We don't need access to your jobs or your customer list, only your business name and your
A card on a counter is the foundation of this whole product, and a contractor has no counter. The work happens in a van, at a customer's house, or behind it, and once the job's done, the tools go back in the truck and the crew drives to the next one.
That doesn't mean there's nothing here for a plumber, an electrician, or a general contractor. It means the first thing worth having isn't a card, it's watching the Google listing itself, because a business with no storefront is the hardest kind to verify from outside and the easiest kind of listing to lose without noticing.
This page says both plainly: what to do about the listing, and where, if anywhere, a card actually belongs.
Eligibility for a listing was never about a storefront. Google states the rule directly:
"To be eligible for a Business Profile, a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours."
Business eligibility and ownership guidelines, Google Business Profile Help, read September 14, 2026
A contractor who drives to a customer's home meets that bar exactly as well as a business with a storefront does. Google calls this a service-area business: instead of a street address, the listing shows only the general area you cover.
It's also the hardest kind to check from outside. There's no storefront to drive past and compare against the listing. Everything anyone can learn about the business is whatever the listing itself says, and there's no equivalent of glancing at a sign out front to catch a mismatch.
That's exactly why this kind of listing benefits most from being watched. No number exists yet for how often a service-area listing gets suspended compared with a storefront's, and none is claimed here. The full mechanics of this listing type, what stays hidden and why it's harder to defend, are on the no-storefront page.
Your business name and a link to your Google listing. Nothing else.
Neither the card nor the nightly check needs a customer's contact information, and neither gets it: the screen after a phone taps the card doesn't know who's standing there until they choose, and the nightly check only looks at what's publicly visible about the business on Google.
Nothing connects to a contact list, a billing system, or a job calendar, because there's nothing for it to connect to. We don't read any of that, let alone pass it anywhere.
Three places suggest themselves, and none of them is the van.
The van itself. A customer never stands inside it and never comes back to it, so anything stuck to the dashboard goes unseen at the one moment they're satisfied. This one doesn't work.
The invoice or the estimate. The card we sell has adhesive on the back and is built to stay put on one surface, not travel inside an envelope. There's no paper version today.
Whatever the job leaves behind. This is the one that actually works: a water heater, a breaker panel, a furnace, a door you just installed, something the customer walks past again. One rule applies here too: NFC doesn't read through metal, a QR code does. On a metal furnace casing, tapping a phone won't work, scanning will. Look for the non-metal part, a plastic cover, a door frame, a label next to the unit.
Some jobs leave nothing behind to stick a card to. There, the card simply doesn't apply, and the nightly watch on the listing keeps running whether or not you ever use one. If a description would only work by swapping one word for another, it doesn't earn its own page, and a contractor is the one trade here where a card doesn't always fit.
Two things matter more here than at a counter where payment happens on the spot. The order runs estimate, then work, then invoice, then payment, often well after the job's done. That gap is exactly when asking for a review feels most tempting, and exactly when it's most likely to go wrong.
A discount in exchange for a review is banned no matter when it happens.
"Requiring or encouraging the posting of content that reflects a genuine customer experience without offering incentives associated with it."
Maps User Generated Content Policy, read September 14, 2026
A discount on the final invoice in exchange for a review is exactly that rule, just written in invoicing language. And while a customer still owes money, a request for a review is never fully voluntary. They don't know whether declining changes how quickly you'll show up next time. The safest moment is after payment clears, and when payment happens in person, the card only belongs on the table once the money has actually changed hands.
The complete rule set, with sources and read dates, is on the review policy page.
Nobody promises a spot in Maps, not even Google itself:
"Third parties can't promise or directly influence your business ranking."
Tips for working with third parties to manage your Business Profile, Google Business Profile Help, read September 14, 2026
We don't speak to Google on your behalf, don't manage your listing, and have no access to it. We don't write, order, or remove reviews. What we do is notice when something changes and say so the same day: every night we check whether Google still returns your listing, and compare six fields, name, address (blank on purpose for a service-area business, since blank is correct here), phone, website, category, and hours, against what we saw the night before. A monthly report and a yearly summary arrive on their own.
A yearly license runs $599, and a card, where one actually fits, is a one-time purchase, not a recurring fee, at $79 a year for an extra one. The exact breakdown is on pricing.
The full rules for asking for a review, with sources and the dates we read them, are on the review policy page. A profile with no storefront is also the one a stranger can most easily edit without your knowledge, covered on the changed listing page. And the complete rundown of what a service-area listing shows, what it hides, and why it's harder to defend than a storefront's is on the no-storefront page.
Every citation on this page comes from one of these pages. The link goes to the original source, not to our summary of it.
$599a year, plus $79 for each extra card. See the full price.