67.7% of Local Google Searches Show a Directory Site on the First Page

A car shopper searches for a used car dealer in their city. Under the map, the first page of Google is full of listings sites: one page of dealer reviews, one of cars for sale, another of vehicle history reports. The dealers themselves have to fight for the spots that are left.

Below the map of local businesses, Google shows ten regular results, and not all of them belong to businesses. Directories, review sites and marketplaces list many businesses at once, and they compete for the same spots. For a local business, each directory on the page is both a competitor for the click and a second place a customer can find you, if your listing there is complete.

67.7% of local searches show at least one directory on the first page, and 15.4% of all first-page local results are directories. They cluster just below the top: directories hold 10.3% of number one spots but 17% of positions 2 to 5. Auto dealer and real estate searches face the most directory competition, banking and education the least.

We analysed Google's first page of US results for searches across 24 industries, from plumbing and auto dealers to banking and higher education, using Google results data from a licensed provider for September 23, 2026. The study covers the 5,853 desktop searches where Google showed a map of local businesses and analysed their 49,484 organic results in positions 1 to 10.

A directory is a site that lists many businesses rather than being one: review sites such as Yelp and the BBB, social platforms such as Facebook, lead-generation sites such as Thumbtack and Angi, and marketplaces such as Cars.com. We checked every result against a list of 73 such sites. We report the share of results that are directories, the share of searches with at least one, the most common directories, and the split by position and industry.

Most searches have one or two. 31.9% of local searches show exactly one directory, 19.6% show two, and 16.2% show three or more. A third of local searches, 32.3%, have none at all.

Across all first-page results, 15.4% are directories, roughly one or two of every ten. A customer who scrolls past the map is likely to meet at least one list of businesses before reaching the second half of the page, and the businesses on that list get a second chance at the customer.

Yelp is the most common directory, with 2,616 first-page results, followed by Facebook with 1,651. Thumbtack (348) and the Better Business Bureau (292) come next, then the car sites Carfax, Cars.com and Autotrader, and the legal directories Justia and Super Lawyers.

Two general directories dominate across industries, and each industry adds its own specialists: car marketplaces for dealers, lawyer directories for law firms, and home service sites for trades. That tells a business owner which few profiles are worth the effort.

Directories hold 10.3% of number one results on local searches, against 17% of positions 2 to 5. The top organic spot mostly goes to a business's own website, and directories fill the positions just below it.

For a business, that is useful news: your own site can still win the top regular result on a local search, while your directory profiles give you a second presence a few places down. Owning both the top spot and a strong listing on the directory below it puts you in front of the customer twice.

Directory share depends on the industry. Directories take 25.9% of first-page results on auto dealer searches and 25.3% on real estate searches, where marketplaces list thousands of cars and homes. Plumbing (19.8%), pest control (19.4%) and moving (18.5%) follow. Banking and loans (4.2%), higher education (5.8%) and insurance (7.6%) face the least.

In car and home searches, customers are comparing inventory across many sellers, and marketplaces answer that need directly. In banking, education and insurance, the institutions themselves are what people search for, and their own sites fill the page.

Find out which directories rank for your main searches. Search your service and city, note every directory on the first page, and make sure you have a complete, accurate profile on each one. For a plumber that might mean Yelp, Thumbtack, Angi and the Better Business Bureau; for a car dealer, Cars.com and Autotrader.

Keep your business name, address and phone number identical across every directory and your Google Business Profile, so customers and Google see the same details everywhere.

Then put most of your effort into your own website, since directories hold only 10.3% of number one spots on local searches. Our local seo packages include auditing and cleaning up directory listings alongside the work that helps your own site rank.

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