You're fully licensed. You've got years of experience. Your customers leave glowing reviews. But when someone in your suburb types “electrician near me” or “plumber Werribee” into Google, you're not there.
Instead, the bloke who started last year with half your experience is sitting at the top of the page, getting all the calls.
It's not because he's better at the job. It's because his online presence is set up properly and yours isn't.
Here are the five most common reasons your tradie business isn't showing up on Google, and exactly how to fix each one.
1. You Don't Have a Google Business Profile (Or It's Half-Done)
This is the single biggest reason tradies don't show up in local search results. Your Google Business Profile (the listing that shows up in the map pack when someone searches for a service near them) is often the first thing potential customers see.
If you haven't claimed yours, Google doesn't know you exist. If you've claimed it but left half the fields blank, Google doesn't trust you enough to show you.
Quick fix: Go to business.google.com and claim your listing if you haven't already. Fill in everything: your business name, address, phone number, service area, opening hours, categories, and add at least 5 photos of your work. Make sure your business category is specific. “Electrician” is better than “Contractor.” “Emergency Plumber” is better than “Plumber.”
2. Your Website Is Slow
Google measures how fast your site loads and uses it as a ranking factor. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load on a mobile phone, two things happen: Google pushes you down the rankings, and the person searching gives up and clicks someone else.
Most tradie websites we audit load in 6 to 10 seconds on mobile. That's not slow. That's invisible.
Quick fix: Test your site at pagespeed.web.dev (it's free, from Google). If your mobile score is under 70, your site is hurting you. The most common culprits are oversized images, cheap hosting, and bloated WordPress themes. Compress your images, upgrade your hosting, or consider a purpose-built site that's fast from the start.
Want help with this? Take our 2-minute quiz.
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Start Your Free Quiz →3. You're Not Using Local Keywords
If your website just says “We're a plumbing company that provides quality services,” Google has no idea where you are or what specific jobs you do.
Google matches search queries to web pages. If someone searches “blocked drain Footscray” and your site never mentions “blocked drain” or “Footscray,” you won't show up. It's that simple.
Quick fix: Make a list of the services you offer and the suburbs you work in. Then make sure your website mentions those specific combinations. “Switchboard upgrades in Werribee.” “Hot water repairs in Hoppers Crossing.” “Ceiling fan installation in Point Cook.” Each service and suburb combination is a chance to rank for a search that a real customer is making right now.
4. Your Site Isn't Mobile-Friendly
Over 70% of local searches happen on a mobile phone. If your website was built for desktop and just sort of squishes down on a phone, you're giving a terrible experience to the majority of your potential customers.
Tiny text, buttons too small to tap, menus that don't work, images that overflow off the screen. We see it constantly. And Google sees it too. Since 2019, Google has used mobile-first indexing, which means it judges your site based on the mobile version, not the desktop one.
Quick fix: Pull up your website on your phone right now. Try to find your phone number and tap it to call. Try to fill in your contact form. If either of those things is difficult, your site is costing you work. A mobile-first rebuild is often the fastest way to fix this properly.
5. You Have No Reviews (Or They're Buried)
Reviews are one of the strongest local ranking signals Google uses. A tradie with 50 genuine Google reviews will almost always outrank one with 3, even if the second one has a better website.
But even if you have great reviews, they need to be visible. If your reviews are only on Facebook, or only on a third-party site that Google doesn't index, they're not helping your Google ranking.
Quick fix: Start asking every happy customer to leave a Google review. Make it easy: send them a direct link to your Google review page via text after the job is done. You can generate this link from your Google Business Profile dashboard. Aim for at least 20 reviews with a 4.5+ star average. Then make sure those reviews are visible on your website too, because it builds trust with visitors and keeps them on your site longer.
The Bottom Line
None of these five things are complicated. But together, they're the difference between showing up on page one and being completely invisible.
If you fix even two or three of these, you'll start seeing more calls, more quote requests, and more jobs from people who are actively searching for exactly what you do, right in your area.
Want us to fix all 5 for you?
We build fast, local-focused websites for Victorian tradies. No calls, no meetings, no lock-in contracts. Take the free 2-minute quiz and we'll show you exactly what we'd build for your business.
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