Rated People has gone. Where your next jobs come from now

On 16 September 2026, Rated People went into liquidation. Every tradesperson’s account was closed the same day. Within days, Checkatrade announced it had bought the Rated People brand and website, but not the memberships. If you were paying for leads through it, you’ve just learned the hard lesson: you never owned that pipeline. You were renting it, and the landlord has sold up.

Years of reviews now sit on a platform you can’t log into. The jobs still arrive on the Rated People website, but they go to Checkatrade members. Rated People’s own help page puts it plainly: “Rated People closed all memberships before it became part of Checkatrade.”

The same thing can happen with any directory or lead app. So this is what I’d do this month if I were a plumber, sparky, roofer or builder who has just lost a chunk of enquiries.

First, rescue what you can

Before you build anything new, grab what’s still reachable.

• Your reviews. Rated People says existing reviews “stay where they are”, and Checkatrade has said it plans to let former members import them, with no date confirmed. I wouldn’t wait for that. If your old profile still loads in a browser, screenshot every review tonight and copy the words into a document with the customer’s first name and the month. Tedious, yes, but you’ll want them for your own website.
• Your past customers. Rated People says eligible former members may get an email from Checkatrade about accessing past jobs, contacts and invoices. If that lands, export everything. Your past customers are the cheapest source of future work you will ever have.
• Your Google reviews. If you’d got into the habit of sending customers to Rated People instead of Google, stop. Google reviews sit on your Google Business Profile, and nobody can take that away from you.

Two things nobody can switch off

A lead platform gives you a tap you can turn on with a card payment. That’s genuinely useful when you’re starting out. The problem is that someone else holds the stopcock. They set the price and they decide who else sees the job. And, as we’ve just seen, they can shut the whole thing overnight.

There are only two things in this game you truly own: your Google Business Profile and your own website. Everything else belongs to someone else. So that’s where the effort goes.

Your Google Business Profile does the heavy lifting

When someone in your town searches “emergency plumber near me” at 9pm with water coming through the ceiling, the map results decide who gets the call. Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors, a survey of 47 local search specialists, asked what matters most for appearing in that map box. The top of their list:

• your primary business category
• how close you are to the searcher
• keywords in your business name
• whether you’re open at the time of the search, which is new at number five this year

Ratings sit just behind those. So, half an hour with a cup of tea, in this order:

1. Pick the right primary category. “Plumber”, not “Contractor”. “Electrician”, not “Electrical installation service”. I see this wrong on about half the profiles I look at, and it’s the single strongest clue Google has about what you do.
2. Set proper hours, and use “more hours” for emergencies. If you’ll come out until 10pm, say so. A profile showing “Closed” at 7pm loses to one that’s open, even though you’d both have picked up the phone.
3. Fill in the Services section with real job names. “Boiler repair”, “Combi boiler installation”, “Unvented cylinder”, “Consumer unit replacement”, “EICR”. In the experts’ ranking, keywords in Google Business Profile services rose 75 places this year. Google reads them.
4. Add photos of your own work. A finished bathroom you fitted beats a stock image of a spanner every time. Ten photos, taken on your phone, is plenty to start.
5. Turn on messaging and add your WhatsApp. Earlier this month Google started showing a WhatsApp button on some business listings in search, right next to Call and Directions. Given that Ofcom reckons nine in ten UK adults who are online use WhatsApp, and three quarters of them use it every day, that button is going to get pressed. If a customer can message you the way they message their mates, they will.

Your reviews need a new home

If Rated People got you into the habit of asking for reviews, keep the habit and change where they go.

Google reviews first. Grab the review link from your Business Profile and save it as a text template on your phone. Then send it the moment you finish a job, while the customer’s still pleased and the van’s still outside. People are more willing than you’d think. BrightLocal asked around a thousand consumers this year (in the US, but I doubt we’re much different) and 28% said they always leave a review when asked, up from 16% the year before. The trick is asking on the day, not next week.

Then reply to each one. Two sentences is fine. Use the customer’s name and mention the job: “Thanks Dave, glad the new consumer unit sorted the tripping. Shout if the garage socket plays up again.”

One warning, because I’ve seen it done. Since April 2025, fake reviews and undeclared sweeteners have been illegal under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, and the Competition and Markets Authority can fine a business up to 10% of its global turnover. A tenner off for a five-star review isn’t a grey area any more. Honest reviews, from real customers, nothing else.

Your website is where the job gets won

The Business Profile gets you found. Your website gets you chosen. In June 2026 the Federation of Master Builders reported that one in three homeowners under 35 rely on online reviews to pick a builder, and only 8% of them check trade body membership. Younger homeowners are judging you from their phone, in about a minute, and your website is where they end up.

The sites that turn that minute into a phone call share a few things:

• A page for each service. Not one page that lists “plumbing, heating, bathrooms, gas”. A page for boiler repairs, another for bathroom fitting, another for landlord gas safety certificates. Whitespark’s experts ranked a dedicated page for each service as the most important thing on your website for showing up in the normal search results.
• Your town and the areas you cover, in your own words. “We cover Croydon, Purley, Coulsdon and out to Caterham” does more than a list of 40 postcodes.
• Those rescued reviews. Put each one on the service page it relates to, with the first name and month. A boiler review on the boiler page is worth ten on a generic testimonials page.
• A phone number and WhatsApp button that follow the visitor down the page on mobile. Over half of UK web page views are now on phones (53.6% in September 2026, according to StatCounter). Make the call button impossible to miss.
• A short form for non-urgent jobs. Name, phone, postcode, what’s the job. Nobody fills in a 12-field quote request on a bus.

You don’t need a big site. Five good pages will do. Our Essential plan is five pages for £39 a month with no setup fee, and the site is yours after 12 months. For many trades that’s less than one lead platform invoice.

If you still want a directory

I’m not against Checkatrade or anyone else. Plenty of trades do well on them. Just treat it as advertising, not as your business, and ask three questions before you sign a 12-month term:

1. Can I export my reviews and customer list if I leave?
2. Does every lead I pay for come to me alone, or to five of us?
3. If this platform disappeared tomorrow, would my phone still ring?

If the answer to the third one is no, fix that first.

The next 30 days

• This week: screenshot your old reviews, update your Google Business Profile category, hours, services and photos, and add your WhatsApp number.
• Next week: text your last 20 happy customers your Google review link. Reply to every review you get.
• Weeks three and four: get a proper website live with a page for each service, your reviews, your areas, and a call button that’s always on screen.

Rated People closing is a rotten thing to happen mid-year. But if it pushes you to build something you own, you’ll come out of it with something nobody can close. If you want a hand with the website part, drop me a line and I’ll tell you what you need and what you don’t.