What should a plumbing website have? I read 37 West Michigan plumbers’ homepages: 6 print coupons, 2 say what a job costs

A plumbing call is often a problem the homeowner has right now — water where it should not be, no hot water, a drain that will not clear — and otherwise a comparison of two or three names for one job. So a plumbing homepage has to show, within seconds, that you do the job, when you answer, how to reach you and roughly what it costs. Those can be counted on the sites a homeowner is actually shown, and this page counts them for West Michigan.

The measurement: 70 listings, 54 plumbers, 37 homepages

On 23 September 2026 I asked the Brave Search API for its local results for “plumbers <town> MI” in the eight towns I track — Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood, Grandville, Walker, Holland, Muskegon and Kalamazoo — and kept the first ten listings in each. They are Brave’s local listings, not Google’s map pack: the plumbers one search engine shows for a town on one day, not a ranking. Walker returned no local listings, as it did for every trade in the same sweep, so it is not in the numbers. The other seven towns gave ten listings each, 70 in all. A plumber listed in several towns counts once, which leaves 54 businesses; 10 of them appear in two towns or more, and 4 in three or four.

12 of the 54 listings name no website. The other 42 do, and 37 of those loaded as the business’s own site. Of the five that did not, two domain names no longer resolve, one listed page no longer exists (HTTP 404), one refuses automated requests (HTTP 403), which usually means a firewall rather than a dead site, and one listed domain is parked: its homepage is 114 bytes of script that forwards a browser to a domain-parking service. One more is worth knowing about: a listed website that now forwards to another company’s page announcing that the plumber has joined it. That page is what a searcher gets, so it is what I read, and it stays in the 37.

I fetched each homepage with curl — plain HTML, before any script runs, which is the first thing a search crawler or an AI assistant receives — and read it for the signals in the table. Two are the trade’s own: water heaters or tankless units, and drain cleaning, sewer work, camera inspections or hydro-jetting. The rest are the ones I read for every trade, from a tel: link and LocalBusiness-family schema (Plumber is one of its types) to reviews, booking links and the phrases a homeowner looks for. I read each dollar figure by hand and fetched each printed licence number again to confirm it is a number. The raw files are in the receipts.

What the homepage has (37 plumber sites, read 23 Sep 2026)	Sites	Of 37
HTTPS	37	100%
A phone viewport (built for mobile)	37	100%
A tap-to-call link	29	78%
Water heaters or tankless mentioned	29	78%
Drain cleaning, sewer, camera inspection or hydro-jetting mentioned	28	76%
Emergency, 24/7 or 24 hours mentioned	24	65%
A book-online or schedule-service link, or a scheduling tool	21	57%
A contact form in the page’s HTML	16	43%
LocalBusiness-type schema markup (Plumber included)	15	41%
“Licensed and insured”	14	38%
A warranty or guarantee mentioned	12	32%
Financing or monthly payments mentioned	11	30%
A free estimate, quote, inspection or consultation	10	27%
Reviews shown on the page (widget or feed, star rating or count)	9	24%
An FAQ (FAQ schema or an FAQ heading)	8	22%
Any dollar figure in the text	7	19%
A licence number (digits after “licence #”, “no.”, “number” or a colon)	5	14%
What a job costs (a price, read by hand)	2	5%

Town (23 Sep 2026)	Listings with no website	Sites read	Tap-to-call	Water heaters	Drain or sewer	Emergency or 24/7	Book online
Grand Rapids	2	7	6	7	6	6	4
Wyoming	2	8	7	7	6	6	6
Kentwood	2	6	6	6	6	4	6
Grandville	1	9	7	6	3	4	5
Holland	2	7	6	6	7	5	4
Muskegon	2	7	5	5	7	6	6
Kalamazoo	2	7	6	6	5	4	3
Walker	no local listings returned — not measured

Every town but Walker gave ten listings, and each of the seven had at least one that names no website. The other gaps between a row’s listings and its sites read are the sites that did not load — two in Kentwood, one each in Grand Rapids, Muskegon and Kalamazoo — and the parked domain, in Holland. A plumber listed in four towns appears in four rows; the first table counts it once. In every town most homepages name water heaters and most name drain or sewer work, Grandville’s drains (3 of 9) excepted; booking online runs from 3 of 7 homepages in Kalamazoo to 6 of 6 in Kentwood.

Before the website: 12 of 54 listings name none

The most plumber-specific number in the sweep is not on a website at all. 12 of the 54 plumbers’ listings name no website, where the roofers I read the same way on the same day had 2 of 54. That describes the listing, not the business — some of the twelve may have a site the listing does not show — but the listing is what the searcher sees. Add the listed websites that lead nowhere useful, the two dead domains, the page that no longer exists and the parked domain, and 16 of the 54 plumbers a search showed in these towns offer a homeowner no working site of their own to look at before calling.

When I read Google Maps’ first ten for Grand Rapids plumbers, roofers, HVAC companies and electricians on 15 September, all 40 listings had a website link (that measurement). Different engine and a different list, so the numbers do not compare directly, but every business Google put first had a site for its listing to point at. Search your trade and town on more than one engine, open your own listing as a customer would, and check the website it names before you touch the site itself. My directory check covers which free listings are worth having and which link to your site.

The baseline: the two big jobs, a number that dials, and a way to book

Water heaters and drains are the jobs a plumbing homepage is expected to name, and most do: 29 of the 37 mention water heaters or tankless units, 28 mention drain cleaning, sewer work, camera inspections or hydro-jetting, and 24 mention both. Four mention neither. Those four may well do the work — some plumbing firms live mainly on new construction or commercial jobs — but their homepages give a homeowner with a cold shower or a backed-up floor drain no sign of it. If you do the work, name it on the homepage and give it a page of its own: the top-ranked Grand Rapids plumbers I read on 15 September link a median of 12.5 service pages from their homepages (how many pages a contractor site needs).

HTTPS and a phone layout are universal here — all 37 have both — so they no longer set anyone apart. The tap-to-call link is common but not universal: 29 have one and 8 do not, at least not in the HTML a crawler receives, close to the 32 of 39 I found among the top-ranked Grand Rapids trade sites on 15 September.

24 of the 37 mention emergencies, 24/7 or 24 hours somewhere on the homepage; 13 use none of those words. That counts words, not service — a plumber who does not take night calls is right not to promise them — but a homeowner with water on the floor needs to know which kind you are before they ring. And 4 of the 24 that mention emergencies have no tap-to-call link a crawler can see, the one pairing that should never be split. If you answer at night, say so at the top, next to a number that dials; if you do not, print your hours.

The surprise is booking. 21 of the 37 homepages invite a visitor to book or schedule online, through a “book online” or “schedule service” button or a scheduling tool in the code — more than twice the share of the roofers I read the same day (12 of 46). The free estimate runs the other way: 40 of those 46 roofing homepages offer one, 10 of these 37 plumbing homepages do. A plumbing job usually starts with a visit, not a quote, so the phone and the booking link are the main buttons, and 32 of the 37 have at least one. The other 5 have neither, and no contact form in their HTML either: a crawler sees no way to reach them at all.

The rest of the baseline is thinner. 16 of the 37 have a contact form in the HTML (forms drawn by script are invisible to one fetch, so this is a floor), and a short form catches the customer who would rather not call. 15 carry LocalBusiness-type schema, the markup that tells a search engine what the business is and where; 22 do not (what schema does). And the median homepage is 267 KB of HTML before a single image or script file arrives, the largest 1.5 MB (does speed matter?).

35 of 37 plumbing homepages say nothing about what a job costs. Six print a coupon instead.

The gap: coupons where the prices should be

Seven of the 37 homepages print a dollar figure, and I read every one by hand (read 23 September 2026). Six of the seven use it for a discount: $75 off any plumbing service, $35 off any repair, $250 off a drain service, $100 to $500 off a new water heater, $200 to $253 off water treatment or a softener, and a $10 yard-sign discount. Of the eleven coupon figures the sweep stored, four are for water heaters and three for water treatment or softeners; the discounts sit on the big installs. One of the six is the page a listed website forwards to.

Only two homepages say what anything costs. One advertises a $78 whole-home plumbing inspection with a water-heater flush, as a special; the other carries an article teaser that puts one water-heater repair at about $450 (both read 23 September 2026). That is all of it: 35 of 37 West Michigan plumbing homepages give a homeowner no idea what a service call, a drain clearing or a new water heater costs. A coupon does not close that gap, because a discount is only useful to someone who already knows the price.

Closing it takes a paragraph, not a price list: the service-call or trip fee if you charge one, and a range for the jobs you do most — clearing a drain, replacing a water heater like for like, converting to tankless — with what moves the price. None of that is a quote, and it answers the question a caller would otherwise ring to ask (the case for published prices). Financing (mentioned on 11 of the 37) and a warranty (12) belong beside those ranges, where the coupons already are.

The licence number Michigan already makes you post

Plumbing is a licensed trade in Michigan. The Skilled Trades Regulation Act says no one may engage in or work at the business of a plumbing contractor, master, journey or apprentice plumber without a licence or registration, and only a licensed master or journey plumber may perform plumbing, with exceptions that include minor repair work and a homeowner plumbing their own single-family home under a permit (MCL 339.6107 on legislature.mi.gov, read 23 September 2026). With few exceptions a permit goes only to a licensed plumbing contractor, who records its licence number on the application, and a local government may not license plumbers itself (MCL 339.6125, read 23 September 2026): the state number is the one that counts.

The same article says where the number goes. A licensed plumbing contractor must display, in a conspicuous place at the entrance of its place of business, a sign giving the name of the business, the name of the licensed master plumber and the licence number, in letters at least three inches high (MCL 339.6111(8), read 23 September 2026). The Act does not mention websites at all — I searched its full text — so nothing in it puts the number on your homepage, and I am not a lawyer. But if the law wants the number on the sign at your entrance, it belongs on the page where a homeowner decides whether to call.

On the sweep, 14 of the 37 homepages say “licensed and insured” and 5 print a licence number; only 3 do both, so 11 make the claim without a number a homeowner could check. I fetched the five again and read each by hand. All five are real numbers, not phrases, but they are not the same kind of licence. One is labelled a plumbing contractor licence. Two are labelled master plumber licences, one printed beside a backflow-tester certification and the other beside contractor’s, mechanical and boiler licence numbers. The last two say only “License #” or “Michigan License #”, without naming the kind. If you print yours, say which licence it is. LARA’s Bureau of Construction Codes licenses journey plumbers, master plumbers and plumbing contractors, and its public “Find / Verify a BCC Licensed Professional or Business” search, linked from LARA’s online-services page, finds a licensee by name, business name, licence type or licence number (both pages read 23 September 2026).

Reviews, an FAQ and the towns you serve

9 of the 37 show reviews on the homepage — a review widget or feed, a printed star rating or a printed review count — so 28 give a visitor comparing plumbers no rating to see without leaving the page. How to show them honestly, and the Google and FTC rules that apply, are on the reviews page. 8 have an FAQ, which is the cheapest place to answer what a service call costs, whether you work weekends and which towns you cover before the phone rings (why and how).

The towns: the homepages name a median of 1 of the 8 sweep towns. 21 name exactly one, 2 name none, and 7 name four or more. If you work across a county, say which towns on the homepage and in your schema markup, in words a homeowner in Grandville or Kentwood will recognise. A separate page per town earns its place only when you have something true to put on it, such as jobs done there or a crew based there; Google’s spam policies give pages aimed at specific cities that funnel visitors to one page as an example of doorway abuse (developers.google.com, read 23 September 2026).

Verdict: what a plumbing website should have

Element	West Michigan plumbers (of 37)	Verdict
A website on your listing	42 of 54 listings	Check yours first. 12 of 54 listings name none.
HTTPS and a phone-ready layout	37 and 37	Table stakes. Every site here has both.
A tap-to-call link	29	Yes, at the top. 8 of 37 have none a crawler can see.
Water heaters named	29	Yes, if you do them, with a page of their own.
Drain cleaning and sewer work named	28	Yes, if you do them. Four homepages name neither job.
Emergency service, or your hours	24 mention emergencies	Say which kind of plumber you are, next to the number.
Book or schedule online	21	Yes. Already the majority, and it suits a service call.
A contact form	16	A short one, for people who would rather not call.
LocalBusiness (Plumber) schema	15	Yes. Cheap, and 22 of 37 leave it out.
A free estimate	10	For the big jobs. For a service call, state the fee.
What a job costs	2	The biggest gap. A fee and ranges beat a coupon.
Your licence number, with its kind	5 (3 name the kind)	Yes. The law puts it on your door; 32 of 37 print no licence number at all.
Reviews on the page	9	Yes. A widget, or a rating and count linked to Google.
An FAQ	8	Yes. Fees, hours, area and what happens on the first visit.
The towns you serve, named	median 1 of 8	Yes on the homepage; a page per town only with something true to say.

What this reading does not prove

• Brave’s listings, not Google’s map pack. These are the plumbers one search engine lists for each town on one day. They are not a ranking and not every plumber in the region.
• Homepages only, HTML only. A price list on a services page, or a form, booking widget or review widget drawn by script after the page loads, is invisible to one fetch. Every count is a floor.
• Words and buttons, not service. “Mentions emergency” means the word is on the page, not that anyone answers at night, and a “schedule service” button may open a form rather than a calendar. The five licence numbers are printed numbers; I did not look each one up.
• What the listing delivers. One of the 37 is another company’s page that a listed website forwards to; it stays in because it is what a searcher gets. The parked domain is counted apart from the sites read, as are the four sites that did not load.
• Correlation, not cause. Nothing here says which element wins calls. It says what a homeowner comparing these sites will and will not find.
• The law is summarised from three sections of the Skilled Trades Regulation Act linked in the receipts, and I am not a lawyer.

How we build it

A plumbing site we build starts from this list, not a template: the number and your hours (or your after-hours promise) at the top with a booking link beside them, a page for each job you do, the service-call fee and ranges for the common jobs, your licence number, reviews from your Google profile, an FAQ, the towns you serve, and the schema that says it all to a search engine. The Starter Site is from $999 for up to three pages, or $149 a month for twelve months; the Business Site, $2,499 starting for five to eight pages, is where a page each for water heaters, drains and sewer, and repairs fits; the Growth Site ($4,999 starting) adds one custom tool, such as an instant estimate range built on your own numbers. What a plumber should pay is worked through with the arithmetic. None of this page depends on hiring us.

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