This is the report for a real plumbing company in a Maryland suburb, pulled from Google on 28 September 2026. We removed its name and its competitor's. We picked it because it sits exactly in the middle of the 163 DC-area plumbers we checked.
Straight answer: you will not catch 2,691, and you don't need to. Google weighs how many reviews you have and how recent they are, so steady new reviews are what move you in the map pack. At 219 reviews, most of them from the last year, you would out-number most of the plumbers in this data set.
One free thing this owner can do today: reply to every review that has no reply yet, even with a short thank-you. It costs nothing, Google notices, and so do people reading the reviews.
We pulled plumbing companies from Google in 29 cities across DC, Maryland and Virginia. This table covers the ones this report is built for: rated 4.4 stars or better, with between 5 and 100 reviews. That is 163 companies. Each is compared with the nearest of the third- to fifth-ranked plumbers in its own city, not the biggest company in the region.
| Low quarter | Median | High quarter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Their Google reviews | 13 | 27 | 54 |
| Their rating | 4.8 | 4.9 | 5.0 |
| Local rival's reviews | 2,090 | 2,626 | 4,097 |
| Gap (rival ÷ them) | 55× | 125× | 259× |
| Distance to that rival | 2.3 mi | 3.8 mi | 6.7 mi |
| Where | Companies | Median reviews | Median rival reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washington, DC | 9 | 23 | 2,966 |
| Maryland suburbs | 71 | 27 | 2,328 |
| Virginia suburbs | 83 | 27 | 3,364 |
A 4.9-star plumber with 27 reviews usually does not have a work problem. It has an asking problem: customers were happy and nobody sent them a link. That is the cheapest problem in this business to fix.
It is the rival's review count divided by yours. It looks brutal, and on purpose it is not the goal. Nobody closes a 100× gap. The number tells you who you are being compared with when a customer scrolls the map.
We use 16 new reviews a month for every report. That is roughly what a shop doing about 60 jobs a month gets when every customer is asked once, with one reminder. It is an estimate, not a promise. A slower shop gets fewer.
If your rating is strong and your count is low, more reviews will help and it is worth fixing. If your rating is weak, fix the work first. More reviews would only show the problem to more people.
Google Places data, pulled 28 September 2026 for 29 cities in the DC area. Only businesses Google tags as plumbers and marks as operating. Each Google listing is counted once. Numbers change every day; your report uses your own numbers on the day you ask.
The free review checker gives you your number in about ten seconds, for plumbers, HVAC, roofers and electricians in any US city. Or ask for the full report and we will email it with the straight answer.