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Ways to grow
So you decided it doesn’t work. Maybe it works for somebody in a big city. Not here. Not in your market.
Then last year Google quietly changed what happens when a stranger in your town types home inspector near me — or asks an AI assistant who to call.
Google answers the question now. It builds that answer out of whatever it can find about you.
For most inspectors, what it can find is a name, a phone number, and a photo of a truck from six years ago.
Then you start hearing things you can’t explain
They’re getting inspections from it. Not from agents — from home buyers who found them on their own. People from out of town. People who never walked through a real estate office.
One guy says he doesn’t visit real estate offices as much anymore. He doesn’t have to. The work is coming to him.
Another one says he’s getting inspections from AI somehow. He doesn’t even understand it himself, but the phone is ringing and the callers say they found him on Google.
You’re sitting there with the same tool. Yours has done nothing for six years.
The agents you used to count on are leaving the business. The ones who are still around — the top producers — already have an inspector. They’re not shopping. You’re not getting in that door.
The agents you could have reached, the newer ones still building relationships, that’s the part of the market that’s been disappearing since 2023.
So the tool you gave up on is working for the guys at the meeting. The agents you used to grow on are gone. And the ones left aren’t looking for you.
If you can’t figure out how to get work that doesn’t depend on referrals from real estate agents soon, you might be forced to close the door and go back to work for the man.
Here’s what nobody told you
Google shows the profiles it has something to show. Photos. Recent posts. Reviews with real replies underneath. Services listed. Hours that are current. A description that tells a stranger what you do and where you do it.
Yours had a name, a phone number, and a picture of a truck.
The wrapped truck. The office. The staff photo. Maybe the tool bag on the tailgate.
Nobody has ever chosen an inspector because of a photograph of a truck.
What stops a stranger scrolling is you working. On the roof with the wind blowing your shirt. In the crawlspace with the flashlight. At the panel with a meter in your hand. Standing in an attic in July with the sweat showing.
That’s a man who does this for a living. A truck is a vehicle.
You didn’t try Google Business Profile and find out it doesn’t work. You set one up and never touched it again.
What you posted
A name. A phone number. One photo of the truck. It looked finished, so you marked it done and went back to work.
A listing with nothing to show is a listing Google has nothing to show. It’s a name in a phone book, and nobody has opened a phone book since 2009.
The other version
Some inspectors did hand it off. Paid a marketing company to look after it. A few months in, that company asked for photos. Asked again. Never got any.
That’s not because you didn’t care. Nobody ever explained what the photos were for, or what happens on Google when you actually feed the thing. So it sat at the bottom of the list, and eventually the company stopped asking.
We’ve been looking at inspectors’ profiles since 2006. Hundreds of them. This is the most common story we find, and it’s almost never the inspector’s fault. Nobody explained the job.
Remember the guy at the meeting getting inspections “from AI somehow”?
Google used to have a Questions and Answers section on every business profile. Customers asked, the owner answered, and those answers sat there working every day.
Google shut it down. November 2025. Gone.
What replaced it is Google’s own AI. When a home buyer asks about your company now — on Google, on Maps, or through an AI assistant — Google writes the answer itself.
It pulls that answer from your profile, your reviews, your photos, and your website.
The guy at the meeting has a profile full of action photos, fresh posts, and reviews with real answers underneath them. When Google’s AI talks about his company, it has something to say.
Your profile has a name and a phone number. Google’s AI has nothing to work with, so it sends the buyer to the other guy.
Nobody controls what Google’s AI says about you. But you control what it reads.
Here’s what we do about it
A profile that’s actually working brings people to your door who have never heard your name and weren’t sent by anybody.
Those people don’t call at ten in the morning. They call at nine at night from the couch. On Saturday afternoon from the parking lot of a house they just drove past. Sunday morning before the open house.
That’s the same trap that killed paid ads for half the inspectors who tried them. The ads worked. The phone rang. He was on a roof. She left no message and called the next name.
Josh answers every one of those calls. He qualifies the buyer, prices the inspection, books the job, sends the agreement, and takes the payment. At two in the morning. On Christmas Day. It doesn’t matter.
The profile brings them in. Josh books them. One without the other doesn’t work. Together, it’s a system.
What stays in your hands
You tell us the service area. We don’t guess which markets matter to your business.
Posts publish on a schedule. You see everything, and you can change anything, any time.
Field photos and short video. We can’t climb on the roof and take those — you’re already up there. We’ll tell you exactly what to shoot, and it takes less time than filling out a report page.
A short video review from a happy client at the end of the inspection, while she’s standing right there relieved. Most inspectors are afraid to ask. The ones who do have something on their profile no competitor can buy.
Month to month. Thirty days’ notice. No penalty. Stopping this accelerant doesn’t touch your four engines. Everything else — your reviews, your client list, your agent database — was always yours and stays yours.
What we won’t promise you
We can’t tell you you’ll rank number one, or that you’ll get a certain number of calls, or that a lead will cost a certain amount. Anybody who makes those promises is guessing, and you should ask them how they know.
Google does what Google does. Profiles get suspended without warning. Features disappear — the Questions and Answers section lasted a decade and vanished overnight. The ground moves, and we work with it as it is.
It isn’t instant. In a quieter market you’ll see the profile start to carry weight in a couple of months. In a market where other inspectors are already working theirs, longer.
Your website matters too. Google’s AI reads your site along with your profile. If your website is a brochure from 2016 with a contact form promising a reply within one business day, that’s part of what the AI is working from — and it’s pulling in the wrong direction. → The Converting Website
The profile and the phone, working together
Your Google Business Profile brings people to your door who never heard your name and weren’t sent by anybody. Josh makes sure every one of them gets answered, qualified, and booked — no matter when they call.
One without the other is half a system. Together, it’s how you stop depending on somebody else’s decision to send you work.