Local Search Statistics & Sources

We quote a handful of numbers about how people look for local services. This page is where those numbers come from, what each one actually measures, and where to read the original research yourself. If a figure appears anywhere on our site, it should be on this page.

84% searched online for a local business in the last three months

From BrightLocal’s consumer search behavior research, which surveys consumers about how they find and evaluate local businesses. The figure covers any online search for a local business in the preceding three months, not any single platform or category.

Source: BrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior Study

61% started their latest local search on Google Search or Google Maps

Also from BrightLocal’s channel research. Respondents name the single channel they began their most recent local search on, so the figure describes where a search starts, not total traffic, and not where the decision is finally made.

Source: BrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior Study

72% look at three or fewer businesses before deciding

From BrightLocal’s research on how local buying decisions get made. This is the number we care about most: the shortlist is short. A business that is not in the first handful of results is usually not being compared at all.

Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Decisions Study

Billions of searches happen on Google every day

Google’s own published description of its search volume. We quote it as an order of magnitude rather than a precise count, because Google publishes it that way.

Source: Google, How Search Works

How We Use These Numbers

These are industry-wide figures about consumer behavior. They describe the market you compete in. They are not predictions about your business, and no one can promise you a particular result from them. Our traffic guarantee only applies when an existing website has at least 90 days of usable analytics before launch. Full eligibility is set out in our 90-Day Performance Guarantee.

Third-party research gets restudied and republished. If a source materially revises a figure, we update the claim here and everywhere else it appears rather than keeping the older, better-sounding number.

Questions

If you think we have cited something incorrectly, tell us and we will check it.

Email: [email protected]