You need 2.7x more reviews to compete in Austin than in New York
We measured 1,122 Google Business Profiles across 8 service industries and 4 US metros to find out what it actually takes to rank. The assumption that bigger markets demand more reviews turned out to be wrong, and it was wrong in every single industry we looked at.
Collected 2026-08-09 · 1,122 profiles · 32 industry and metro combinations
Five things the data says
- 1
Market size does not predict the review bar.
Austin businesses carry a median of 317 reviews against 119 in New York, a 2.7x difference in favour of the far smaller market. This held in all 8 industries measured, without exception.
- 2
In the densest market, the top three have fewer reviews than the businesses below them.
Across New York results, businesses ranked one to three carried a lower median review count than those ranked four to twenty. Proximity appears to outweigh reviews where there is a competitor on every block, which is the opposite of how ranking is usually explained.
- 3
Star ratings separate nobody.
Every industry measured averaged between 4.65 and 4.88 stars, clustering at 4.78. A 4.8 rating is not an advantage, it is the entry requirement. Review count is what actually varies.
- 4
The top three hold 2.1x the reviews of positions four to twenty.
Across the whole dataset the median for top-three results was 445 against 208 for the rest. In plumbing the multiple reaches 11.1x, the widest gap we measured.
- 5
Small markets are the least contested and the least optimised.
15% of businesses in the small metro had no website at all, against 5% in New York, and their profiles were the least complete on every measure we checked.
The review bar by metro
We picked four metros spanning the size range deliberately, expecting a clean progression from largest to smallest. Instead the mid-size market set the highest bar by a wide margin and the largest market came in below it. The most plausible explanation is density: in New York a searcher has dozens of qualifying businesses within a mile, so proximity dominates and smaller operators surface. In a sprawling metro like Austin, fewer businesses cover far more ground, and the ones that dominate have accumulated very large review counts.
| Metro | Profiles | Median reviews | Avg rating | No website | Profile completeness |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York, NY | 264 | 119 | 4.81 | 5% | 2.93 / 3 |
| Chicago, IL | 282 | 171 | 4.8 | 8% | 2.9 / 3 |
| Austin, TX | 283 | 317 | 4.83 | 4% | 2.95 / 3 |
| Waco, TX | 293 | 69 | 4.7 | 15% | 2.8 / 3 |
Completeness scores whether a profile has a website, a phone number, and opening hours.
The review bar by trade
The number of reviews needed to be competitive varies roughly eightfold between the highest and lowest trades measured. Comparing yourself to a national average is close to meaningless; the only benchmark that matters is your own category in your own market.
| Industry | Profiles | Median reviews | Top 3 median | Positions 4–20 | Gap | No website |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dental | 141 | 489 | 859 | 626 | 1.4x | 1% |
| Auto repair | 117 | 241 | 659 | 299 | 2.2x | 27% |
| HVAC | 143 | 190 | 1573 | 268 | 5.9x | 3% |
| Legal | 143 | 162 | 296 | 266 | 1.1x | 1% |
| Cleaning | 144 | 130 | 312 | 189 | 1.7x | 6% |
| Plumbing | 140 | 111 | 1457 | 131 | 11.1x | 14% |
| Roofing | 143 | 96 | 157 | 106 | 1.5x | 2% |
| Electrical | 151 | 58 | 196 | 78 | 2.5x | 14% |
Median reviews, every trade in every market
The complete cross-tab. Read down a column to see how a market treats different trades, or across a row to see how one trade varies by market. The Austin column is higher than the New York column in every single row, which is the finding this study opened with.
| Industry | New York | Chicago | Austin | Waco |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC | 61 | 266 | 732 | 73 |
| Plumbing | 45 | 161 | 314 | 61 |
| Electrical | 58 | 69 | 85 | 24 |
| Legal | 236 | 188 | 250 | 53 |
| Roofing | 93 | 88 | 246 | 49 |
| Dental | 463 | 530 | 617 | 374 |
| Auto repair | 270(n=16) | 255 | 366 | 114 |
| Cleaning | 132 | 130 | 292 | 27 |
Median Google review count per business. Cells marked with a sample size returned fewer than 25 results and should be read with more caution than the rest.
Where each industry actually stands
Dental
median 489 reviews · top 3 at 859 · 4.81 stars
Dental has the highest review bar of any trade measured, and the smallest gap between the top three and everyone else. Practices are already competing hard on reviews, so volume alone will not separate you. The opening is in the procedure-level searches most practices never build pages for.
Local SEO for dentalAuto repair
median 241 reviews · top 3 at 659 · 4.65 stars
Auto repair has the weakest web presence of any trade here: more than a quarter of listings have no website at all. In a category where the profile is often the only web presence a shop has, completing it properly is unusually decisive.
Local SEO for auto repairHVAC
median 190 reviews · top 3 at 1573 · 4.82 stars
HVAC shows one of the widest gaps in the dataset between the top three and the rest. The leaders are far ahead on reviews, which means breaking in takes sustained review generation rather than a one-off push.
Local SEO for hvacLegal
median 162 reviews · top 3 at 296 · 4.8 stars
Legal has the flattest top-three gap measured. Review count separates law firms far less than it separates trades, which puts the weight back on practice-area pages and the bar and legal directory citations most firms leave unclaimed.
Local SEO for legalCleaning
median 130 reviews · top 3 at 312 · 4.81 stars
Cleaning sits mid-pack on reviews with a modest top-three gap, making it one of the more reachable categories in the dataset for a business starting from a low base.
Local SEO for cleaningPlumbing
median 111 reviews · top 3 at 1457 · 4.68 stars
Plumbing has the most extreme concentration in the entire dataset. The top three results carry many multiples of the reviews held by positions four through twenty, so the gap between ranking and not ranking is unusually wide.
Local SEO for plumbingRoofing
median 96 reviews · top 3 at 157 · 4.88 stars
Roofing carries the highest average rating and one of the lowest review medians in the dataset. The bar to compete on volume is low, which rewards roofers who run a consistent review process through storm season.
Local SEO for roofingElectrical
median 58 reviews · top 3 at 196 · 4.79 stars
Electrical has the lowest review median of any trade measured. The absolute number needed to compete is small, which makes it one of the fastest categories to move with a deliberate review habit.
Local SEO for electricalTurning a benchmark into a target
Find your trade in the table above and read the top-three median, not the overall median. That is the number your competitors at the top of the map pack are carrying, and it is the only figure that describes what ranking requires. Then check the gap column: a wide gap means the leaders are far ahead and catching them takes a sustained review habit rather than a campaign. A narrow gap means reviews are not the deciding factor in your category, and your effort is better spent on profile completeness, service pages, and citations.
One caution about the geography finding: it does not mean small markets are easy. It means review count alone does not describe difficulty. Waco had the lowest review bar in the study and also the least complete profiles, which is a different kind of opportunity: in markets like that, simply having a website and filled-out hours puts you ahead of a meaningful share of the field before reviews enter the picture at all.
151
Median reviews across all profiles measured
4.78
Average star rating across every industry
2.1x
Review gap between the top 3 and positions 4 to 20
Want to know where you sit against these numbers? Run a free audit, or work out what closing the gap is worth with the ROI calculator.
Download the raw data
All 1,122 records as CSV, one row per business, with the industry, metro, rank, review count, rating, and profile fields. Business names are withheld by design, for the reason given in the methodology below. Free to reuse with attribution.
How this was measured, and what it cannot tell you
We collected the Google Maps results for one search term per industry in each of 4 metros, then recorded the publicly displayed fields from each business profile: review count, star rating, primary category, website, phone, and opening hours. That produced 1,122 profiles across 32 industry and metro combinations, collected on 2026-08-09.
Search terms used
"hvac contractors", "plumbers", "electricians", "law firms", "roofing contractors", "dentists", "auto repair shops", "house cleaning services", each searched as term in metro.
Limitations worth knowing
- Four metros is a small geographic sample. The finding that market size does not predict the review bar held across every industry we measured, but four cities cannot establish why. Treat it as a strong signal that the conventional assumption is wrong, not as a settled explanation.
- Map results are personalised. Rankings vary by the searcher's exact location, device, and history. Position data here reflects one collection run from one location per metro, so rank should be read as approximate ordering rather than a fixed leaderboard.
- One search term per industry. A plumber searching "emergency plumber" would surface a partly different set of businesses than "plumbers" did.
- A single point in time. Review counts only go up. These figures describe 2026-08-09 and will drift.
- One thin cell. Auto repair in New York returned only 16 results before Google stopped serving more, below our 25-profile threshold. It is included in the industry totals and flagged here rather than quietly dropped.
- Business descriptions were not measurable. We intended to report how many profiles fill in the description field, but could not extract it reliably, so it is excluded entirely rather than reported as a zero.
- Business names are withheld. The published CSV carries every measured field except the name of the business each row describes. Every figure on this page is a median, a percentage, or a ratio, so identity is not needed to check the analysis, and publishing a named list of small businesses labelled as having no website or an incomplete profile would do those businesses real harm for no research benefit. Journalists and researchers who need to verify specific rows can contact us for the identified dataset.
Cite this research
Free to reference or republish with a link back. Journalists and researchers are welcome to the underlying CSV.
LocalHero (2026). Local SEO Benchmarks: Google Business Profile data across 8 industries and 4 US metros. https://localhero.live/local-seo-benchmarks
Frequently asked questions
How many Google reviews do I need to rank in the map pack?+
It depends entirely on your trade and your market, and the spread is wide. Across 1,122 profiles measured, businesses ranking in the top three carried a median of 445 reviews against 208 for those ranked four to twenty. By industry the top-three median ranged from 157 to 1573, so a national average is not a useful target. Use the figure for your own category.
Do bigger cities require more reviews to compete?+
Not in this data, and the result was consistent enough to be worth taking seriously. Businesses in Austin carried a median of 317 reviews against 119 in New York, despite New York being many times larger, and Austin came out higher in all 8 industries measured. In the densest market, top-three results actually held fewer reviews than businesses ranked below them, which suggests proximity carries more weight than review count where competitors are packed closely together.
What is a good Google rating for a local business?+
The measured range is narrow enough that rating barely functions as a differentiator. Every industry in this study averaged between 4.65 and 4.88 stars, with an overall mean of 4.78. A rating in that band is the entry requirement rather than an advantage. Review count varies enormously across the same businesses, which is why it separates competitors and rating does not.
How many local businesses have no website?+
8% across the full sample, but it varies sharply. In the smallest market measured 15% of businesses had no website, against 5% in New York. Auto repair was the weakest industry at 27%. For those businesses the Google Business Profile is effectively their entire web presence.
How was this data collected?+
We searched one fixed term per industry in each of 4 US metros on Google Maps and recorded the publicly displayed fields from each resulting business profile: review count, star rating, primary category, website, phone, and opening hours. That produced 1,122 profiles across 32 industry and metro combinations, collected on 2026-08-09. The full dataset is available as a CSV download, and the limitations are documented on the page.
Can I use this data in my own article?+
Yes. The findings and the raw CSV are free to reference or republish with a link back to this page. There is a citation block at the bottom of the page with the suggested format.