How to Pick a Roofing Contractor Who Won't Screw You Over

You need a roof. You type "roofer near me" into your phone and about 40 names come up. Some have nice websites. Some have hundreds of reviews and a 4.9. Some look like they threw a website together last Tuesday.

I've audited 55 roofing companies in Atlanta. Not blog posts. Not Yelp. I pulled up every single profile. Looked at their websites. Counted their reviews. Checked whether their Google listing was even claimed. And I'm meeting them in person.

Here's what I learned about picking the right one.

1. Reviews matter more than anything

And I don't just mean the star rating. I mean how MANY reviews they have and how recently they got them. A roofer with 200 reviews got them over years. That means the business is stable, it's been doing work, and customers keep coming back to talk about it. A roofer with 4 reviews at 5.0 stars could just be the owner's cousins. You don't know.

2. Check whether the website actually works

I can't tell you how many roofers I found whose sites were broken. 404 errors. SSL certificates expired. One guy's site mentioned Toledo, Ohio on his Atlanta page. If the website doesn't work, what makes you think the crew will show up on time?

3. Look at the photos

Not stock photos. Real photos. Roofs they've actually done. Bonus points if the photos were taken FROM the roof. That means somebody on that crew is paying attention enough to pull out their phone and document the work. That's the kind of crew you want.

4. Check if their Google Business Profile is claimed

This is the one most people miss. Go to their listing. Scroll down. If it says "Claim this business," that means ANYBODY could be editing their phone number, their hours, their address. If they can't be bothered to claim their own Google profile in 2026, what else can't they be bothered to do?

And look, I'm not saying a roofer with zero reviews and a broken website is definitely going to do bad work. Some of the best roofers I've found have been doing it for 30 years on word of mouth alone. But the problem is you can't TELL. The guy with 100 reviews and real roof photos and a working website has done the homework. The other guy might be great. He might also not be. You're gambling with your house.

Here's what I tell people: treat the Google search the way you'd treat walking into a restaurant. You walk past the place with the broken sign and no menu in the window. You walk into the place that looks alive. Same thing with roofers. The profile is your first look inside.