Ask a marketing company whether your website needs a blog and you'll usually hear yes. Osprey writes blog posts for clients and publishes this blog every day, so we have a stake in the answer too. That's why we went and counted instead of guessing.
On October 31, 2026, we ran Google's business search for eight trades in 16 cities, 8 in the US and 8 in Canada, and opened the website of every business it showed us. 2,003 sites loaded. On each one we looked for a blog and the date of its newest post.
6 in 10 contractor websites have a blog. Only 1 in 3 posted anything in the last 90 days, and about 1 in 4 blogs hasn't had a new post in over a year. Businesses in Google's top 3 don't blog any more than others with the same number of reviews.
The Short Answer: A Blog Won't Lift You on the Map, but It Can Answer Searches Your Service Pages Can't
If you want more calls from the map results, a blog isn't the lever. Google's page on local ranking lists three things: relevance, distance and prominence. It says prominence is how well-known a business is, and that it's also “based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.” Blog posts don't come up on that page, and our data lines up with it.
A blog does other jobs. It can answer the questions people type before they're ready to call, like why the furnace is blowing cold air or how long a metal roof lasts, and show up in the regular results under the map. It gives your office a link to send when a customer asks. And it tells a visitor the business is busy, as long as the newest post isn't from 2021.
Here's what we found:
- 6 in 10 sites have a blog (1,234 of 2,003). Heating and air conditioning companies blog most. Electricians blog least.
- Only 1 in 3 posted in the last 90 days (646 of 2,003).
- About 1 in 4 blogs has gone quiet for over a year. 69 haven't posted in over five years.
- Businesses in the top 3 don't blog more than lower-ranked businesses with similar review counts.
- 12 unrelated companies publish the same articles word for word, including two that showed up in the same Phoenix search.
- 82 sites still show WordPress's “Hello world!” sample post.
How We Checked 2,003 Contractor Websites for a Blog
We searched Google's business listings for plumbers, HVAC companies, electricians, garage door repair, pest control, roofers, house painters and landscapers. The US cities were Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, Charlotte, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Sacramento and Pittsburgh. The Canadian cities were Mississauga, Surrey, London (Ontario), Halifax, Saskatoon, Regina, Kitchener and Oshawa. That's 128 searches with up to 20 businesses each, and we asked Google to include businesses that hide their address.
That gave us 2,188 different websites. We opened each one in a browser with no window on screen, blocked our visits from landing in the owners' Google Analytics and didn't try to get past bot checks. 2,003 loaded as the business's own site, 1,004 in the US and 999 in Canada. Another 132 showed a bot check or an error page, 42 were dead, parked or nearly empty, and 11 didn't load or pointed to a social media or directory page instead.
We looked for posts four ways. WordPress sites have a built-in list of posts with each one's publish date, so we read that first. Then we tried the site's news feed, then the blog page itself, then the site map that tells Google which pages exist. A site counted as having a blog if it had at least one real article. We read odd-looking titles by hand and set aside 29 sites whose only posts are leftovers from a website template, like “Sample Post” or a few paragraphs of fake Latin.
What this can't tell you:
- We measured blogs, not results. We didn't see anyone's traffic or leads. A busy blog can bring in nothing, and three good posts can bring in visits for years.
- Some dates are rough. We used publish dates wherever a site gave them. For 19 sites we only had the date a post was last changed, which can be newer. We couldn't date 20 blogs at all.
- Post counts are floors. WordPress hands out 100 posts at a time and news feeds usually 10 to 20, so a site with more had more.
- Google's business search isn't the map on your phone, and we ran it once. Treat the ranking comparison as a rough check.
We haven't named any business in this post.
6 in 10 Contractor Sites Have a Blog, and Busier Companies Blog More
1,234 of the 2,003 sites (61.6 percent) have at least one real article. US sites are more likely to have one than Canadian sites, 71.3 percent against 51.9 percent.
By trade, heating and air conditioning companies blog most (77.0 percent), then pest control (72.4 percent) and roofers (67.1 percent). Electricians blog least, at 44.0 percent.
The clearest pattern is size. Here's the share with a blog by the number of Google reviews a business has:
| Google reviews | Sites | Have a blog | Posted in the last 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fewer than 50 | 420 | 32.4% | 13.6% |
| 50 to 199 | 746 | 56.3% | 25.7% |
| 200 to 999 | 590 | 77.5% | 43.9% |
| 1,000 or more | 247 | 89.5% | 55.9% |
A company with 1,000 reviews often has an office manager, a marketing budget or an agency, and a blog tends to come with that. It doesn't mean the blog brought in the reviews.
The website builder matters too. 72 percent of WordPress sites have a blog, against 36 percent on Wix, 34 percent on Squarespace and 29 percent on GoDaddy's builder. WordPress started out as blogging software, and it shows.
Only 1 in 3 Posted in the Last 90 Days, and 1 in 4 Blogs Has Gone Quiet for a Year
Having a blog and keeping it going are two different things. Here's when the 1,214 blogs we could date last published something:
| Newest post | Sites | Share of dated blogs |
|---|---|---|
| Last 30 days | 461 | 38.0% |
| 31 to 90 days ago | 185 | 15.2% |
| 91 days to 1 year ago | 251 | 20.7% |
| 1 to 2 years ago | 122 | 10.0% |
| 2 to 5 years ago | 126 | 10.4% |
| More than 5 years ago | 69 | 5.7% |
646 sites, 32.3 percent of all 2,003, posted in the last 90 days. If every blog we couldn't date were active too, it would still be only 33.3 percent.
At the other end, 317 blogs (26.1 percent of the ones we could date) haven't had a new post in over a year, 195 in over two years and 69 in over five. A customer who clicks Blog and finds a newest post from 2021 sees a business that stopped paying attention in 2021. That's a bad look whether Google notices or not.
The steady ones are a minority. At least 378 sites (18.9 percent) posted 12 or more times in the last year. Among the blogs we could count that posted at all in that year, the median was 13 posts, about one a month. At the far end, 35 sites published 100 or more posts in 12 months, two a week or more.
Businesses in Google's Top 3 Don't Blog More Than Others With the Same Reviews
Businesses in Google's top 3 do have blogs more often: 70.5 percent of top 3 spots against 63.3 percent of spots 4 to 20. But they also have more reviews, and reviews go with blogging. So we compared like with like:
| Google reviews | Top 3: has a blog | Spots 4 to 20: has a blog |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer than 50 | 13.0% (23 spots) | 35.9% (415 spots) |
| 50 to 199 | 55.1% (98 spots) | 58.0% (695 spots) |
| 200 to 999 | 77.0% (135 spots) | 78.6% (532 spots) |
| 1,000 or more | 90.7% (97 spots) | 92.5% (240 spots) |
Within each review range, the top 3 blog no more often than everyone else, and in every range a little less. If the top 3 blogged at the same rate as lower-ranked businesses with similar reviews, we'd expect 261 of their 353 spots to have a blog. 249 did. For blogs that posted in the last 90 days, we'd expect 151 and found 134. The fewer-than-50-reviews row is only 23 spots, so don't read much into it.
That fits what Google says about local ranking. It doesn't mean a blog can't help your website in the regular results under the map, which run on a different set of signals. We didn't measure those here. It does mean that if the map is your goal, your time goes further on your Google Business Profile and your reviews than on posts. That's where our local SEO work starts too.
12 Unrelated Companies Publish the Same Articles Word for Word
Some contractors buy blog posts from a marketing company, and some of those companies sell the same posts to more than one client. We lined up the titles of every post we found. 606 titles turned up on two or more sites. Most were the same question asked by different writers, with different articles underneath. So we opened every copy and compared the text sentence by sentence.
12 businesses that aren't related to each other carry articles that match another company's word for word. They fall into two groups:
- Seven heating, cooling and plumbing companies in six cities across the US and Canada. One pair shares 33 identical posts. In a pair we read line by line, the only differences were the city, the company name and the phone number. Two of the seven showed up in the same Phoenix search, so a homeowner comparing them would read the same advice under two different logos.
- Five Canadian heating companies in five cities with the same marketing company's name in their footers. Some of their posts are identical. A sixth company in that group uses the same titles with the text rewritten.
We left out franchises and sister companies that share posts on purpose, like a national painting brand's local sites. 12 of 1,234 blogs is about 1 percent, so canned posts aren't common in this sample. But you can't spot it from your own site. You'd have to search for a sentence from your blog to find out.
Is it a problem? Google's 2008 post on the subject says, “There's no such thing as a ‘duplicate content penalty.’ At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.” Its current spam policies do list “Republishing content from other sites without adding any original content or value, or even citing the original source” as abusive scraping. A post you paid for isn't scraped. But when the same article sits on seven sites, we wouldn't expect Google to show all seven for the same search. You paid for the post, and another company's copy may get the visit. You can read Google's duplicate content post yourself.
Not sure what your blog is doing for you? Book a free 20-minute call. We'll open your blog with you, check when it last posted and search a few of your sentences to see if anyone else has the same words.
Book a Free Blog Check →82 Sites Still Show WordPress's “Hello World!” Post
A new WordPress site comes with a sample post called “Hello world!” It says “Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!” 82 of the sites we checked still publish it, and for 57 of them it's the only post. We opened 20 of those posts again, and 16 still show the sample text word for word.
102 sites (5.1 percent) still publish some kind of placeholder: “Sample Post”, “Blog Post Title”, a test post, a web host's welcome post or fake Latin. For 29 sites, placeholders are all the blog has. These posts are public, and anyone who clicks around your site can find them.
It takes five minutes to fix. Delete the post. If it's your only post, take the blog link out of your menu until you have something to say. If your site has bigger problems than one stray post, our website design page covers what we'd look at first.
Start, Fix or Pause: What to Do With Your Blog
Here's how we'd decide:
- Check your newest post date. If it's over a year old, start posting again or take Blog out of your menu until you do.
- Delete the leftovers. Look for “Hello world”, “Sample Post” and anything in Latin.
- Search one sentence from your blog. Put a sentence from one of your posts in quotes and search Google for it. If other companies' sites come up with the same words, ask whoever writes your posts where they came from.
- Write what only you can write. Your prices, the problems you see on jobs in your area, the questions customers ask on the phone. Google's guidance on helpful content asks, “Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?” A canned post can't do that. You can.
- Pick a pace you can keep. One useful post a month for a year beats ten in March and nothing after. Don't pad posts to hit a length, either. Google's helpful content guidance asks, “Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't.)”
If you'd rather hand it off, that's what our SEO content service does. Whoever writes your posts, us included, should be able to show you which posts brought in visits and calls. If they can't, that's your answer. We put together a checklist for judging an agency's work, and posts take time to pull their weight, so here's a realistic SEO timeline. If shared content bothers you, it's not only blog posts: we found rival contractors using the same stock photos too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does blogging help a contractor rank in Google Maps?
Not that we could see. Google says local ranking comes down to relevance, distance and prominence, and it describes prominence in terms of links to your business and reviews. In our check of 2,003 contractor websites, businesses in Google's top 3 had blogs about as often as lower-ranked businesses with similar review counts (249 spots against 261 expected). A blog can still bring in visits from the regular search results and help customers trust you.
How often should a contractor post on a blog?
Google doesn't publish a number. Pick a pace you can keep for a year. Among the contractor blogs we could count that posted in the last 12 months, the median was 13 posts, about one a month. We'd rather see one useful post a month than ten in March and nothing after, because a blog that stopped in 2023 tells visitors it stopped.
Can I use the same blog articles as other contractors?
You can, but they'll do less for you. Google says there's no duplicate content penalty in the way most people mean, and a post you paid for isn't scraping. But when the same article sits on several sites, Google is unlikely to show every copy for the same search, and a customer who reads yours and a competitor's will notice. In our study, 12 unrelated companies carried word-for-word copies, including two that showed up in the same Phoenix search.