Tear-offs, leak calls and siding

Manufacturer badges, and leak season versus re-roof season

Roofing and siding sites carry more manufacturer credentials than any other trade we check. Each badge is a claim a buyer can check on the maker's own locator, and a badge that does not match the locator is worse than no badge.

Leak and emergency wording is the wet-month search. Re-roof and siding wording is the dry-month search. A site with one roofing page competes for both with the same words, and a check in July says nothing about January. We read both windows and date every result.

What people ask

We type questions like these into Google and ChatGPT for a roofing or exterior company.

• “Who should I call to replace my roof in Beaverton?”
• “Who is a good siding contractor in Portland or Multnomah County?”
• “Can you recommend a licensed window installer near Lake Oswego?”
• “Who handles emergency roof leaks in Clark County?”
• “Who does roof moss removal and treatment in Gresham?”
• “Who installs fiber-cement siding in Washington County?”

A leak search needs a phone number and a local address on the page. A siding or window search needs project photos with the town named.

Shingle, siding and window programs, and the license behind them

• Oregon CCB or Washington L&I. The record shows how long you have been licensed. That is the check against a crew that arrived with the last storm. Neither the CCB record nor, for most exterior companies, the L&I record will say roofing, siding and windows. The site has to.
• ODA or WSDA pesticide license, if you apply moss treatment. A buyer can check it in the Oregon or Washington agriculture department's public license search. Put that number in text on your moss page, next to the CCB or L&I number.
• Shingle manufacturer programs. Name the tier on the site the way the maker names it on its locator: GAF (Master Elite, Certified Plus and Certified), Owens Corning (Preferred and Platinum Preferred), CertainTeed (the Contractor's Edge tiers Master, Pro and Premier) and Malarkey's Certified Contractor program (Certified Pro and Certified Premium).
• James Hardie. The contractor locator and the James Hardie Alliance, whose levels run Enrolled, Select, Preferred and Elite.
• Window and door programs. Andersen and Pella certify contractors; Marvin and Milgard authorize dealers. Milgard runs a Certified Dealer network, though its windows also turn up at the home centers, so say whether you are a Certified Dealer or only install the product.
• Associated Roofing Contractors of Oregon and SW Washington. If you belong, say so in text on the site, not only as a logo.
• Houzz and BuildZoom. Houzz for project photos, BuildZoom because it republishes your CCB record.
• The listings every contractor needs. Google Business Profile, Apple Business, Bing Places, Yelp and Facebook, with the same name, phone, website and service area on every one. Angi, Thumbtack and BBB are paid channels, worth it or not depending on the size of job you want.

Most manufacturer locators are zip-code search tools that load with JavaScript. In a September 2026 audit, the crawlers that fetch pages for AI answers showed no evidence of running JavaScript. A buyer can open the locator, so link it from the site rather than counting on ChatGPT to read it.

Badges with no license number, and stock roofs

• A badge with no license number. A shingle or Hardie logo sits in the header and the CCB or L&I number appears nowhere in the text. It is the gap we see most on roofing sites, and it is exactly what a storm-chaser's site looks like.
• Stock roofs. Photos that could be anywhere, with no dates and no towns, so nothing on the page ties the work to a place.
• An insurance page with nothing behind it. A free inspection or storm-damage landing page built for ads, with no service pages, no local presence and no normal way to ask for a re-roof estimate.
• Only the finished shot. Wide finished photos and nothing of tear-off, decking repairs, underlayment, flashing, valleys or pipe boots.
• Moss work with no page. Moss removal, moss treatment and roof cleaning sold on the phone or folded into one line on the roofing page. A search for roof moss removal in Beaverton has nothing on the page to match, and there is no place to put the pesticide license number.
• A form that only asks about damage. No roof age, material or size. It reads like a claims lead form.
• A menu the photos do not back up. Windows, siding and doors in the navigation, but every project caption is siding.

Looking nothing like a storm-chaser

After a windstorm or an ice storm, a buyer who checks you can spot the marks of a traveling crew: a mailbox or virtual office for an address, an out-of-state area code, a license only weeks old, a website built the week after a storm, and copy that is all insurance and never workmanship or product. Your site should make it obvious none of that is you.

Show a real local address, or a clear service-area policy that matches your Google profile. Put the license number in text. Keep ordinary pages for re-roofs, repairs and leak service next to any storm or insurance page, so claims work reads as one thing you do rather than the only thing.

How the report reads for a roofer

• Who you are. The CCB or L&I record: how long you have been licensed, and whether the number is in text on the site and matches the record. If you apply moss treatment, the same check on the ODA or WSDA pesticide license.
• Site basics. Whether service and project pages read as text for Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, and how fast they show on a phone.
• Pages for the jobs people search. Separate pages for roof replacement, repair and leak service, inspections, moss removal and roof maintenance, gutters, siding, windows and doors as you offer them, and a storm page only if storm work is real.
• Google Business Profile. A trade category that matches the work, such as Roofing contractor rather than General contractor, with services listed and real job photos.
• Map results. Where you show for roofer and siding searches in the towns you serve.
• Search results. Which pages come up for your name and for jobs such as roof replacement in your towns, and who holds the first page.
• AI answers. Whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview name you for questions like the ones above.
• Reviews. Count, recency and spread, and whether reviews name the job and the town.
• Listings, associations and brands. The same name, phone and address across those directories and your manufacturer listings, the tier you hold on the shingle, siding and window programs whose products you install, and ARC membership.
• Phone and estimate form. Whether the estimate form asks roof age, material and size, or which window, siding or door work and whether it is storm damage or a planned project, and whether a leak caller can tap to call.

We test from one location on one day, and the report says which, so nobody reads a single check as the whole county.