Google Business Profile for drywall contractors: the setup that gets repair calls
Primary category, the services list homeowners actually search, hours, photos that show finish quality, posts and Q&A, for a drywall company profile that ranks.
Open your Google Business Profile right now and look at it the way a homeowner with a hole in the hallway wall would. Does it say "drywall repair"? Does it show hours? Is there a photo of a finished wall, or is it a Street View shot of your house? For most drywall companies the honest answers are no, no and the house. 63.4% of drywall listings show no hours. The median has 3 reviews. This guide fixes the profile in an afternoon.
Claim it and get the category right
If you have never logged in, search your business name on Google, click "Own this business?" and verify. Google usually offers a phone or video verification for contractors; the postcard takes two weeks.
The primary category must be "Drywall contractor". Not "Contractor", not "General contractor", not "Remodeler". Google matches your listing to searches through categories, and "drywall contractor" is what the "drywall repair near me" and "drywall installation" searches resolve to. In the current dataset, 9,203 listings carry that category, so it is the pool you are competing in.
Add secondary categories only for work you actually do and want more of: Painter if you paint, Plasterer if you do plaster and veneer, Insulation contractor if you insulate before you hang. Do not add "Water damage restoration service" unless you have the equipment and the licensing to dry a house. You will get calls at 2 a.m. for a flooded basement and you will lose the lead to someone with fans.
The services list is where the calls come from
Under Services, Google lets you list specific services with a description and an optional price. This is the most ignored field on a drywall profile and the one that does the most work, because Google shows matching services directly in search results. List the things homeowners type:
- Drywall repair (holes, cracks, nail pops, door knob holes)
- Water damage drywall repair (ceiling stains, sagging board)
- Popcorn ceiling removal
- Texture matching (orange peel, knockdown, skip trowel)
- Ceiling repair
- Basement drywall and finishing
- Garage drywall
- Skim coating and level 5 finish
- Drywall installation for additions and remodels
- Soundproofing and double layer drywall
Give each a two-sentence description with a price range: "Drywall repair. Most patches up to 2 feet are $150 to $450 depending on texture and whether paint is included. Same-week scheduling." Ranges do not scare off good customers. They filter out the ones who were going to argue about $75.
Hours: list them, and list Saturday if it is true
63.4% of drywall companies show no hours. A profile with no hours shows nothing. A profile with hours shows "Open" in green during the day, which is a small but real nudge on a results page full of blanks.
Only 18.5% list Saturday hours. Homeowners look at their walls on Saturday. If you answer the phone on Saturday morning, say 8 to 12, listing it puts you ahead of four in five competitors on the day the calls come in. Do not list 24 hours. 3.8% of drywall listings do, and almost none of them mean it; the first missed 11 p.m. call earns a one-star.
Photos that sell finish quality
91.7% of drywall listings have at least one photo, so the bar is not zero. The bar is useful. Upload twenty, in this order:
- A finished wall under raking light with no visible seams. This is the money shot in drywall. Hold a work light at a low angle and photograph a level 5 wall.
- Before and after of a patch: the hole, the patch, the painted wall.
- A popcorn ceiling half-scraped, then smooth.
- A basement framed and hung, then taped, then finished.
- Your truck with the company name, and the crew in matching shirts if you have them.
- Texture samples: orange peel, knockdown, smooth, side by side.
Name the files before upload: "drywall-repair-ceiling-[city].jpg". Google reads filenames. Add two or three a month after that; recent photos signal an active business.
Posts and Q&A
Google Posts show up on your profile for a week. One a week is plenty. Keep them specific: "Popcorn ceiling removal openings the week of the 20th, two living rooms' worth of time left. Text a photo for a quote." A post with a price and a date gets clicks; "we're the best in town" gets nothing.
The Q&A section lets anyone ask a question publicly, and if nobody asks, you can. Seed it with the five questions you answer on every call:
- Do you do small repairs or only full houses? (Yes, and here is the minimum.)
- Can you match my existing texture? (Yes, orange peel, knockdown and skip trowel; smooth over texture is a skim job.)
- Do you paint after the repair? (Yes or no, with the price difference.)
- How soon can you come out? (Repairs usually within the week.)
- Do you work with insurance for water damage? (Your real policy.)
Answer in your own words from your own account. Those answers appear in the profile and in AI search summaries.
Reviews and the description
Your business description has 750 characters. Use them for services and area, not adjectives: "Drywall repair, hanging, taping and finishing, popcorn ceiling removal and texture matching for homeowners and builders in [city] and [county]. Level 4 and level 5 finish. Most repairs scheduled within the week."
Reviews are their own guide, but the short version for the profile: reply to each one and name the job in the reply. Replies are public text on your listing, and "popcorn ceiling" in a reply is one more match for the next search.
The monthly check
Once a month, ten minutes: confirm hours are still right, add three photos, post once, answer any new questions, and check the "Suggested edits" area, because Google will let the public propose changes to your category and hours and some of them stick if you ignore them. Compare your review count against the benchmark report and see which percentile you moved into.
Frequently asked
I work from home. Do I have to show my address? No. Set the profile as a service-area business, hide the address and list the cities and counties you cover. Google treats service-area businesses the same as storefronts for ranking in the map pack within your area.
Should I have one profile for repair and one for new construction? One profile. Two listings for one business at one address is a policy violation and both can be suspended. Put both kinds of work in the services list and let the description explain who you serve.
Does the free website Google offers count? Google retired its built-in site builder. Link a real five-page site; 49.4% of drywall contractors have none, and the ones with a site have a median of 6 reviews against 1 for the ones without. The website guide covers what it needs.
Profile setup and the monthly upkeep are part of the local SEO service in the free 14-day trial, if you would rather have it done.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, drywall companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor