Home inspectors on Google: the 2026 benchmark report
Review counts, ratings, website presence and listed hours for 27,687 home inspection companies, computed from public Google Business Profile listings across 51 states.
Reviews
| Review count | Value |
|---|---|
| Median | 4 |
| Average (mean) | 65.6 |
| 25th percentile | 0 |
| 75th percentile | 39 |
| 90th percentile | 161 |
Share of home inspectors by review count:
| Bucket | Share of listings |
|---|---|
| 0 reviews | 30.2% |
| Under 10 | 59.1% |
| Under 25 | 70.1% |
| 100 or more | 14.8% |
| 500 or more | 2.6% |
Ratings
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Average rating | 4.76 |
| Rated 5.0 | 66.6% |
| Rated 4.5 or higher | 88.5% |
| Rated under 4.0 | 7% |
| No rating yet | 28% |
Websites
| Website status | Share |
|---|---|
| Website listed | 64.6% |
| No website listed | 35.4% |
| Own domain | 63.5% |
| Social profile only | 0.6% |
| Free or DIY builder | 0.5% |
Median review count for home inspectors with a website: 16. Without one: 0.
Profile completeness and hours
| Profile field | Share |
|---|---|
| Has a profile photo | 92.1% |
| Public email on profile | 28.2% |
| Open 24 hours | 6.3% |
| Open Saturday | 31.6% |
| Open Sunday | 21.7% |
| No hours listed | 58.8% |
Where the listings are
| State | Listings |
|---|---|
| FL | 1,737 |
| CA | 1,517 |
| TX | 1,247 |
| NY | 807 |
| GA | 765 |
| OH | 700 |
| IL | 668 |
| MI | 624 |
| NC | 598 |
| NJ | 524 |
| PA | 508 |
| WA | 478 |
Primary categories
| Google category | Listings |
|---|---|
| Home inspector | 26,730 |
| Building inspector | 381 |
| City government office | 276 |
| County government office | 45 |
| (blank) | 41 |
| Commercial real estate inspector | 31 |
| Local government office | 22 |
| Training center | 19 |
Start with the median, because it is embarrassing
Half of all home inspection companies on Google have 4 reviews or fewer. That is a single digit, not a few dozen. 30.2% have none at all and 59.1% are under ten. Read that as good news: the bar in this trade is on the floor, and almost every inspector who clears it does so by asking, not by spending.
The distribution is steep. The 75th percentile is 39 reviews and the 90th is 161. So the jump from typical to the top decile is a gap you can close at one review per completed inspection in a matter of months, not years. Meanwhile the mean of 65.6 is dragged upward by the 14.8% of firms past a hundred and the 2.6% past five hundred, most of them multi-inspector operations in large metros. Ignore the mean. Compare yourself to the percentiles.
The five-star trap
66.6% of rated inspectors show a perfect 5.0 and 88.5% sit at 4.5 or above. A 5.0 in this field is not an achievement, it is a sample size. It usually means three reviews from three friendly clients. Buyers and agents both read the count before the stars, and an inspector at 4.8 with 120 reviews outranks and outsells a 5.0 with four every time.
Two numbers underneath that are worth noting. 28% of listings carry no rating at all, which is why the percentages above describe rated listings only. And 7% sit below 4.0, the one place where the star number does real damage, because agents will not put a sub-4.0 inspector on a list they hand to a client.
The website gap is the widest one here
35.4% of home inspection companies list no website on their Google profile. Inspectors with a site have a median of 16 reviews. Inspectors without one have 0. We are not claiming the site produces the reviews; firms that take the business seriously tend to do both. But the correlation is stark, and in a trade where the buyer decides in a day or two, a firm with nowhere to send a sample report is losing the comparison before it starts. It also means a third of the field cannot be quoted by an AI assistant, cannot show a sample report, and cannot run a paid ad that lands anywhere.
Hours, photos and the Saturday problem
58.8% of inspectors list no hours on Google and only 31.6% show Saturday hours, with 21.7% on Sunday. Inspections get scheduled around a buyer's work week, so Saturday morning is prime time in most markets. A profile with no hours shows nothing useful; a profile that says closed on the day the buyer wants to book pushes them to the next name. Only 6.3% list themselves as available around the clock.
The one field almost everyone gets right is imagery: 92.1% have at least one photo, so having none puts you in the bottom few percent instantly. 28.2% publish an email address, which matters more here than in most trades because agents forward, they do not dial.
What to do with this
- Pull your own three numbers first: review count, rating, and whether a website is actually linked on your Google profile.
- Place yourself honestly. Under 4 reviews is the bottom half of 27,687 firms. Under 39 is the bottom three quarters. 161 and up is where the firms on every agent's short list live.
- If you are in the 35.4% with no website, fix that before anything else. Five pages, tap-to-call, a redacted sample report, and your counties named in plain text.
- Set a review process: one ask at the end of every walkthrough, one reminder text at 48 hours, tracked weekly. That alone moves most firms two percentiles a quarter.
- Fill in real hours, including Saturdays if you work them, and turn on missed-call text-back. Run the calculator to see what the unanswered ones cost you in a year.
- Only then buy traffic. Ads pointed at a profile with three reviews and no sample report pay for your competitor's education.
Method
This report aggregates 27,687 public Google Business Profile listings collected from Google Maps searches for home inspectors across every US state, deduplicated by place. Review counts and ratings are as displayed on the listing at collection time. "Website listed" means the profile links to any URL; we classify the URL as an owned domain, a social profile, or a free site builder by hostname. Figures are refreshed monthly. Cite this page as: Inspector Growth Lab, "Home inspectors on Google benchmark report", 2026.