How many Google reviews does a plumber need?
Updated October 2026
Quick answer
In Basingstoke, the typical plumber has 26 Google reviews. Across the markets we measure, plumbers range from 12 (Bicester) to 90 (Milton Keynes).
Plumbers town by town
Every town where we publish a figure, lowest first. A figure is published only where at least 15 plumbers with premises were checked within the last 120 days. Pick a town to put its own number in the answer at the top of the page.
| Town | Typical reviews | Top third from |
|---|---|---|
| Bicester† | 12 | 32 |
| Carlisle | 14 | 16 |
| Mansfield | 14 | 22 |
| Taunton | 18 | 26 |
| Wolverhampton | 18 | 30 |
| Gloucester | 19 | 33 |
| Shrewsbury | 19 | 25 |
| Leighton Buzzard | 25 | 35 |
| Basingstoke | 26 | 86 |
| Lincoln | 26 | 38 |
| Swindon | 26 | 47 |
| Guildford | 28 | 67 |
| Chelmsford | 30 | 49 |
| Worcester | 32 | 39 |
| High Wycombe | 33 | 53 |
| Darlington | 36 | 80 |
| Wakefield | 36 | 54 |
| Preston | 37 | 61 |
| Doncaster | 38 | 79 |
| Exeter | 48 | 60 |
| Bolton | 49 | 82 |
| Peterborough | 51 | 67 |
| Sunderland | 51 | 80 |
| Norwich | 57 | 76 |
| Southampton | 57 | 69 |
| Glasgow† | 61 | 78 |
| Leeds | 68 | 94 |
| Aberdeen | 69 | 101 |
| Nottingham | 73 | 89 |
| Aylesbury | 78 | 136 |
| Bristol | 82 | 106 |
| Cardiff | 85 | 168 |
| Milton Keynes | 90 | 139 |
† At or within one of the 15-business floor (Bicester, Glasgow). These figures are true for the plumbers we hold but rest on the fewest of them we will publish from, so one listing opening or closing can move them, and they are the most likely to be withdrawn at the next refresh.
We also hold plumbers in Harrogate, Paisley, Lowestoft, Tring, Thame — but not the 15 businesses with premises we need before publishing a figure, so those towns get none.
How review counts are spread: Plumbers
Solid bars mark the typical count for plumbers, and where the top third and the top 10% begin.
- under 1015%
- 10 to 2424%
- 25 to 49typical: 3819%
- 50 to 99top third from 6621%
- 100 to 249top 10% from 17615%
- 250 or more6%
Half of the plumbers we measure sit between 14 and 86 reviews. 21% have reached 100 reviews or more.
Ratings rarely set businesses apart: the typical plumber already shows 4.9 stars, and 90% of plumbers are at 4.5 or above. Review count is what differs.
What a click costs, against what an ask costs
Google Ads charges a plumber for every click on a search like “emergency plumber [town]”. Across the towns where a figure is reported, the typical click costs $14.17; the dearest is Guildford at $24.99. Those figures come from DataForSEO Labs keyword_overview for Google Ads, retrieved 21 September 2026 to 22 September 2026, in US dollars as DataForSEO reports them. Where the emergency term is not in DataForSEO's database, the plain “plumber [town]” term stands in.
Asking a customer you have already served to leave a review costs 24p through DriveMoreReviews on the entry plan (£24 a month for up to 100 customers). One click bought, or about 47 customers asked at the typical click price (taking $1 as 79p) — and the click is gone the moment the searcher moves on, while a review stays on the listing. That is the contrast, not a claim about how many of those asks turn into reviews.
Questions about plumber reviews
- How many Google reviews does a plumber need?
- The typical plumber has 38 Google reviews, so that is the first number to beat. 66 puts a plumber in the top third of the plumbers a customer is choosing between, and 176 in the top 10%. Your own town matters more than any of those: the table above runs from 12 in Bicester to 90 in Milton Keynes.
- What is a good Google rating for a plumber?
- The typical plumber shows 4.9 stars, and 90% of plumbers are rated 4.5 or above, so anything below 4.5 stands out against them. 78% are at 4.8 or higher. Ratings bunch this tightly in local search, which is why a rating on its own rarely separates one plumber from the next - the review count does.
- Which towns have the most-reviewed plumbers?
- Milton Keynes, where the typical plumber has 90 Google reviews, then Cardiff and Bristol. The table above lists every town we publish, lowest first, so you can read off your own rather than the top of the list.
- How many 5-star reviews cancel out a 1-star?
- At a 4.6 average it takes 9 five-star reviews; at 4.8 it takes 19, and at 4.9 it takes 39. The arithmetic is (your rating − 1) ÷ (5 − your rating), rounded up, so the higher your average the more one 1-star costs to undo. The review calculator does it for your own rating and count.
- How do plumbers get more Google reviews?
- By asking every customer, soon after the job, with a short message and one link. Left to chance, a listing collects reviews only from the people who think to go and find it; an ask reaches the rest. If you do not have the link yet, get your Google review link and QR code free. DriveMoreReviews sends that ask by text for you.
Where these numbers come from
For each town we read the public Google Business Profile listings Google returns for “plumbers [town]” — up to sixty — and keep only businesses with a street address in the town. Service-area listings with no address, suppliers and training providers, listings with fewer than three reviews, and businesses whose Google primary category is not one we count as a plumber are all removed before anything is counted. A town is published only when at least 15 businesses survive that, and only while the figures are under 120 days old; a town whose figures go stale is withdrawn rather than shown as current.
That leaves 823 UK plumbers with premises, across 38 towns, checked October 2026. The typical figure we quote is the median rather than the mean, because a handful of very large counts pull a mean above where most of a market actually sits. We do not name businesses: the median, the spread and the count are the market; the names are not ours to publish.
Cite this page
Source: DriveMoreReviews, How many Google reviews does a plumber need? (October 2026), https://drivemorereviews.com/google-reviews/plumbers
You may quote these figures with a link to this page.
Other business types: Electricians, Roofers, Builders, Garages, Estate Agents — or the Google review calculator, which holds every business type and town we publish.