that’s where she’s gonna click. So it’s kind of crazy. One thing to keep in mind too is Google

tends to do these things quickly and then sometimes they walk them back. We were actually talking to a roofer the other day that we’ve encouraged over the last six months to sign up for LSA. He hadn’t done it yet and now he’s finally trying to do it this week. And he said he was calling and waiting on hold for 45 minutes at a time and then they even came back on and said, we have so much call volume right now, we cannot help you. Which also goes back to this Google’s kind of created this perfect storm where now all these people that are desperate to get the call the phone ringing again are all vying for that LSA traffic.

Which also aligns with the fact that in on August 17th, they are going to be combining LSA and Google ads. So there’s just a lot of shakeup happening over at Google. Yeah. They are like, we can see what’s coming.

Devon Hayes (06:32)
Dirty I didn’t even tie those together.

Amanda Joyce (06:37)
Yeah, we can see what’s coming. And it’s like we really don’t even know what what it’s all gonna look like. Yeah, we

Devon Hayes (06:40)
Like, you want to use A and I will show

Amanda Joyce (06:43)
don’t, yeah, we just don’t even know what what the search results are gonna look. Cause it’s odd to me that now they are showing a traditional Google search ad.

mixed in with LSA before the local three pack. But yeah, what’s gonna happen now if everything’s living under the Google ads hat? Are they gonna would they allow your Google ad to show up in both that section and the LSA or are they only gonna are you only gonna you’re gonna have to pick and choose which one you want to show up in. It’s it’s the Wild West people.

Devon Hayes (07:07)
It is the wild. I know, because that diversity update, I

don’t think that they would put both your ad and your organic. But okay, so so now we’ve identified this problem, guys, and you’re you’re not alone. you’re not hallucinating. It is real. So what can you do about it? Let’s talk about some solutions here so you’re not like left feeling totally tired. actually last but not least on the things that also that they also updated this month too. And it’s always been a thing.

your review velocity. It’s always been a thing, but this July update now they’ve weighted your review velocity more than it previous previously was, meaning it’s more of a ranking factor now than it had been. It it carries more weight. So it’s always been a ranking factor in the local three pack. It just now they’ve placed a heavier weight on the velocity at which you get reviews. So

What they’re what what happens now is a company that in your market that has 50 reviews, but they steadily get, you know, one or two reviews a week, versus a company that has 600 reviews and hasn’t gotten a new review for five or six weeks, it’s gonna favor that company that only has fifty reviews, but they get one or two reviews a week. So that review velocity is a heavy weighting factor, heavier than it has been previously. So that’s something that

We can you can try to control, right? We know we

Amanda Joyce (08:26)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (08:26)
know how hard it is to get those reviews from customers, but when you’re thinking like, Well, what can I do? Like that’s one of the things and it’s it’s it’s critical. It’s it’s so frustrating to we know it’s hard to get

Amanda Joyce (08:36)
Yeah. And we know it’s frustrating. Yeah. It’s frustrating but

Devon Hayes (08:40)
it and you and

They don’t want you to get it too too too many reviews too quickly. They want all the details in the reviews. They want, you know, they don’t want your service guys handing over an iPad asking for reviews because they’re tracking that IP to make sure you’re not pressuring people into reviews. They don’t want you to do review campaigns because then you get way too many reviews at once and that actually works out. Like they will hold a few and then they’ll realize you did a campaign and they are natural. But if you go from zero to 50 reviews, they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What and what what’s

Amanda Joyce (09:09)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (09:09)
going on? Are these real?

Amanda Joyce (09:10)
And it’s the good news is that, you know, if you are somebody that’s in a market where maybe you’ve vo you’re you’ve just gotten started over the last couple of years and you’ve got like fifty reviews and you’re up against some big dogs that have six and eight hundred, if they’re slowing down with their review velocity and you are really leaning into it, you you do have a chance to compete. So that is some good news there. But you know, we talk to cli we talk to roofers all the time that are like, Yeah, that’s all well and good, but I I I try all the time, I ask, it doesn’t work. So you’re not alone if that’s how you’re feeling, but it’s

It’s d it’s something tangible you can do. Like we were recommending to a couple of folks that had expanded into a new market, and they’re like, before we got that new location, they already left us a review on this location. And we we were like, I mean, do you think you can ask their wife if the husband left the review? I mean, I know it feels a little bit desperate, but desperate times call for desperate measures. you know, like if if you’re

Who knows what’s gonna happen in three to five months? Cause while Google’s also getting blown up and people are signing up for LSA left and right, which is what they’re wanting everyone to do, they’re also gonna be getting a ton of backlash from everybody who who was depending on those calls from their profiles. So maybe they’ll have a heart and come around a little bit and make some tweaks. But to me, it’s not a good UX. They’re gonna end up devaluing the three-pack because a user’s gonna stop depending on it because they just need their answer and they need to get they wanna take action. So hopefully they’re gonna

get their heads right. But for now, really optimizing your GBP to the full tilt, posting to it consistently and continuing to get reviews is something tangible you can do as a business owner while it kind of feels like we’re in the Wild West.

Devon Hayes (10:40)
Yeah, a steady trickle of uploading photos each week. I mean, that shows that it has life. If you just don’t touch your Google business profile for 30 days, they consider your business dormant. And so they’re not gonna recommend you or put you in the local three-pack. So upload it upload a couple photos. You have them, you have all the stuff you need from the job side. They’re just you don’t want them to, you know, die on the vine in the truck. Like have your texts take photos, get them to you, upload those a couple every week.

Posting each week. you know, you can so there’s two kind of separate areas areas in your GBP. There’s your photos, which you can upload, and then there’s your posts. so those are two areas, just if you touch those once a week, you know. I mean spend 20 minutes in your profile maybe once a week. just talking about the work that you do, sharing what’s going on with the team. So you can control that. You can ask for the reviews. We know you can’t control that.

And you can control kind of the back end, the services that are inside of your GBP, making sure that those match what you have listed on your website. So if you call it, if you call it roof replacement on your website, you want to call the service on the back end of your GBP roof replacement. If you call it residential roofing, then you want to make sure you call the service residential roofing on the back end of your GBP.

provide a lot of clarity to the robots that are crawl crawling through and reading it. That area we know customers and homeowners, they’re not reading it, but understand you have two audiences when you’re optimizing your Google business profile. The robots and then the humans. You know, we we know humans, transactional, they want to click that call button. They’re not they might they might bigger like remodeling contractors, they’re definitely probably looking at your work in there, whatever’s visible on your profile, but

Amanda Joyce (12:25)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (12:25)
Plumber,

electrician, you I mean, bingo bango. Like I just want to call you, but still. So, anyways, when you think of this, don’t feel like it has to be like this highly produced video or photo. It’s just, it’s what’s it’s what’s living on your phones anyway. So just upload it. Spend a little bit of time in there every week. That’s something you can control. and then

Amanda Joyce (12:43)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (12:44)
the your spammy website stuff off your GBP, that’s a whole other thing you can control. But what were you gonna say, Amanda?

Amanda Joyce (12:50)
I was gonna say we got some pushback this morning from a client that I was really encouraging them to be posting from their job sites. And one of the things they said is, we’re always so afraid that, you know, like maybe someone’s hasn’t hooked in yet to their harness and we’re gonna post something that’s not OSHA compliant or something like that. So they’re just afraid to post anything. So if that’s something that’s getting in your head and stressing you out about job site,

photos have everybody while they take their lunch break and they’re under a shady tree and there’s a house behind them. They you don’t have to be swinging the hammer for that for it to count as a job site photo, but don’t let that stop you from doing it. There’s ways around it so that you can you can do that. And we know that we had our eye on a

a specific roofer that was a competitor of one of our clients and they were killing it in the local three-pack. I mean, God knows what’s going on now because Google just shuffled the deck on us, but they were daily posting photos from job sites with faces of of crew members. They I don’t I couldn’t tell you now if for sure if they were harnessed in and on a roof, but even if they’re like, we’re prepping for the day and you all just take a selfie like, well you’ve got your catch all up before you’ve ever climbed on the roof.

That Google loves that. They can tell you’re swinging the hammer. You’re real people. and humans like that too. They like to see who could potentially be on their on their property. So it might feel

Devon Hayes (14:01)
Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (14:01)
like a huge task, but it really doesn’t have to be.

Devon Hayes (14:03)
I was gonna add to that. Yeah, those the other part that made that work was that each of those pictures of those humans had the logo in it. So like, you know, I’ve got my little elevation gear on. But having your brand’s logo, the wrapped trucks behind the crew, even in their working T shirts that has your company name and logo on it, all of that is GBP gold. So yeah, it doesn’t have to be like, you know, look at look at this amazing flashing job. I did I don’t know. Whatever. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (14:29)
Nobody cares about your flashing. They wanna

see they wanna see the faces of of the people that that make up your crews and that could potentially be out, you know, protecting their shrubs and making sure that the the job site’s left clean and that everything’s great. So it’s it should actually it’s it’s a positive thing.

Devon Hayes (14:46)
It is. And then so part two. So it that’s this is all that’s all GBP stuff. The other thing, and and that’s where transactions happen. So that’s probably the part you guys care about the most is like w why the hell did my my call volume drop off so significantly? But the other part of this is now what lives out there on your website, the other thing that got targeted with that big update.

if you were one of those contractors that got sold the idea of AI and an AI website and churning out 200 pages, 200 blogs, 200 service area pages, and then just publishing and slapping it on there. and you didn’t add a human touch, you didn’t make any of it unique to your business, and you could just swap out the logo and company name on those pages, and it could be any roofing company.

Or any not just roofing. We know this is for exteriors too. This is for literally any website that update. GBP stuff, very specific to roofing, but it’s coming for you, other exterior contractors. It’s happened all over other categories this whole year. But the spam update, the June spam update targets website content specifically. So,

If you didn’t take the time to take your AI content and make it unique and original to your company where your experts are cited, you have your project photos, you talk about your favorite restaurants when you’re in this town, you don’t have any of that on there, and it’s just all AI based, but you’re it you’re gonna see a significant drop. And not just in those pages. Those pages probably weren’t ranking in the first place, but now your authority and your trust for your entire website.

is broken. And so now Google is gonna devalue those blue links, those ten blue results, you’re getting devalued. Now you’re getting less visibility for those service pages outside of the local three pack for some of those like buyers that kind of go through and like really spend time clicking through your site and reading it. And the way to and another way to think of that is yes, there’s buyers there. The other part of it is

How Google and AI view you in terms of are you an expert? Are you, do we trust you? What’s your experience like? Tying that to different search prompts, different AI prompts, even because we know they go back and forth. That gets devalued. And that’s getting you now, you’re getting the boot, you’re not getting indexed, which means Google isn’t storing your website’s info for that topic anymore because it doesn’t trust you, because it thinks you just have unoriginal spammy content.

From AI that has no original value or unique value about your business. So, long story long, if you have a whole bunch of AI content, you’re gonna feel the burn too, on top of this burn from the interface on Google with your GVP and that call button. Whew, words, so many words today, guys.

Amanda Joyce (17:27)
But I mean, on that

same note, we’re seeing this trend towards a lot of contractors getting sold that that very product. Forget

Devon Hayes (17:34)
Mm.

Amanda Joyce (17:34)
the your human-built website that you’ve been laboring over for the last five years. Let us build you the fanciest, newest AI website with all AI content. We’ll have it to you in

Devon Hayes (17:44)
yeah.

Amanda Joyce (17:44)
a week.

Devon Hayes (17:45)
Watch our AI robots build your website live. Wild one.

Amanda Joyce (17:48)
Mm-hmm. Please watch

out for all the reasons that Devon just said. And Google’s only going to get tighter and tighter on it because they they want a diverse library of resources that they can pull from to give a good user experience. And if every single one of them is is written by robots, it’s just repetitive bullshit for lack of a better way to describe it. So please

Devon Hayes (18:05)
Yeah. You’re right.

Amanda Joyce (18:07)
don’t do that. If you spent $20,000 on a website two years ago, I promise you that website is going to

pay off in spades in the next couple years while everybody else tries to check out and hit the easy button. Keep focusing on the website that like that you’ve labored over that really reflects you as a company. And if and to Devin’s point, if the c if you really haven’t looked at your content lately or maybe s you did lean a little heavy on AI more recently, go back and look at it. Add your IP, make it unique, let people know why why you’re different. I mean that’s what you’re gonna do in your sales process. It’s no different. You’re not you can’t you’re not gonna go sit down in some homeowner’s living room and speak robots speak to them and just

Sound like every other roofer, you’re gonna try to figure out how what makes you unique. Your website is a walking, talking salesperson. It needs to, it needs to reiterate everything you’re sharing in those sales meetings. And all this other stuff won’t matter because while everyone else is making these mistakes and hitting the easy button, Google will continue to reward you and they will notice it. I promise.

Devon Hayes (19:02)
Yeah. And I was gonna

say this is a great teaser. So we have agency owners were in all kinds of agency groups, but specifically with other home services marketing agencies. So we have a very, very, very good episode that’s gonna come out, I would say like the second part of August. We our agency friends, they lost like a client of like a decade. They’re like, your performance is incredible, but I’m sold on this new AI website and this new AI thing. So they’re like

Awesome website that our our friends did. it was taken down. Their new AI website just launched. So we want to meet in 30 days, get 30 days of data. We know that it launched and there’s no Google Analytics on it. So the tracking is gone there. We’re like, that’s weird because now your historical data is just ruined. But

Amanda Joyce (19:45)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (19:46)
anyway, so we are so excited. We’re gonna watch the data for the next 30 days. You’re gonna meet our friends who are also they’re awesome and we all, you know what they I like how they call it OKGs, our kind of guys.

We speak the same language and so that’s gonna be a really fun episode where we talk about what happened to this HBAC contractor once they went with an AI website over a traditional website. And maybe our socks will be blown off. So far we’ve looked at it and there’s a whole bunch of errors on it, but you know, may we we’ll see what happens in thirty days. More to come. So

Amanda Joyce (20:13)
More to come, who knows? Yeah.

Devon Hayes (20:16)
yeah, that episode’s gonna be awesome and I cannot wait to like back into it and

and reverse engineer and see and see what happens. So we’ll we’ll share that with you and and break it down and make this whole complex idea of a AI website versus a traditional web like WordPress website and and tell you the differences and make it digestible. So you’ll you’re gonna love you’re gonna love our friends. So anyways.

Amanda Joyce (20:37)
All right, so definitely tune in next time so you can hear all of that. We’re so excited for that conversation. but as a recap from today, if you’re feeling the burn, you’re not alone. And the best the best thing you can do is continue just just shepherding, I don’t know, that’s not a good word, but really just working through your

Devon Hayes (20:55)
I’m interested.

Amanda Joyce (20:56)
your GBP profile. Like just treat it like a sweet little baby, because Google is being really

Really squirrely right now and you have to you

Devon Hayes (21:05)
Selfish.

Amanda Joyce (21:06)
just gotta yeah, is they’re being they’re being a selfish newborn that just wants to be babied and you have to take care of it. It’s gonna s yeah.

Devon Hayes (21:12)
Yeah, treat your GBP. Yeah, treat your GBP

like a mini, like a mini website. You’re touching it every single week. You’re nurturing it. You are, yeah. Swaddle that thing and drop some photos in there. And then do not do not spam your own website with AI content. And if you have done that, you can save it, go in there and quote quote yourself or quote an expert on the thing you’re talking about, add original project photos and just talk about what you love about the area.

And and speak to god permitting and this county sucks because of this thing or whatever it is, add your unique information to it and give an opinion. Give an opinion on those pages. That’s a way you can make it unique without like rewriting the book. Okay. I think we covered it.

Amanda Joyce (21:52)
Alright guys.

Devon Hayes (21:52)
Reach out. Questions, what’d we missed? Are you feeling the burn? you can you can always ask Amanda and I anything. We’re we’re we love to help.

comment, reach out. We’re here. We would love to hear your experience and which other exteriors contractors have felt the burn, the Google burn as of the latest UI update. All right, thank you.