Google recently changed the way people find contractors, and plenty of business owners are still piecing together what that means for them.
A recent TechCrunch piece made it plain: "Google Search as you know it is over."
That's not hyperbole. At a Google I/O conference, the company confirmed it. AI Mode, Google's new search experience, has already surpassed 1 billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch.
And Google just announced something that should get every trades business owner's attention. According to Google's own announcement, "for select categories like home repair, beauty or pet care, you can ask Google to call businesses on your behalf."
Read that again — the customer doesn't search, compare, and call. Google calls for them.
For two decades, a homeowner with a clogged drain or a cracked sewer line would type in a few words, get a list of links, and click through to find you. You could win that moment with the right keywords, a solid Google Business Profile, and a handful of good reviews. The system rewarded proximity and basic effort, and if you did those things well, the phone rang.
That system is being replaced. Google is now deploying what it calls "information agents," tools that, in Google's own words, operate "in the background, 24/7," intelligently reasoning across everything on the web to find exactly what a user needs. If a property manager asks Google to find a commercial plumber with fast response times and strong communication, the AI doesn't hand over 10 links and step back. It evaluates your reviews, parses your service descriptions, cross-references your credentials, and makes a call. Literally, in some cases.
For business owners, this is as big a shift as the jump from the Yellow Pages to Google.
Write down what you did last Tuesday
Given that context, the most powerful thing on your website right now isn't your logo or your tagline. It's the specific details of completed work.
Google's information agents are looking for precise, structured proof when they match a query to a business. Generic service pages that say "We do residential and commercial plumbing" give those agents almost nothing to work with. A detailed project summary that reads, "Replaced a corroded 4-inch cast iron main for a 24-unit apartment complex in [City], resolving recurring backup issues and bringing the building into code compliance before winter," gives them exactly what they need.
Start documenting jobs the way you'd explain them to someone who wasn't there, like what the problem was, what you found when you got into it, what you did to fix it, and what the result looked like when you left. Don’t be overly promotional, just be accurate. Each write-up becomes evidence an AI agent can use to confidently recommend your business when a potential customer describes a problem that sounds a lot like the one you already solved. The more your language matches the way customers actually describe their problems, the better your chances of being the answer that comes back.
Words in reviews are working overtime
Five-star ratings still matter, but they're no longer the whole game. The actual text inside a review is what AI systems parse, and a generic "Great service, highly recommend!" doesn't do much for you when someone types a specific question into a search box.
When a technician wraps up a job and asks for a review, give them something to work with, a prompt that points the customer in the right direction: "It really helps us when reviews mention the specific problem we solved and how the process felt."
That nudge produces reviews with phrases like "They diagnosed the issue in under an hour and gave me a flat price before touching anything" or "They explained every step without making me feel like I was being sold something." Those are exactly the phrases an AI pulls when someone searches for a contractor who is upfront about pricing or easy to work with. The vocabulary your customers use to describe you becomes your marketing copy, whether you write it or not.
Let them see who's coming to the door
When search results feel increasingly automated, customers are making their final decision on something no algorithm can generate — whether they feel comfortable opening the door.
Take a hard look at your website. If it's full of stock photography and language about "professional service and customer satisfaction," you look identical to every other business in your category. That was survivable when customers clicked through to compare 10 options. When an AI is assembling a shortlist of three, it's a different situation.
A short video from the owner explaining who you are and how you work costs almost nothing to produce and does more than any stock image ever could. Add real photos of your trucks and your crew, and replace the generic service description with a plain-language walkthrough of what a service call actually looks like from the moment someone calls to the moment your truck leaves the driveway. First-time customers are anxious about the unknown, and a real face on a screen goes a long way toward settling that before they ever pick up the phone.
Every listing tells the same story, or it hurts you
AI agents don't stop at your website. They cross-reference your Google Business Profile, your listings on Yelp and Angi, industry directories, and anywhere else your business name appears online. When they find inconsistencies, they treat it as a reliability signal, and not a good one.
Spend an afternoon checking every listing your business has. Phone number, address, hours, service area, contact information — it needs to match exactly across every platform. A number that differs between two listings, a license number missing from a directory, a service area that doesn't line up — any of those can cause a recommendation engine to pass over you in favor of a competitor whose information is clean.
There's also a technical piece worth a conversation with whoever manages your website. Structured data markup, also called schema, is code that tells search engines explicitly what your business does, where you work, what licenses you hold, and how you price. Your web developer can add it in an afternoon, and it makes your business far easier for an AI agent to verify. Think of it as making sure your paperwork is in order before someone shows up to check it.
Stop renting your customers from Google
If Google is the primary way new customers find you, then Google owns your lead flow. That means when Google changes its rules, your call volume changes with it. That's worth thinking hard about.
The businesses that will weather this shift best are the ones building a customer base that doesn't need to search for them. A structured maintenance agreement gives customers a reason to call you before a problem becomes an emergency, and a brief text a few months after a completed job, just checking in with no pitch, reminds them you're still there. A simple quarterly email with something genuinely useful keeps your name in front of people who already trust you without feeling like marketing noise.
A customer with a maintenance agreement doesn't type "best plumber near me" when the water heater starts making noise. They call you. A customer who got a thoughtful follow-up from your office is more likely to hand your name to a neighbor than to go back to Google. Build enough of those relationships and the algorithm becomes a lot less important.
The phone can ring again
The steps that matter here aren't complicated, and none of them require a marketing department or a big budget. Document your jobs with enough detail that a stranger could understand exactly what you fixed and why it was hard. Coach your technicians to ask for reviews that describe the experience, not just rate it. Make sure every listing your business has tells the same story. Stay in touch with customers you've already earned. A little intention applied consistently across those five areas compounds faster than most owners expect.
Google is going to keep changing. The businesses that come through it well will be the ones that made themselves genuinely easy to trust, for the AI doing the sorting and for the person on the other end of the search who just needs someone reliable to show up.
You've navigated harder things than a search engine update. Start with one of these five steps and see what moves.
About the Author
Anne Lackey is the co-founder of HireSmart Virtual Employees, a full-service HR firm helping others recruit, hire and train top global talent. She can be reached at anne@hiresmartvirtualemployees.com or at meetwithanne.com.
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