The Google Business Profile Reputation Gap: A Census of 18.1 Million US Listings

Every "Google Business Profile statistics" roundup on the search results page cites the same handful of secondary numbers — search-intent share, ranking-factor weightings, a global listing-count estimate — recirculated from survey to survey. None of them look at the profiles themselves. So we pulled them: a live query over 18.1 million US Google Business Profile listings in Crawlora's Google Maps dataset, scoped to reviews, ratings, geography, and category — the exact cut of this dataset nobody, including us, has published before.

The headline isn't website presence, which we already measured in June across the US, UK, and Canada. It's reputation. Google's own 2026 roadmap has spent the year tightening Google Business Profile verification specifically to purge fake and low-quality listings, and local-SEO research says review count and rating are now the single heaviest signal in local-pack ranking. So we asked the obvious follow-up nobody had answered with real data: how many actual US businesses have the reputation signal that's supposed to matter most?

The reputation gap: 1 in 10 has never been reviewed

"No reviews" is a different, worse problem than "bad reviews." A 1-star business at least got noticed. Across the full 18.1 million US listings, 1,837,129 — 10.1% — have a review count of exactly zero:

Has at least one review89.9% · 16,293,437Zero reviews10.1% · 1,837,129

That's the floor. The bar that actually matters is higher. Local-SEO research this year converges on the same rule of thumb: a listing with 50-plus reviews at a 4.5-star-plus rating has a materially better shot — one widely cited figure puts it at 61% better — at landing in the local pack. We can check that against the whole population instead of a survey sample, and the answer is blunter than the research implies:

Meets 4.5★+ and 50+ reviews8.4% · 1,530,524Doesn't meet the bar91.6% · 16,600,042

8.4%. One in twelve. If reviews and ratings are really carrying a third of the local-pack ranking weight, as the research below claims, the overwhelming majority of US businesses on Google Maps are competing for local visibility without the one signal that's supposed to decide it.

Reviews are a healthcare problem, specifically

The zero-review rate isn't spread evenly across categories — it's concentrated, and the pattern is not what "small businesses don't ask for reviews" would predict. We pulled the ten largest real-business categories in the US dataset and ranked them by zero-review share:

Doctor25.5%37,901 of 148,354

Medical clinic11.5%19,314 of 167,527

Dentist10.8%24,209 of 223,543

Insurance agency6.2%9,232 of 147,902

Auto repair shop3.5%5,614 of 158,659

Beauty salon2.8%4,568 of 161,369

Real estate agent2.3%3,098 of 136,594

Hair salon1.9%2,603 of 134,641

Restaurant1.7%2,720 of 164,649

Gas station1.4%1,854 of 132,088

Doctors sit at 25.5% — better than one in four has never been reviewed — nearly double the next-worst category and eighteen times the rate of gas stations. Medical clinics (11.5%) and dentists (10.8%) land right behind. Meanwhile the consumer-facing trades that live or die by walk-in demand — restaurants, hair salons, gas stations, real estate agents — sit at 98%-plus reviewed. That's not a small-business-neglect story; it's a category-specific one. Patients are structurally less likely to leave a public review of a doctor than a diner is to review a restaurant, and healthcare listings often go months between the kind of single, memorable visit that prompts someone to open Google and type something.

Show the full category breakdown

Category	Listings	Has ≥1 review	Zero reviews	Zero-review rate
Doctor	148,354	110,453	37,901	25.5%
Medical clinic	167,527	148,213	19,314	11.5%
Dentist	223,543	199,334	24,209	10.8%
Insurance agency	147,902	138,670	9,232	6.2%
Auto repair shop	158,659	153,045	5,614	3.5%
Beauty salon	161,369	156,801	4,568	2.8%
Real estate agent	136,594	133,496	3,098	2.3%
Hair salon	134,641	132,038	2,603	1.9%
Restaurant	164,649	161,929	2,720	1.7%
Gas station	132,088	130,234	1,854	1.4%

Where the listings are: a 50-state count

Listing density isn't proportional to population. Texas and New York edge out California despite California's larger population base — worth reading as a crawl/index-coverage artifact of this dataset, not a demographic claim about where American businesses actually sit:

389891488964 no data

Show the data

Texas	1,488,964
New York	1,444,391
California	1,394,859
Florida	1,220,378
Pennsylvania	895,214
New Jersey	696,569
Illinois	656,596
North Carolina	638,797
Ohio	630,230
Georgia	537,244
Michigan	528,649
Virginia	514,611
Massachusetts	459,516
Tennessee	405,382
Maryland	382,759
Colorado	379,865
Indiana	367,567
Washington	316,563
Missouri	315,871
Alabama	315,056
Wisconsin	309,885
Minnesota	278,892
Connecticut	277,156
Louisiana	267,104
Kentucky	262,501
South Carolina	260,471
Oklahoma	226,688
Arkansas	197,006
Iowa	174,700
Kansas	172,918
Oregon	165,197
Arizona	164,669
Mississippi	160,009
Maine	142,061
West Virginia	129,344
Nebraska	120,551
New Hampshire	110,016
Utah	97,459
Montana	93,855
New Mexico	85,838
Nevada	85,533
Vermont	75,284
Delaware	73,098
Idaho	70,571
South Dakota	68,047
District of Columbia	67,933
Rhode Island	67,841
North Dakota	58,634
Hawaii	41,182
Alaska	38,989

The top 5 states — Texas, New York, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania — hold 35.5% of every US listing in the dataset. One state is conspicuously absent from the map: Wyoming didn't resolve to a distinct state bucket in this facet at all, which reads as a data-normalization gap in the underlying crawl rather than a claim that Wyoming has zero businesses — worth flagging rather than quietly smoothing over.

Show all 50 states (Wyoming excluded — see note above)

State	Listings	Share of US total
Texas	1,488,964	8.2%
New York	1,444,391	8.0%
California	1,394,859	7.7%
Florida	1,220,378	6.7%
Pennsylvania	895,214	4.9%
New Jersey	696,569	3.8%
Illinois	656,596	3.6%
North Carolina	638,797	3.5%
Ohio	630,230	3.5%
Georgia	537,244	3.0%
Michigan	528,649	2.9%
Virginia	514,611	2.8%
Massachusetts	459,516	2.5%
Tennessee	405,382	2.2%
Maryland	382,759	2.1%
Colorado	379,865	2.1%
Indiana	367,567	2.0%
Washington	316,563	1.7%
Missouri	315,871	1.7%
Alabama	315,056	1.7%
Wisconsin	309,885	1.7%
Minnesota	278,892	1.5%
Connecticut	277,156	1.5%
Louisiana	267,104	1.5%
Kentucky	262,501	1.4%
South Carolina	260,471	1.4%
Oklahoma	226,688	1.3%
Arkansas	197,006	1.1%
Iowa	174,700	1.0%
Kansas	172,918	1.0%
Oregon	165,197	0.9%
Arizona	164,669	0.9%
Mississippi	160,009	0.9%
Maine	142,061	0.8%
West Virginia	129,344	0.7%
Nebraska	120,551	0.7%
New Hampshire	110,016	0.6%
Utah	97,459	0.5%
Montana	93,855	0.5%
New Mexico	85,838	0.5%
Nevada	85,533	0.5%
Vermont	75,284	0.4%
Delaware	73,098	0.4%
Idaho	70,571	0.4%
South Dakota	68,047	0.4%
District of Columbia	67,933	0.4%
Rhode Island	67,841	0.4%
North Dakota	58,634	0.3%
Hawaii	41,182	0.2%
Alaska	38,989	0.2%

Why this is landing right now

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Google spent 2026 tightening Google Business Profile verification, with video verification now the default path for most new or edited listings — explicitly aimed at cutting down fake and duplicate listings rather than a routine UX tweak. That tightening lines up with what the reputation data shows: a large share of the listings Google is now scrutinizing harder are the same ones with no reviews, no ratings, and often no website to verify against.

The stakes for getting this right keep rising. Local-SEO research this year puts Google Business Profile signals as the single heaviest local-pack ranking factor, at roughly a third of total weight — ahead of on-page and link signals combined. Businesses that land in the map pack's top 3 see roughly 126% more traffic and 93% more calls, clicks, and direction requests than those ranked 4 through 10. Nearly half of all Google searches (46%) carry local intent, and AI Overviews are now appearing on a majority of local searches (68%), compressing how much room is left below the fold for anyone who doesn't already have the reputation signals AI Overviews and the local pack pull from. Reviews and ratings aren't a nice-to-have layered on top of a Business Profile — they're close to the whole game, and 11 in 12 US listings don't have them at a competitive level.

What this means

If you run local SEO or an agency practice: the businesses in this data with zero reviews, no website, or a thin rating are your addressable market — not because they're bad leads, but because they're the ones with the most obvious, provable gap to fix. Crawlora's Google Maps API and Contact API let you pull exactly that segment (unreviewed, unclaimed-looking, no-website listings) by category and state, instead of manually screenshotting Maps searches. See the web data layer for local lead generation for the workflow — it's built for finding customers, but the same data cuts equally well for finding businesses that need your services.

If you're building on this data directly: every number in this post came from Crawlora's public Google Maps dataset API — datasets_google_map_search and datasets_google_map_facets support the same min_review_count, min_rating, has_website, state, and category filters used here. Full endpoint docs are at /docs/google-map, and the broader catalog is at /datasets.

If you want the website-presence half of this story: /local-business-index is the companion study — 40% of 12.4 million US/UK/Canada listings have no website at all, and the most common "website" in the whole dataset is a Facebook page.

Methodology & data

Every figure in this post comes from live queries against Crawlora's google-map-businesses dataset via its public dataset API, filtered to country=United States, pulled July 19–20, 2026. "Has a website" and "has ≥1 review" use the has_website and min_review_count filters directly; the "meets the bar" figure combines min_rating=4.5 and min_review_count=50. Category-level counts exclude point-of-interest categories (postal codes, bus stops, parks, churches, ATMs) and are limited to the ten largest real-business categories in the dataset, matching the filtering already documented on /local-business-index. State counts come from a facet aggregation on the state field; Wyoming did not appear as a distinct value in that aggregation and is omitted rather than estimated.

This is a point-in-time crawl snapshot, not a government census — it measures what's indexed in Crawlora's Google Maps dataset, not a verified count of every business in America, and state-level counts should be read as listing density in this crawl, not authoritative business-population figures. We publish aggregate rollups only; no individual business record from this dataset is exposed in this post.

Query the same Google Business Profile data

18.1M+ US listings with review count, rating, category, state, and website presence — filterable by the same fields used in this post, over one REST API.

Google Maps API docsLocal lead-gen workflowPricing