96% of Google Maps Searches for Local Services Show No Paid Listings

Someone with a leaking pipe opens Google Maps and searches for a plumber. The map fills with pins and a list of local businesses, ranked by Google. On most searches, not one of those listings has been paid for: the businesses at the top earned their place.

That matters for how a local business spends its marketing money. Promoted pins are the paid listings Google can show on Maps, marked as sponsored. If they appear on few searches, the map is still mostly won through the free Google Business Profile, reviews and location, not ad spend.

96% of Google Maps searches for local services show no paid listing at all. Even plumbers, the most advertised of 20 services, see a promoted pin on 10.1% of searches, which leaves nine in ten plumber searches with no ad on the map.

On September 23, 2026 we ran Google Maps searches for 20 local services, such as plumber, dentist and personal injury lawyer, in 79 US cities: 50 large cities and 29 small ones. Each service and city was searched twice, once with "near me" and once without, giving 3,160 searches, and we captured the top 100 results of each.

A promoted pin is a paid listing on Google Maps, labeled as sponsored, that an advertiser buys through Google Ads. A search counts as showing ads when at least one promoted pin appears in its results. The Google Business Profile is the free listing, with reviews, hours and photos, that makes up the rest of the map.

129 of the 3,160 searches, 4.1%, showed at least one promoted pin. When pins did appear, there were few of them: 219 sponsored listings across those 129 searches, 1.7 per search. On a map that shows up to 100 businesses, one or two paid listings are a small share of what a searcher sees.

Every one of the 20 services had at least one sponsored listing somewhere, so paid pins are available to all of them. Few businesses buy them, which leaves the local map mostly to organic rankings.

Plumber searches showed a promoted pin 10.1% of the time, the highest of the 20 services. Chiropractors follow at 7% and roofers at 5.7%, then a group at 5.1%: auto repair shops, HVAC companies, dentists and personal injury lawyers. These are services where one customer is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, so a paid pin can pay for itself.

At the other end, restaurants (1.3%) and accountants (0.6%) rarely showed paid pins. For an accountant, a paid Maps listing is almost unheard of; for a plumber, it is still absent from nine searches in ten.

Searches with "near me" showed promoted pins slightly less often, 3.4% of the time, than the same searches without it, at 4.7%. People who add "near me" are often ready to call, but that has not drawn more advertisers onto the map.

City size mattered even less. Large cities came in at 4.2% and small towns at 3.8%, so paid Maps competition is not concentrated in big markets. A business in a small town faces about the same chance of a paid rival on the map as one in a major city.

If you are choosing between Maps ads and improving your Google Business Profile, the profile comes first. With paid pins on 4.1% of map searches, the local results are earned through the right categories, a steady flow of reviews, real photos and accurate hours. Every improvement there shows on the 96% of searches with no ad.

If you are a plumber, roofer or chiropractor, expect more paid competition on Maps than other trades. Promoted pins and Local Services Ads can still make sense once your profile is strong, because a paid pin next to a thin profile wastes the click. Our local seo packages build the profile, reviews and local pages first, then add paid Maps placements where the numbers support them.

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