126 Local SEO Statistics October 2026

Local SEO statistics pages tend to recycle the same few numbers, several from 2018 and some with no traceable source at all. This one doesn't. Every figure here goes back to the organisation that ran the survey, filed the report or published the enforcement data, and most of it came out in 2025 or 2026. When the producer is a vendor running its own research (BrightLocal, SOCi, Yext, Birdeye, Whitespark, Sterling Sky), we name it.

Two numbers set the scene. Google Maps passed 2 billion monthly users (Google, Feb 2025). And in the space of one year, the share of consumers asking AI tools for local recommendations went from a niche to nearly half. The businesses that get picked have accurate listings, recent reviews and a website that answers the obvious questions.

For the wider search picture, see our SEO statistics hub. AI assistants outside local search are covered in AI search statistics.

How do consumers search for local businesses?

For most people, local search is a weekly habit that starts on a phone. Google gets the first search. It often doesn't get the second, and the choice itself rarely takes long.

Local search statistics: how much local searching do people do?

Four in five consumers search for local businesses every week. In a 2024 survey, 80% of US consumers said they search online for local businesses at least weekly and 32% do so every day or several times a day (SOCi, Feb 2024).

• 82% of consumers search for something online at least once a day (BrightLocal, Apr 2025).
• 39% of consumers estimate that at least 41% of their searches are about local businesses (BrightLocal, Apr 2025).
• 91% of US adults own a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011 (Pew Research Center, Nov 2025).

"Near me" searches show how much of that searching is about right now. Google stopped publishing "near me" growth figures after 2018, so the latest official numbers are old. They are also the only primary ones. Mobile searches for "near me" combined with "can I buy" or "to buy" grew more than 500% over two years (Google, May 2018).

The time-bound versions grew fastest. Mobile searches for "near me today" or "near me tonight" rose more than 900% over the same period (Google, May 2018), and those combining "open", "now" and "near me" rose more than 200% (Google, May 2018).

Which apps do people use for mobile local search?

Google Search is the first stop for most. 52% of consumers started their most recent local business search on Google Search and a further 9% on Google Maps (BrightLocal, Jul 2026).

• 71% used Google Search at some point during that search (BrightLocal, Jul 2026).
• 75% used more than one channel during their most recent local business search (BrightLocal, Jul 2026).
• 26% of Gen Z consumers use social media as their default local search platform, 12 points above the population average (BrightLocal, Apr 2025).
• 15% of consumers use Google Maps as their default platform for local searches (BrightLocal, Apr 2025).

Google Maps is big enough to be its own search engine. It lists 250 million businesses and places, and 500 million people contribute reviews, photos and other information to it each year (Google, Feb 2025). The map receives 100 million updates every day (Google, Feb 2025).

How do people pick a business from the results?

Fast, and from a short list. 75% of consumers choose a local business within 30 minutes of starting to search, and 28% within five minutes (BrightLocal, Jun 2026).

• 72% of consumers look at three or fewer businesses before deciding. Only 1% look at more than ten (BrightLocal, Jun 2026).
• Even for professional services, only 10% of people research for more than an hour before choosing (BrightLocal, Jun 2026).
• Distance comes first. 44% of consumers look at the address or how close a business is before clicking through to learn more, and only 6% say they just click the top result (BrightLocal, Jul 2026).
• 85% of consumers rate contact details and opening hours as an important factor when researching a local business (BrightLocal, Apr 2025).
• 56% often or always check that a business's details match other mentions online (BrightLocal, Apr 2025).

A wrong listing loses the customer. 63% of consumers have found wrong business information on platforms such as Google, Facebook and Instagram, and 47% have dropped a business because of it (SOCi, Feb 2024). Listings drift out of date faster than owners fix them. Google users alone suggested 80 million updates to business hours, contact details and other listing information in 2025 (Google, Apr 2026).

Who gets found on the local results page?

The Business Profile is still the main lever in local rankings. It brings fewer calls for the same visibility than it used to, because the organic 3-pack now shares the screen with AI Overviews, ads inside the pack and Local Services Ads.

What decides where a profile ranks?

Category, distance and name. In a survey of 47 local search specialists scoring 187 factors, the primary Business Profile category ranked first for local pack and Maps rankings, followed by the distance between searcher and business (Whitespark, Nov 2025).

• Keywords in the business name ranked third and a physical address in the city of the search ranked fourth (Whitespark, Nov 2025).
• Being open at the time of the search, a factor added in this edition, went straight to fifth place (Whitespark, Nov 2025).
• The 2026 edition added 47 new factors and, for the first time, asked experts to score each factor's effect on AI search visibility (Whitespark, Nov 2025).

Google Business Profile statistics: how do customers act on a profile?

Most actions are website visits. Across the large brands Birdeye tracks, website visits made up 47% of profile engagement, direction requests 38% and phone calls 15% (Birdeye, Apr 2026).

• 86% of profile impressions came from category searches rather than searches for the brand name (Birdeye, Apr 2026).
• In retail, direction requests made up 57% of profile actions, while in healthcare calls made up 36% (Birdeye, Apr 2026).
• 76% of the profiles Birdeye tracked were verified in 2025, up from 71% in 2024 (Birdeye, Apr 2026).
• Review volume on the profiles Birdeye tracks fell 36.7% in 2024 after stricter moderation, then recovered 0.9% in 2025 (Birdeye, Apr 2026).

Calls are the action under most pressure, because Google is showing fewer call buttons and more ads. At the start of 2025, local pack ads appeared on 1% of the mobile ranking reports Sterling Sky ran. By December 2025 they were on almost 22% (Sterling Sky, Jun 2026). Local Services Ads spread too, from roughly 11% of tracked queries at the start of 2025 to 31% in November 2025 (Sterling Sky, Jun 2026).

Where do people click on a local results page?

Paid placements and the pack take most first clicks. In a click test on law firm searches, the local pack took 29% of first clicks, with the first listing taking 14% and the third only 1% (iLawyer Marketing, May 2023).

• Business directories make up 31% of the top 10 organic results for local-intent searches (BrightLocal, Oct 2024).
• Yelp accounts for 28% of the directory results that show up in those searches (BrightLocal, Oct 2024).
• Google users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none appeared (Pew Research Center, Jul 2025).
• Users ended their browsing session on 26% of Google pages with an AI summary, against 16% of pages with only traditional results (Pew Research Center, Jul 2025).
• Google's AI-generated local packs showed on about 7% of the keywords Sterling Sky tracks, all on mobile in the US (Sterling Sky, Jun 2026).
• Those AI local packs featured 5,943 unique businesses against 18,330 in regular 3-packs, about 32% as many (Sterling Sky, Jun 2026).

How much do online reviews decide?

Reviews are the filter people apply to the shortlist, and the bar keeps rising. A rating that was acceptable last year can now remove a business from consideration.

Online review statistics: how much do people rely on reviews?

Almost everyone reads them, and most set a minimum before they will pick a business. 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and 41% always do, against 29% the year before (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

• 49% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).
• 93% of consumers have made a purchase after reading reviews, and 27% have spent more than $1,000 that way (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

The minimum is about volume and recency. 47% of consumers won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% only pay attention to reviews from the past three months (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

• 68% will only use a business rated four stars or more (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).
• An extra half-star on Yelp makes restaurants 19 percentage points (49%) more likely to sell out their tables at peak times (University of California, Berkeley, Mar 2012).
• A product with five reviews is 270% more likely to be bought than one with no reviews (Northwestern University Spiegel Research Center, Jun 2017).
• A "verified buyer" badge on a review raises the odds of purchase by 15% (Northwestern University Spiegel Research Center, Jun 2017).

Google review statistics: where do people read and write reviews?

Google is still the main review site, but its lead is shrinking. 71% of consumers used Google to read local business reviews, down from 83% the year before, while Apple Maps rose from 14% to 27% (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

• Google accounted for 77% to 90% of reviews across the industries in Birdeye's dataset (Birdeye, Apr 2026).
• Google Maps users shared more than 1 billion reviews in 2025 (Google, Apr 2026).
• Yelp users contributed 22 million reviews in 2025 (Yelp, Feb 2026).
• Tripadvisor received 31.1 million reviews in 2024, and business owners responded to more than 11 million of them (Tripadvisor, Mar 2025).
• 7.3% of reviews submitted to Tripadvisor in 2024 were rejected by automated analysis before posting (Tripadvisor, Mar 2025).

Do review replies matter?

Yes. Most customers expect an owner to reply, and a growing share expect it within the day. 89% of consumers expect business owners to respond to reviews, and 19% expect a reply the same day, up from 6% (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

• Generic or templated replies make 50% of consumers unlikely to choose a business (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).
• 78% of consumers were asked to leave a review in the past year, and 83% of those asked went on to write one (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

Asking is the simplest way to keep reviews recent, which matters because most consumers ignore older ones.

How common are fake reviews and fake listings?

Fake content is an industrial-scale problem, and platforms and regulators now publish enough numbers to size it. For a real business the damage is direct: fake listings take calls and map pins that belong to someone else.

How many fake reviews and profiles does Google remove?

Hundreds of millions of reviews and over ten million listings a year. In 2025 Google removed more than 13 million fake Business Profiles and restricted posting on more than 782,000 accounts (Google, Apr 2026).

• Google blocked 79 million inaccurate or unverified edits to Business Profiles in 2025 (Google, Apr 2026).
• In 2024 Google blocked or removed over 240 million policy-violating reviews and took down more than 12 million fake Business Profiles (Google, Apr 2025).
• In 2024 Google removed more than 10,000 listings run by one group that impersonated real locksmiths (Google, Apr 2025).
• Google also blocked over 70 million policy-violating edits to places in 2024 and restricted posting on more than 900,000 repeat-offender accounts (Google, Apr 2025).

What do other review platforms report?

Every platform that publishes numbers shows the same pattern. Yelp filtered out nearly 500,000 suspected AI-generated reviews in 2025 (Yelp, Feb 2026).

• Yelp rejected more than 50,700 new business pages tied to spam in 2025, 29% more than in 2024 (Yelp, Feb 2026).
• Yelp closed over 889,800 fake phone support accounts in 2025, most of them promoting fraudulent customer service numbers (Yelp, Feb 2026).
• Yelp alerts for review exchange rings fell 62% in 2025 after changes to its recommendation software (Yelp, Feb 2026).
• In 2024 Tripadvisor stopped 2.7 million fraudulent reviews, and 54% of fake submissions were businesses boosting their own ratings (Tripadvisor, Mar 2025).
• Tripadvisor warned about 9,000 businesses for incentivised reviews, and 360,000 removed reviews were linked to employee reward schemes (Tripadvisor, Mar 2025).
• Trustpilot removed 4.5 million fake reviews in 2024, 7.4% of all reviews submitted, up from 6.1% in 2023 (Trustpilot, May 2025).
• 90% of the fake reviews Trustpilot removed in 2024 were caught by automated systems (Trustpilot, May 2025).

How are regulators responding to fake reviews?

With fines in the US and hard numbers in the UK. Fake reviews now carry federal fines: the FTC approved its final rule banning the sale and purchase of fake reviews and testimonials by a 5-0 vote (FTC, Aug 2024).

• In its first enforcement step under the rule, FTC staff sent warning letters to 10 companies (FTC, Dec 2025).
• 11% of consumers were offered an incentive to write a positive review in the past year (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).
• 57% of consumers think a business caught using fake reviews should be banned from review platforms (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

The only government estimate of scale comes from the UK. Its research found that 11% to 15% of reviews in three common product categories on e-commerce platforms are fake (UK Department for Business and Trade, Apr 2023). Fake review text on products alone does an estimated £50 million to £312 million of harm to UK consumers each year (UK Department for Business and Trade, Apr 2023).

Are AI assistants changing local discovery?

Yes, and faster than any other channel in this data. AI assistants return a short list instead of a page of results, so the gap between being recommended and being invisible is wide.

How often does AI show up in local search?

Close to a third of consumers use it every month. 31% of consumers use AI tools for local business recommendations at least once a month, and 23% used one during their most recent local search (BrightLocal, Jul 2026).

• 44% of US adults have used ChatGPT, compared with 34% a year before (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• Adults under 50 are about twice as likely as those 50 and older to use ChatGPT, 57% against 28% (Pew Research Center, Jun 2026).
• Google's AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly active users (Google, Jul 2026).
• The Gemini app has 950 million monthly active users (Google, Jul 2026).
• 82% of consumers read AI-generated review summaries, and 23% are willing to decide on the summary alone (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).

On Google itself, it depends on the wording. For clearly local searches, local packs appeared 93% of the time and AI Overviews 15% of the time (Whitespark, May 2025). For hybrid searches such as "average cost of dental implants in Phoenix", AI Overviews appeared 97% of the time and local packs 17% (Whitespark, May 2025).

Do people trust AI recommendations for local businesses?

Not enough to act on them alone. Only 18% of consumers who used AI for a local search felt ready to contact the recommended business straight away, and 43% went on to check Google (BrightLocal, Jul 2026).

• 40% of consumers trust AI platforms to recommend businesses (BrightLocal, Feb 2026).
• In a user study, ChatGPT users looked at 3.7 local businesses on average, and 21% switched to Google to verify what they found (Sagapixel, Jan 2026).
• 75% of those ChatGPT sessions included at least one prompt written like a keyword search rather than a question (Sagapixel, Jan 2026).
• 39.2% of participants clicked through from ChatGPT to a business website (Sagapixel, Jan 2026).
• For one large multi-location client, ChatGPT traffic grew from 0.1% of what Google sent to 2% in a year (Sterling Sky, Jun 2026).

Which sources do AI assistants cite for local answers?

Mostly sources a business controls. In 6.8 million AI citations across Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity, 86% came from websites, listings and reviews that brands own or manage (Yext, Oct 2025).

• Forums such as Reddit made up about 2% of citations once location and query intent were taken into account (Yext, Oct 2025).
• 64% of marketing leaders surveyed by Yext said they are unsure how to measure success in AI search (Yext, Oct 2025).
• Business websites made up 58% of ChatGPT Search's sources for local searches, business mentions 27% and directories 15% (BrightLocal, Dec 2024).
• In Google's local AI Overviews, 60% of the citations pointed to third-party sites such as Yelp, Reddit and Thumbtack, while 40% cited local businesses (Whitespark, May 2025).
• Locations that ChatGPT recommends average a 4.3-star rating (SOCi, Jan 2026).
• In retail, only 45% of the brands most visible in traditional local search were also among those AI platforms recommended most (SOCi, Jan 2026).

How are small businesses investing in local marketing?

Small businesses know local search matters. Most still have gaps in the basics, and plenty pay for SEO with no website or claimed profile for it to work on.

Do small businesses have the basics in place?

Many do not. Only 40% of small and medium businesses have a dedicated website (BrightLocal, Aug 2025).

• 54% of small business owners manage marketing themselves (BrightLocal, Aug 2025).
• 89% of SMBs invest in local SEO, but only 29% of them say it has a high impact on their business (BrightLocal, Aug 2025).
• 36% of SMBs say cost is holding them back from investing in marketing channels (BrightLocal, Aug 2025).

The gap matters because of how many of them there are. There are 36,207,130 small businesses in the United States, 99.9% of all businesses (SBA Office of Advocacy, Feb 2026). Together they employ 62.3 million people, 45.9% of private sector workers (SBA Office of Advocacy, Feb 2026).

How fast are small businesses adopting AI?

It depends who you ask. 58% of small businesses say they use generative AI, up from 40% in 2024 (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Aug 2025).

• 96% of small business owners plan to adopt emerging technologies, including AI (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Aug 2025).
• The Census Bureau's national business AI use rate was 19.8% as of May 3, 2026 (U.S. Census Bureau, May 2026).
• Fewer than 20% of firms with four or fewer employees reported using AI, and AI use among firms under 20 employees did not change significantly between December 2025 and May 2026 (U.S. Census Bureau, May 2026).
• Around 14% of retail businesses use AI, below the national average (U.S. Census Bureau, May 2026).
• 37% of firms with at least 250 employees reported using AI in their business operations (U.S. Census Bureau, May 2026).

The two numbers measure different things. The Chamber asks small business owners whether they use generative AI at all. The Census Bureau asks a sample of employer businesses whether they used AI in their business operations in the last two weeks.

How much is spent on local advertising?

Local ad spend keeps growing, and mobile takes the biggest share. Mobile is the largest local media category, forecast at $45.3 billion in 2026 excluding political ads, up 8.9% (BIA Advisory Services, Sep 2026).

• Excluding political advertising, local ad spend is forecast at $176.4 billion in 2026, up 3.9% on 2025 (BIA Advisory Services, Sep 2026).
• BIA's first 2027 forecast puts local ad revenue at $186.5 billion, roughly flat as political spending drops (BIA Advisory Services, Sep 2026).
• Growth is led by digital channels, particularly mobile, social and connected TV, according to BIA's April revision, which put 2026 growth at 8.1% (BIA Advisory Services, Apr 2026).

Methodology and Sources

We included a statistic only if we could open the document that produced it, find the number on the page and confirm its date. Every figure links to that document, not to a roundup that repeated it. Vendor research is labelled with the vendor's name. Platform enforcement numbers (Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot) are self-reported. Older studies are kept only where nothing newer measures the same thing, and their dates are shown. This page is checked and refreshed monthly.

Sources

• BrightLocal: Consumer Search Behavior 2026, speed, channels, decisions; Consumer Search Behavior 2025; Local Consumer Review Survey 2026; SMB Marketing Report 2025; Uncovering ChatGPT Search Sources; Business Listings Visibility Study
• Google: New ways we're protecting businesses on Maps (2025 Trust & Safety); Google Maps uses AI to fight fake Business Profiles (2024); Google Maps celebrates 20 years; How near me shopping searches have changed; Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings remarks
• Federal Trade Commission: Final rule banning fake reviews; Warnings to 10 companies; Warning letter template
• Yelp Trust & Safety Report 2025
• Tripadvisor 2025 Transparency Report
• Trustpilot Trust Report 2025
• UK Department for Business and Trade, Fake online reviews research
• Harvard Business School, Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com
• Anderson and Magruder, Learning from the Crowd (The Economic Journal)
• Northwestern Spiegel Research Center, How Online Reviews Influence Sales
• Pew Research Center: Mobile Fact Sheet; Americans and AI 2026; Google users and AI summaries
• SOCi: 2026 Local Visibility Index release; Consumer Behavior Index
• Yext: AI citations release; AI Citations, User Locations, and Query Context
• Whitespark: 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors; AI Overviews in local search
• Birdeye, State of Google Business Profile 2026
• Sterling Sky, The State of Local SEO in 2026
• Sagapixel, How users find and choose local services using ChatGPT
• iLawyer Marketing, Click test study
• U.S. Census Bureau, AI use by businesses (BTOS)
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Empowering Small Business 2025
• SBA Office of Advocacy, Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business 2026
• BIA Advisory Services: September 2026 forecast; April 2026 forecast

Glossary

• GBP: Google Business Profile, the free listing that appears in Google Search and Maps (formerly Google My Business).
• Local pack (3-pack): the block of three map listings Google shows for local searches.
• LSA: Local Services Ads, Google's pay-per-lead ads for service businesses, shown above the local pack.
• AI Overview: the AI-written summary Google shows above search results.
• AI Mode: Google's conversational search mode built on Gemini.
• SMB: small and medium-sized business.
• NAP: name, address and phone number, the core listing details that should match everywhere.
• Vendor research: a study run and published by a company that sells software or services in the same field.