What Google’s new online estimate filter means for roofers

By Emma Peterson. 

Dive into the world of online roof estimates with Demand IQ’s Austin Rosenbaum and Eagleview’s Peter Cleveland. 

In a recent Read Listen Watch® (RLW), Megan Ellsworth sat down with Austin Rosenbaum and Peter Cleveland. Austin is the founder and CEO of Demand IQ, a company that, in his own words, supports “hundreds of home service and home improvement businesses with tools for instant online quotes.” Peter is Eagleview’s VP of partner strategy. In this role, he works with other companies that are using Eagleview’s arial data and measurement tools, like Demand IQ. Using both of their expertise, this duo dove into a discussion around one of Google's newest additions to their search tool – an online estimate filter.  

This filter is an optional button that appears in the Google browser when users search for roofers in their area. For homeowners, this button adds to the roofing process the immediate, online shopping experience that we’ve grown to expect in the age of technology. As Austin put it, “Google understands homeowners want immediate answers, so this is a shortcut for customer experience to keep their platform relevant and users happy.”  

For contractors, this new button can offer both challenges and opportunity. Peter elaborated, “To me, this is all about lead gen. Companies that can offer online estimates are going to get more informed leads and homeowners that feel more confident about the process because of the price visibility.” Alternatively, contractors that don’t offer online estimates will struggle. Austin explained, “We’re seeing estimates that between 1 in 4 homeowners are clicking on this online estimate button. So, if you are not participating in this new feature from Google, you’re looking at a possible 20% drop from your usual visibility.”  

At the end of the day, Google’s addition of this filter has made it crucial for contractors to have an online estimator. So, how do you add an estimator to your website? That’s Demand IQ’s specialty! As we mentioned earlier, their entire focus is connecting contractors and other professionals with instant online quote tools. Austin gave a short explanation of how their estimating tool works:  

Our tool is an estimator that goes into your existing website. Then, when a homeowner lands on the estimator page, they will be prompted to input their address. It will then pull up the roof, ask for confirmation that it is the right roof and start pulling up information. From there, the homeowner will be given a survey that has the homeowner share why they are looking at roofing options...Once that’s done, the program will scan the roof, pull together information (like cost per square for selected materials) and create an estimate report. 

Where is it getting the data needed to do all this? That’s where the partnership between Demand IQ and Eagleview comes in. Peter explained, “Our AI model has been trained off of the millions and millions of roof measurements that we’ve done in the last few decades. It also has access to and uses the high-resolution imagery we’ve been known for. The result is a very accurate program. When I talk to contractors that use the AI program, they tell me it’s within half a square of accuracy.” 

Listen to the episode or Watch the recording to learn more about online estimates in the context of Google’s new filter.