What a main contractor checks before they call you back
Nobody admits that the next twenty minutes are spent on Google. That quiet check is where a great deal of subcontract work is won and lost.
A main contractor has a package to let and four firms on a longlist. Nobody is going to admit that the next twenty minutes get spent on Google, but that is what happens, and it decides which two get the call.
This is the part of built environment marketing that firms consistently underrate, because it does not look like marketing at all. Nobody searched for you. Nobody clicked an advert. Somebody already had your name, went to check you out and formed a view. That check is where a great deal of work is quietly won and lost.
What they are actually checking
That you are real and current
A website last updated in 2019, a news page that stops three years ago, a Companies House record that does not match the letterhead. Any of these introduce doubt inside the first minute.
That you have done this before
Not work in general: this. The same building type, the same value band, the same kind of constraint. Generic capability statements do not answer that question and every firm has one.
That you are accredited for it
CHAS, SafeContractor, ISO certifications, sector approvals. If these are buried on an about page or mentioned only inside a PDF, assume they were not found.
That the numbers stack up
Turnover, headcount, typical contract value. A contractor letting a two million pound package needs to believe you can carry it, and will look for evidence rather than take your word.
That nothing alarming comes up
A search for your company name alongside a few unhelpful words is a standard part of due diligence. Far better that you know what it returns than that they find out first.
Why your website usually fails this test
Most contractor and subcontractor websites are built to introduce the firm to somebody who has never heard of it. Almost nobody arrives that way. The traffic is people who already have your name and are verifying you, and verification needs completely different content from introduction.
An introduction wants a story. A verification wants a list: projects with names, values and dates, accreditations with registration numbers, sectors stated plainly and a named person to speak to. The firms who win this are simply the ones who made those things easy to find.
The page most firms are missing
If you do one thing, build a properly written projects section. Not a gallery. A page for each project carrying the client, the value band, the duration, the scope, what was difficult and how it was handled, with real photographs taken at the time.
That page does three jobs at once. It answers the verification question in exactly the format a contractor is looking for. It ranks, because it is specific and almost nobody in the sector is writing this. And it is precisely the kind of structured, factual content AI assistants draw on when somebody asks who handles this sort of work.
The objection is always confidentiality, and it is usually softer than it appears. Values can be given as a band. Clients can be described rather than named. A page saying a three-storey Cat B fit-out of eighteen thousand square feet for a City law firm, completed in fourteen weeks, gives a contractor everything they need and names nobody at all.
What to fix this week
Put a date on something
A recent project, a recent post, anything carrying the current year. The total absence of a date is what makes a site feel abandoned.
Move accreditations up
Onto the homepage and the relevant service page, as logos with the registration numbers beside them rather than a line of text on an about page.
Name a human being
A named contact with a direct line beats an enquiry form for this audience every single time.
Search for yourself
Run the check they are going to run and see what comes back. It is the cheapest piece of competitive research available to you.
The check nobody runs on themselves
Once a quarter, take twenty minutes and do to your own firm exactly what a contractor would do. Open a private browser window so your own history does not flatter the results, and work through it properly.
Search your company name
Look at the first ten results and the panel on the right. Anything outdated, wrong or unflattering is doing quiet damage every time somebody runs this check.
Search your trade and your region
If you do not appear, that is not fatal, because this audience already has your name. It does tell you what a contractor sees when they go looking for alternatives to you.
Open the site on a phone
Most of this checking happens on a phone, frequently somewhere with poor signal. If it does not load quickly there, then for this purpose it does not load.
Ask somebody outside the firm
Give a friend the company name and two minutes, then ask what they concluded. Their answer is more useful than any audit you can run internally.
The point is not to catch a disaster. It is that most firms have never once looked at themselves the way their market does, and twenty minutes usually produces two or three obvious jobs.
None of this generates enquiries the way an advert does. It protects the ones you have already earned through relationships and reputation, which in this sector is most of them, and it is the difference between being longlisted and being called.
Would you survive the check?
Send us your website and the kind of package you want to win. We will tell you what a contractor would conclude in the first two minutes.
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