Here's a number that should bother every contractor in North Alabama.

We pulled Google's first page for six of the most common "find a contractor" searches across Huntsville, Madison, Decatur, and Athens — HVAC repair, plumbing, roofing, electrical, garage door repair, and painting. Fifty-three results in total.

Of those 53 page-one spots, only 18 — about one in three — were an independent local contractor's own website.

The other two-thirds? Directories, national franchises, Reddit threads, and Facebook pages. The businesses that actually do the work in your town are getting outranked, on their own turf, by platforms that have never held a wrench.

Let me show you exactly what we found, because the breakdown is worse than the headline.

What we did (so you can check our work)

No surveys, no opinions. We searched six core trade-plus-city queries and logged every result on Google's first page, then sorted each one into a category: the contractor's own website, a directory or review platform, a national franchise, a Facebook-only page, or irrelevant.

The six searches:

  • HVAC repair, Huntsville
  • Plumber, Madison
  • Roofing company, Decatur
  • Electrician, Athens
  • Garage door repair, Huntsville
  • Painter, Madison

It's a snapshot, not a census — six searches on one June day, pulled through an SEO tool rather than from inside any one neighborhood, so exact positions shift with location and time. But the pattern was consistent enough across all six trades that the direction isn't in doubt. Here's what showed up.

Finding 1: Only 34% of page-one results are a real local contractor's site

Eighteen of fifty-three. That's the number that matters.

When a homeowner in Madison searches "plumber madison al," they see ten results. On average, fewer than four of them lead to an actual local plumber's website. The rest send that homeowner to a directory that will sell their information, a national chain headquartered three states away, or a Facebook page.

Every one of those non-local results is a spot a local contractor could have owned — and didn't. (If you've never looked, it's worth seeing exactly what Google shows when someone searches your business — most owners are surprised.)

Finding 2: Directories take 40% of the page — and some of them are charging you for it

Twenty-one of the fifty-three results (40%) were directories, review platforms, forums, or "best of" listicles. Not one of them is a business that will show up and fix a furnace.

The repeat offenders: Yelp, Angi, BBB, Thumbtack, Nextdoor, Reddit, the Chamber of Commerce directory, and national "top 10" roundup sites.

Here's the part with teeth. Yelp appeared on page one for all six searches. Every single trade. BBB showed up on four of six. Angi on two.

Think about what that means if you're a contractor paying Angi or Thumbtack for leads. You're paying a platform to send you customers — and that same platform is outranking your own website for your own service in your own city. You're renting back the visibility you could own outright. The middleman isn't just taking a cut; he's standing in front of your store. (I ran the full math on what those leads actually cost in my breakdown of Angi Leads.)

Finding 3: Some local contractors are running on a Facebook page and nothing else

Five of the results we logged weren't websites at all. They were Facebook pages — local contractors with no site of their own, relying entirely on a platform they don't control.

In the Athens electrician search, two of the local results were Facebook: one business page and one "anybody know a good electrician?" group post. The painter search and the garage door search each had one.

A Facebook page can disappear or get throttled the day Meta changes its mind, and it gives you almost nothing in Google's eyes. These contractors aren't ranking — they're squatting on borrowed land, one algorithm tweak from invisible. A free, fully-built Google Business Profile plus a real website would put them miles ahead of where they're standing now.

Finding 4: Decatur roofing proves it's winnable

Now the good news, because this isn't a story about local contractors being doomed.

The roofing search in Decatur broke the pattern hard: five of the nine results were independent local roofers' own websites — River City, Jones Roofing (in business since 1972), Pioneer, B&B (since 1967), and Burnett. The directories were there, but they were buried under actual Decatur businesses.

The difference wasn't luck. Those roofers have real websites with real depth — service pages, history, service areas, the works. They invested, and they own page one for it. When local contractors actually build, they win. Most trades just haven't, which is why a paint-and-sip art studio (yes, really) outranked half the actual painters in Madison.

What this means if you're a North Alabama contractor

The takeaway isn't "Google hates small businesses." It's the opposite. Page one for your trade in your town is sitting half-empty, occupied by middlemen and out-of-town chains that a local business with a real website can push aside — the way those Decatur roofers did.

Three things the data says out loud:

If you're paying for leads from a platform that outranks you, you're paying twice. Once for the lead, and again in the visibility you handed them by not ranking yourself.

A Facebook page is not a website. If that's your entire online presence, you're not in the race. You're watching it from a borrowed seat.

The trades that win are the ones that built something real. Depth beats directories. The roofers proved it. (If you want the playbook for how local ranking actually works, start with local SEO for contractors.)

The honest limitations

I'm not going to pretend six searches is the final word. It's a directional snapshot: one day, one tool, six trades. Local search results vary by exact location and change constantly. A contractor could be ranking beautifully inside their own zip code and not show in our pull, or vice versa. Treat these numbers as a clear signal, not a courtroom exhibit.

But across six different trades in four different cities, the same thing kept happening — local contractors outnumbered on their own search results by platforms and chains. When a pattern repeats that cleanly, it's telling you something true.

What we do about it

Full disclosure: Sites On Call builds websites for North Alabama contractors, so we have a dog in this fight. We ran this study because we kept seeing the same thing in the field and wanted to know if the numbers backed it up. They did.

If you're a contractor in Huntsville, Madison, Decatur, Athens, Hartselle, or anywhere in between, and you're tired of watching Yelp and Angi rank above your own name, that's a fixable problem. A real website with the depth those Decatur roofers have is how you take the spot back.

Or take this data and do it yourself. Plenty will. The point isn't who builds it — it's that page one for your trade is half-empty, and right now the middlemen are the ones filling it.

— Irene Daniels, Sites On Call

Methodology note for anyone citing this: results pulled June 2026 via SEO SERP analysis for six trade-plus-city queries (HVAC/Huntsville, plumbing/Madison, roofing/Decatur, electrical/Athens, garage door/Huntsville, painting/Madison); 53 total first-page results categorized as independent local site, directory/review platform/forum, national franchise, Facebook-only, or irrelevant. Categories and counts available on request.