Painting contractors on Google: the 2026 benchmark report
Review counts, ratings, website presence and listing completeness for 88,392 painting contractors, computed from public Google Business Profile listings in 51 states.
Reviews
| Review count | Value |
|---|---|
| Median | 11 |
| Average (mean) | 46.2 |
| 25th percentile | 2 |
| 75th percentile | 39 |
| 90th percentile | 107 |
Share of painting contractors by review count:
| Bucket | Share of listings |
|---|---|
| 0 reviews | 12.3% |
| Under 10 | 46.1% |
| Under 25 | 65.8% |
| 100 or more | 10.8% |
| 500 or more | 1.2% |
Ratings
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Average rating | 4.73 |
| Rated 5.0 | 53% |
| Rated 4.5 or higher | 85.2% |
| Rated under 4.0 | 6.4% |
| No rating yet | 8.9% |
Websites
| Website status | Share |
|---|---|
| Website listed | 72.9% |
| No website listed | 27.1% |
| Own domain | 69.5% |
| Social profile only | 2.7% |
| Free or DIY builder | 0.8% |
Median review count for painting contractors with a website: 18. Without one: 3.
Profile completeness and hours
| Profile field | Share |
|---|---|
| Has a profile photo | 97% |
| Public email on profile | 20.5% |
| Open 24 hours | 7.5% |
| Open Saturday | 34.1% |
| Open Sunday | 16.4% |
| No hours listed | 39.4% |
Where the listings are
| State | Listings |
|---|---|
| CA | 2,246 |
| OH | 2,160 |
| NY | 2,146 |
| TX | 2,073 |
| PA | 1,973 |
| IL | 1,969 |
| NC | 1,932 |
| NJ | 1,909 |
| MA | 1,903 |
| GA | 1,877 |
| VA | 1,816 |
| FL | 1,810 |
Primary categories
| Google category | Listings |
|---|---|
| Painter | 28,783 |
| Painting | 11,039 |
| General contractor | 5,981 |
| Construction company | 4,411 |
| Contractor | 4,371 |
| Handyman/Handywoman/Handyperson | 4,366 |
| Roofing contractor | 2,703 |
| Auto body shop | 2,209 |
The median is lower than you think
Half of all painting companies on Google have 11 reviews or fewer. That is the most useful line in this report, because it resets what "behind" means. If your company has 30 reviews you are already in the top quarter of the trade nationally. The 75th percentile sits at 39.
That is comforting for about ten seconds, until you remember that you do not compete with the country. You compete with the two or three painting contractors who appear beside you in the map pack for your city, and those are drawn from the top of the distribution. The 90th percentile is 107 reviews, and only 10.8% of painting contractors have passed 100. That is the number worth chasing.
The spread is extreme. 12.3% of painting listings have no reviews at all, 46.1% have fewer than ten, and 65.8% have fewer than 25, while 1.2% have cleared 500. The mean of 46.2 is dragged upward by a handful of large multi-crew and franchise operations and describes almost nobody. Use the percentiles, not the average.
Ratings will not separate you
Average rating across the dataset is 4.7 stars, 85.2% of painting contractors sit at 4.5 or better, and 53% show a perfect 5.0. A 4.9 does not make you special in this trade; it makes you ordinary, and a spotless 5.0 with nine reviews usually just means nine reviews. Only 6.4% fall below 4.0, and that is the one place the star number decides anything, because homeowners spending four thousand dollars on a house they live in do not call a sub-4.0 contractor.
What separates listings is volume and recency. A company at 4.7 with 140 reviews, most of them from this year, outranks and outsells a 5.0 with a dozen from 2022. Also worth noting: 8.9% of painting listings carry no rating at all, which is a listing that exists and does nothing.
The website gap is the widest opening in the trade
27.1% of painting contractors list no website on their Google profile. The contrast is stark: painters with a site have a median of 18 reviews, painters without one have 3.
We are not claiming the website produces the reviews. Companies that treat this as a business rather than a truck and a ladder tend to do both. But for painting specifically the website carries weight that it does not carry for an emergency trade, because a homeowner comparing three bids wants to see finished work before they choose, and there is nowhere else to show them twenty before and after pairs. If you are in the 27.1%, that is the cheapest competitive gap on this page to close.
Listing completeness
97% of painting listings have at least one photo, so photos are table stakes rather than an advantage; what counts is whether yours are recent, yours, and paired before and after. Hours are messier. 39.4% of painting companies list no hours at all, and only 34.1% show Saturday hours even though Saturday is when homeowners walk their house and decide it needs painting. 20.5% publish an email address. Every empty field is a small reason for Google to rank someone else and a small reason for a homeowner to call the next result.
What to do with this
- Open your own Google Business Profile and write down four numbers: review count, star rating, whether a website is linked, and whether hours are filled in.
- Place yourself against the percentiles. Below 11 is the bottom half. Below 39 is the bottom three quarters. 107 and above is where map-pack winners live in a competitive city.
- If you are one of the 27.1% with no website, fix that before anything else. Five pages, tap-to-call, a gallery organized by interior, exterior and cabinets, and price ranges. See the website guide.
- Set a review target you can measure weekly. One review per completed project, asked at the final walkthrough, moves a 20-review company past the 75th percentile inside a year. The reviews guide has the exact ask.
- Fill in hours, add Saturday if you take Saturday calls, and turn on missed-call text-back so the estimate requests that arrive while you are spraying do not go to the next contractor. Run your own numbers in the calculator.
- Only then buy traffic. Ads pointed at a listing with four reviews and no website are a donation to the painting company two results below you.
Method
This report aggregates 88,392 public Google Business Profile listings collected from Google Maps searches for painting contractors 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: Painting Contractor Growth, "Painting contractors on Google benchmark report", 2026.