Home Repair in Israel: 2,049 Google and Midrag Listings

When looking for a plumber or painter, it is tempting to assume that large directories show the same market. Open one list, sort by stars and choose. We tested that assumption with our own sample of home service listings in Israel. The main result calls for care in interpretation. The two sources contained 2,049 listings combined; a rating threshold of at least 4 out of 5 left 1,821. An automated visual comparison flagged only eight possible listing pairs across the sources. That last figure describes what our method managed to identify, not the true share of professionals present on both platforms.

This is an independent KABLAY editorial study carried out on 11–12 July 2026. It is not a national census, a ranking of services or verification of any individual’s qualifications. Listings, ratings and availability change. We publish aggregate counts and our method without names, phone numbers, profile photos or copies of third-party review text.

What we counted

For Google Places, we searched in Hebrew for eight home repair trades across about 54 Israeli cities: plumbing, electrical work, drywall, handyman services, painting, tiling, apartment renovation and stretch ceilings. Each query was limited to 20 results. We filtered clearly irrelevant categories and removed repeated results by place ID. This produced 1,142 Google listings. The study did not find more than 2,000 professionals on Google Maps alone.

The second part collected 907 listings from Midrag’s public results, deduplicated by profile ID. The sum, 1,142 + 907 = 2,049, is the number of listings in two sources before identity matching, not the number of distinct people. A listing may represent a company, an individual or a team; one person may appear on both platforms. We therefore do not describe 2,049 as a precise count of active tradespeople in Israel.

Google Places is information about businesses and places, not a professional licence registry. Midrag has its own review system. We did not check identity, documents and completed work in the same way for every profile. The selected cities, search terms and result cap also prevent extrapolation to the whole country or claims about either platform’s market share. Relevant providers outside the first 20 results of a query may simply be absent from this sample.

How many remained after a 4 out of 5 threshold

We put ratings on a common five-point scale. For Google we used the available five-point rating. We divided Midrag’s ten-point rating by two, so 4/5 corresponds to 8/10 there. A listing with no numeric rating does not pass the filter. That is missing information, not a judgment about the professional’s work.

Of 1,142 Google listings, 922 reached at least four. Another 59 were below four and 161 had no available rating. The formal filter therefore excluded 220 Google listings. Of 907 Midrag listings, 899 passed; eight had no available numeric rating, and none in this particular sample was below 4/5. Across the two sources, 1,821 listings remained and 228 were excluded: 59 for a rating below the threshold and 169 because no rating was available.

Those numbers do not mean 228 providers work badly or that 1,821 have been verified. An average depends on the number, age and substance of reviews, the work reviewed and how feedback is collected. In our data, only 692 Google listings met both a rating of at least four and a minimum of five reviews. That is a different, narrower filter. It would be misleading to present 692 as the result of the rating threshold alone or 922 as fully screened tradespeople.

What comparing Google and Midrag showed

A common name, city and trade are insufficient to identify the same person on two platforms. Two plumbers in one city can share a name and have similar scores. We therefore accepted only stronger visual evidence: five links based on face imagery and three based on a shared work photograph. The result was eight possible Google–Midrag listing pairs flagged automatically; each pair was not fully checked by a human.

Eight pairs are about 0.9% of the 907 Midrag listings examined. This is the rate of visual matches flagged by our method, not the market’s actual overlap. A professional may have no suitable photo, use a company name on one site or publish different material on each platform. Our method could then miss a genuine match. We did not manually verify every possible pair among hundreds of candidates. It is therefore not justified to assert that the true overlap is below 10%, even though the number of candidate links we could find was unexpectedly small.

The opposite mistake matters too. Linking people on a similar name or high rating alone may combine two separate professionals. That error can mislead customers and misrepresent the people involved. “Identity not established” is more responsible than a confident but weak match. We do not publish a list of suspected matches, and absence from another platform says nothing about anyone’s honesty or quality.

Why two directories may look different

Platforms differ in how people join, where they operate, which jobs they cover and how they maintain profiles. One tradesperson may rely on neighbours’ recommendations, another on map searches and a third on reviews in a specialist directory. These are possible explanations for the pattern, not causes our study measured. A different visible audience does not prove that one platform has “real” professionals and another does not.

The unit of analysis matters as well. A company listing can represent a crew, and one person can use multiple trading names. A search for a trade can return adjacent services. That is why we call the results candidate listings rather than verified individual workers. For example, our Google sample contained 378 electrician listings and 264 plumber listings, but only three for stretch-ceiling queries. This contrast reflects our terms, cities and result limits. It cannot tell us how many people work in each trade nationwide.

Time is another limit. We collected the sample in July 2026, while a customer hires someone now, in a particular city. Ratings can change, a specialist can move, rename a business or stop taking jobs. The study is useful for understanding search behaviour, not as a substitute for checking a current offer before booking.

How to use this finding when hiring

The first practical lesson: if one source shows few suitable options, broaden the search rather than concluding that a city has no professionals. Eight flagged visual links do not prove that the audiences are completely separate, but they do illustrate the limits of one list. Write a short brief describing the task, broad location, timing and access. Then compare replies against the same set of questions. This compares real offers for your job rather than only profile pages.

The second lesson: four stars can be a starting filter but not a hiring decision. Check how many reviews support the mean, how recent they are and whether they discuss work like yours. A review about installing a tap does not establish experience with a hidden pipe. Praise for painting a dry room does not address preparation of a damp wall. Do not attach another person’s reviews to a profile with a similar name unless the identity is adequately checked.

The third lesson is to verify terms beyond stars. Ask for a diagnosis, material list, visit price, a process for approving extra work if a concealed fault appears, and acceptance checks. Where a particular task requires qualifications or authorisation, check the documents and scope for that task. Our guide to professional documents suggests questions; the home service hiring guide helps prepare a comparable brief for several offers.

If a provider has profiles on multiple services, ask them for current links. Compare more than the display name: look at the type of work, service area, agreed contact channel and consistency of their portfolio. Do not put your full apartment address, entrance code or personal documents in a public comment. Share such details privately after choosing a provider.

What the study means for professionals

The small number of flagged cross-platform visual links is a reminder that one public profile does not necessarily provide visibility everywhere. Multiple profiles are not the same as actual jobs. A professional is better served by keeping services, service area, contact method and limits of work current in channels they really use. If an old or incorrect listing uses your name, request correction through the relevant service. Do not copy reviews or photos from another profile without rights and context.

A rating over four does not replace a clear quote or careful communication. Customers need recent examples of comparable work, an explanation of the stages and an honest answer to “what happens if opening the area reveals another fault?” Our KABLAY guide for professionals explains how our service works; it is separate from the Google and Midrag measurement.

Publication boundaries

We disclose the collection dates, sample sizes and arithmetic so that the results can be read correctly. We do not publish the listing database, other parties’ images or review text. Google Maps and Midrag are named as sources, not research partners or endorsers. Their ratings belong to each platform’s context and may change. The official Google Places policies set separate rules for attribution and retention when source content is displayed. This article contains no individual results on which to judge a named person.

The practical conclusion is straightforward: two samples contained 2,049 listings, the rating threshold left 1,821, and a strict automated comparison flagged eight possible links across sources. None of these figures alone tells you who will do your job best. Search in more than one way, check identity cautiously and decide on the specific work, terms and relevant documents rather than one star count or list position.