Tony Wang8 min readRite Aid Has Zero Stores. Our Data Still Shows 1,100 of Them.
Rite Aid closed every store in October 2025. This dataset still shows about 1,100 of them. Listing data cannot see a chain die.
Every previous study in this series measured an industry that was growing or consolidating. Pharmacy is the first one that is unmistakably shrinking — and it turns out that is the hardest thing for listing data to show you.
The test: a chain that no longer exists
Rite Aid was America's third-largest pharmacy chain. It filed for bankruptcy twice, in October 2023 and again in May 2025, and closed its final 89 stores in October 2025. As of this data snapshot it operates no US retail pharmacies at all.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Real open Rite Aid stores | 0 (final 89 closed October 2025) |
| Raw matches for the brand query in category=pharmacy | 1,992 |
| Genuine Rite Aid listings in a 30-record sample | 17 of 30 (~57%) |
| Implied genuine listings still live | ~1,130 |
| Most recent updated_at timestamps observed | Within the past week of the snapshot |
| Websites still resolving to riteaid.com store pages | Many, including full store-locator URLs |
These are not obviously stale records. They carry recent update timestamps, ratings, review counts, and working-looking store-locator links such as riteaid.com/locations/oh/cadiz/651-lincoln-street.html. Nothing in the record marks the business as closed.
The per-service artifact: one store, many listings
The second finding runs the opposite direction from an earlier result. In our physical therapy and eye care studies, summing a brand's listings across sibling categories recovered its true footprint. In pharmacy, that same technique fails badly.
| Category | Listings | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| pharmacy | 9,876 | The stores themselves |
| crypto_atm | 7,683 | Bitcoin ATMs inside the stores |
| drug_store | 5,385 | Overlapping store listings |
| passport_photo_processor | 4,818 | In-store photo service |
| money_transfer_service | 3,443 | In-store money transfer counter |
| atm | 3,133 | In-store ATMs |
| print_shop | 1,909 | In-store print counter |
Each in-store service earns its own Google listing with its own place_id. Summing siblings therefore counts a single CVS four or five times over. The same pattern shows up inside a single category:
| Listing type | Count |
|---|---|
| Store / pharmacy listings | 73 |
| "COVID-19 Drive-Thru Testing at Walgreens" | 24 |
| Specialty Pharmacy | 2 |
| "The Health Center: Operated by Walgreens" | 1 |
| Distinct street addresses | 81 (1.23 listings per address) |
| Duplicate place_ids | 0 — every listing is a distinct entity |
Nearly a quarter of the sample describes a drive-thru testing service that was wound down years ago, still listed under the pharmacy category at an address that also has its own store listing.
The contamination, for completeness
| Query | Top category returned | Why |
|---|---|---|
| q="Rite Aid" | hearing_aid_store — 4,359 | "Aid" matches hearing aid retailers and audiologists (691) |
| q="Rite Aid" (sampled names) | Buy-Rite Drugs, Price Rite Drug, Cure-Aid Pharmacy, First Aid Solutions, Rite Care Pharmacy | "Rite" and "Aid" each match independently |
This is the same class of collision documented in our eye care study, where "Sunglass Hut" returned thousands of Pizza Hut locations. The defense is unchanged: run a category facet on every brand query before trusting a count.
How we did this, and the caveats
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Brand category spreads | datasets_google_map_facets with facet=category on bare brand queries for CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid |
| Walgreens composition | 100-record sample, category=pharmacy, state=Ohio, sort=updated_at_desc, names and addresses classified by hand |
| Rite Aid survival check | 30-record sample, category=pharmacy, sort=updated_at_desc, each record classified genuine or contaminated |
| Collision checks | Address and place_id collision counts within the Walgreens sample |
| External figures | Rite Aid bankruptcy and October 2025 closure reporting; Walgreens ~8,500 stores; CVS 1,100+ closures since 2022 |
Caveats worth stating plainly: the ~1,130 figure is an estimate, derived by applying a 30-record sample's 57% genuine rate to 1,992 raw matches — the true number could be meaningfully higher or lower, and we did not classify all 1,992. We did not verify that every genuine-looking Rite Aid listing corresponds to a physically closed store; the inference rests on the company having closed all stores in October 2025, which is externally reported. The 24% COVID-listing share is from one state, Ohio, and other states may differ. CVS's ~9,000-store figure and the ~36,000 listing sum are not directly comparable — the sum includes categories that legitimately describe distinct services, which is precisely the point. And as with every study on this dataset: it's live-growing, so a re-pull months from now may show these phantom listings pruned.
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Frequently asked questions
How many Rite Aid stores are still listed after the chain closed?
Rite Aid closed its final 89 stores in October 2025 and operates no US retail pharmacies. This dataset still returns 1,992 matches for the brand within category=pharmacy, of which 17 of 30 sampled records (~57%) were genuine Rite Aid Pharmacy listings — implying roughly 1,130 live listings for a chain with zero open stores, many with update timestamps from the past week and working riteaid.com store-locator URLs.
Can business listing data measure retail closures?
Poorly. Listing data captures openings far more reliably than closures. For growth and consolidation analysis this barely matters, but for measuring a contracting industry it is disqualifying unless handled explicitly — a dead chain's phantom listings can silently inflate access statistics in exactly the regions that lost the most stores.
Why does one pharmacy store generate several listings?
Because each in-store service gets its own Google listing with its own place_id. In a 100-record Walgreens sample from Ohio, 24% were "COVID-19 Drive-Thru Testing at Walgreens" entries at the same street addresses as store listings — 1.23 listings per distinct address. CVS spans pharmacy, crypto_atm, passport_photo_processor, money_transfer_service, atm and print_shop, totaling roughly 36,000 listings for a chain with about 9,000 stores.
When does summing sibling categories overcount?
When the sibling categories describe different services at the same location rather than partial slices of the same population. Summing siblings correctly recovered Athletico's and MyEyeDr's footprints in earlier studies, but applied to CVS it counts each store four or five times over. Before summing, check whether the categories describe the same kind of entity — if one is atm or print_shop, you are about to count the same building repeatedly.
Why is searching for Rite Aid unreliable?
Because both words match independently. A category facet on the brand query returns hearing_aid_store as the top category at 4,359 matches, since "Aid" matches hearing aid retailers, plus 691 audiologists. Sampled results also include Buy-Rite Drugs, Price Rite Drug, Cure-Aid Pharmacy, Rite Care Pharmacy and First Aid Solutions — only 17 of 30 sampled records were genuinely Rite Aid.