17.6%
of local pack impressions click position 1, against 15.4% for position 2 and 15.1% for position 3 — a much flatter curve than organic search.
Grade C Cite with caution
Research
Numbers worth citing, traced to source.
Every statistic on this site is graded on where it came from, when it was collected, who it measured and how — and the widely-repeated ones that can't be traced are named as such rather than left out quietly.
- 275 Graded statistics
- 24 Research pages
- 67 Named sources
- 68 Claims named unverifiable
How the grading works
Every figure carries a grade.
The grade is about provenance, not about whether the number is interesting. A widely-quoted figure with no published sample gets a C however often it appears elsewhere. The D column reads zero for a reason: a figure that cannot be traced is not published here as a statistic at all. It is documented instead — 68 of them across the archive, each named at the foot of the page it belongs to, with what could not be established about it.
- A Cite freely 77 figures
Primary source, dated, with sample and method published. Quote it, with its scope attached.
- B Cite with scope 141 figures
Real research with a published sample, but narrower than the way it is usually quoted — self-reported, or one country, or one kind of business.
- C Cite with caution 57 figures
Named source and plausible method, but the sample size or methodology is not published where the number is. Attribute it, do not lean on it.
- D Do not cite 0 figures
Untraceable, undated, or superseded by later changes to the thing it measured. These are the numbers keeping the roundups alive.
What a graded statistic looks like
One number, with its receipts.
The archive is the evidence; the guides are the method. This figure is what the Google Maps SEO guide builds its priority order on.
The archive
Platforms & behaviour
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Local SEO statistics
The local SEO numbers worth quoting, each graded on where it came from, when it was collected, who it measured and how — plus the widely-repeated ones that cannot be traced to a study at all.
Sources BrightLocal · First Page Sage · SOCi
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Google Business Profile statistics
What's actually known about Google Business Profile verification, completeness and suspensions — graded on provenance, including one widely-cited figure that appears to be a fabricated attribution.
Sources BrightLocal · Google Business Profile Help · Birdeye
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Google Maps statistics
What's actually measured about Google Maps and local pack click-through rates and ranking weight, graded on provenance — and the widely-repeated proximity claim that doesn't match its own cited source.
Sources Google · BrightLocal · First Page Sage
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Local review statistics
How consumers actually use reviews to choose a local business, with year-over-year trend data — the rating and recency bar has moved faster in the last year than most businesses have adjusted to.
Sources BrightLocal · Google · Location3
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Local business website statistics
How many local businesses actually have a website, how mobile-dependent their audience already is, and why the most-quoted mobile speed statistic in this category is nine years old.
Sources BrightLocal · HTTP Archive · Google / DoubleClick
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Lead response time statistics
The real research behind the 'speed to lead' industry — two genuine, well-documented studies from 2007 and 2011 that get merged into one garbled, misattributed claim almost everywhere they're quoted.
Sources Oldroyd · Hennessey Digital · RevenueHero
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Local search behaviour statistics
How consumers actually search for and decide on local businesses — multi-channel journeys, maps-native search, and how fast most people actually decide, graded on provenance.
Sources BrightLocal
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AI local search statistics
What's actually measured about how AI assistants recommend local businesses — a genuinely well-documented selectivity gap, alongside consumer-adoption figures that move faster than they can be verified.
Sources SOCi · BrightLocal · Whitespark
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Meta Ads statistics for local business
The honest state of Meta Ads benchmarking for local businesses — the best available data measures Facebook advertising broadly rather than local businesses specifically, which is itself the most important finding here.
Sources Meta for Business · WordStream · Meta Platforms
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Local lead generation statistics
Real cost-per-lead data by industry from search advertising benchmarks — showing more than a 3x spread between verticals that a single 'good CPL' number can't capture.
Sources LocaliQ (WordStream)
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Local conversion rate statistics
What a good website conversion rate actually looks like, from real platform data rather than a survey — and why home-service businesses tend to convert above the cross-industry median.
Sources Unbounce · Google web.dev · Invoca
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WhatsApp Business statistics
What Meta has actually disclosed about WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business usage, graded on provenance — including two competing India user-count figures that can't both be right, and neither of which is properly sourced.
Sources Meta Platforms · Meta for Developers · Meta
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India local business digital statistics
What real, credible Indian digitalisation research exists — and the honest gap it leaves: no published study measures website, Google Business Profile or WhatsApp adoption specifically among local, consumer-facing Indian businesses.
Sources ICRIER · IAMAI–Kantar · Just Dial Ltd
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Local citation statistics
What's actually known about citation consistency and consumer trust — real but seven-year-old BrightLocal research, against a set of suspiciously precise ranking-impact figures that don't trace anywhere.
Sources BrightLocal
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Page speed statistics
Real, official Google field data on how much of the mobile web actually passes Core Web Vitals — and the honest gap: no published breakdown isolates local business website performance specifically from this dataset.
Sources HTTP Archive · Google
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Small business marketing budget statistics
What small businesses actually plan to spend on marketing — real survey sentiment data against a genuinely unreconciled set of 'percentage of revenue' figures that don't agree with each other.
Sources The CMO Survey · BrightLocal · Constant Contact
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Call tracking and phone lead statistics
Real platform data from 1.1 million tracked leads showing why a missed call is genuinely costly, which industries answer worst, and which channels actually drive phone conversations.
Sources CallRail · Invoca · Focus Digital
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Yelp statistics for local business
Real numbers on Yelp's paying advertiser base and advertising revenue trend, sourced directly from the company's own SEC filings — the most directly verifiable source type used anywhere on this site.
Sources Yelp Inc.
Nothing in the archive matches that. Try a broader word — “reviews”, “Maps”, “leads” — or ask for the number directly.
By industry
Vertical-specific numbers
Separated from the general research deliberately. A figure measured on dental practices is evidence about dental practices, and the archive does not promote it to a local-business benchmark by filing it with one.
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Legal marketing statistics
Real cost-per-lead and AI-referral data for law firms — the most expensive local vertical to acquire a lead in, with marketing spend that doesn't reflect it, and AI already sending clients to lawyers at a meaningful scale.
Sources Clio · Google · Internet Brands
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Real estate lead statistics
How buyers actually find agents versus how they find homes — real NAR survey data showing referral and repeat business still outweigh new lead generation, even as online search decides which listings get seen.
Sources National Association of Realtors · LocaliQ (WordStream) · The Close
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Home services marketing statistics
How homeowners actually find and hire contractors — real industry survey data showing prior experience and referral still account for six in ten hires, against real, comparatively high, search-advertising lead costs.
Sources Home Improvement Research Institute · Jobber · LocaliQ (WordStream)
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Dental marketing statistics
Real cost-per-lead data for dental practices — and a set of widely-repeated patient-discovery statistics that don't trace to any named study, including a check against the ADA's own published research.
Sources ADA Health Policy Institute · ADA Health Policy Institute (Medical Expenditure Panel Survey) · ADA Health Policy Institute (National Health Interview Survey)
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Fitness and gym marketing statistics
Real industry data on gym member retention and churn from the Health & Fitness Association's large annual survey — and a generic acquisition-cost claim that circulates without fitness-specific evidence behind it.
Sources Health & Fitness Association · Health & Fitness Association / Industry Insights
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Restaurant local marketing statistics
What's actually known about how diners discover restaurants online — a real but ageing 2023 study, and a genuine gap on how much delivery aggregators now shape that discovery.
Sources National Restaurant Association · DoorDash · PYMNTS
Claims we could not verify
68 figures this archive refuses to repeat.
Local marketing runs on numbers that get copied between roundups until nobody can name where they started. Deleting them quietly solves nothing — the next article still repeats them, and a reader who has met the figure elsewhere has no way to find out it does not hold up.
So each page keeps its own list: the claim as it circulates, where it appears to have come from, and what specifically could not be established. A 55% proximity weighting that does not match its own cited source. A 42% photo lift Google no longer states. A widely quoted Google Business Profile figure that appears to be a fabricated attribution.
They sit at the foot of the page they belong to, under the numbers that do hold up.
Research requests
Need a number that doesn’t exist yet?
If the figure you need isn't in this archive, say what decision it has to support. Some questions have an answer nobody has published — those are worth measuring properly rather than estimating.
Replies usually go out within one working day.