Someone in Tauranga searches "landscaper near me" on their phone. Google shows them a handful of local businesses side by side, with stars, review counts, photos and opening hours. They tap one. Whether you get that call is decided in that list, against those businesses, in a few seconds.
That is why the only benchmark worth your time is a local one. Not for the comparison itself, but to answer the questions you already ask: am I showing up, do I look good enough, and what should I fix first?
In this article
- 1. Why national averages send you the wrong way
- 2. Where the bar sits in your market, and how to check it yourself
- 3. Putting your effort into what gets you the call
National averages send you the wrong way
Advice like "the average business has 47 Google reviews" sounds useful. It is not. A landscaper in Tauranga with 30 reviews reads that and feels behind. If the other Tauranga landscapers have eight, 12 and 15, that business is the one with the most proof on the page.
Flip it and the same number misleads the other way. Thirty reviews looks healthy against a national figure, but if three hair salons in Ponsonby sit above 200 each, a customer scrolling past them sees 30 as thin. Your customers never see a national average. They see the four or five businesses Google puts next to yours.
Key point
"Good enough" is set by the businesses beside you in the list. Four photos is plenty in one trade in one town and thin two suburbs over. The bar is local, so the check has to be local too.
Where the bar sits in your market
The bar is not the best business in town. A market high of 1,900 photos tells you nothing useful. What matters is what most of your local competitors have, and what the handful that get the most calls have done that the rest have not.
Think of it as group membership rather than a grade. "You're one of the businesses without a description on your Google listing" is something you can fix this afternoon. "You're behind" is not. The useful questions are simple ones, asked about the businesses a customer would see beside you:
- How many reviews do they have, and how recent are the newest ones?
- Do they reply to reviews, including the bad ones?
- Do their listings carry real photos, a description and correct hours?
- Does their website load fast on a phone and say clearly what they do and where?
Where most of them have something and you do not, that is a gap a customer notices. Where none of them have it, doing it first is how you stand out.
Check it yourself in 20 minutes
You can get a rough read on your own market tonight. Open a private browsing window on your phone so Google is not tailoring results to you. Search the way a customer would: your trade plus your town ("electrician Hamilton"), then your trade plus "near me". Do it from home and again from a suburb you want more work in.
Write down the businesses that appear in the map list both times. Those are the ones a customer weighs you against. Then open each listing and note the star rating, the review count, the date of the newest review, the number of photos, and whether the hours are filled in. Ten minutes in, you will have a fair sense of where the bar sits.
Picture this
A physio clinic in Hamilton has 25 Google reviews and a tidy website. By any national yardstick it is doing fine, and the owner has been planning to spend money on the website next.
Checked against the other Hamilton clinics, the picture shifts. Most of them reply to every review and post fresh photos, and this clinic does neither. Its website is already one of the better ones in town.
The website can wait. Replying to reviews and adding photos are what a customer comparing clinics actually notices, and both cost nothing but an hour.
Put your effort into what gets the call
Most owners put effort into whatever worries them. One with a 3.9 rating spends on SEO. One with a 4.8 loses sleep over a single bad review. A local benchmark shows which move actually matters here, for you.
The rule of thumb is to fix the gaps a customer can see first, in the order they meet you. Showing up in the map list comes before anything else, because a customer who never sees you never compares you. Then how your listing looks once they find you: reviews, photos, hours, description. Your website comes after that for most local trades, because many customers call straight from the listing.
Your customers never see a national average. They see the four or five businesses Google puts next to yours.
Start this week
5 minutes today
- Search your trade plus your town in a private window and note who shows up in the map list
- Note whether you are in that list at all
30 minutes this week
- Write down reviews, newest review date, photos and hours for each business in the list
- Circle the one thing most of them have that you do not, and fix it
Ongoing this month
- Ask every happy customer for a Google review until your count sits with the pack
- Repeat the search at the end of the month and see whether your place in the list has moved
Where Marketbase comes in
Doing this by hand gives you the few businesses you can see from one phone. Marketbase has already checked every business in your trade and city, across your Google listing, reviews, the map, your website, Facebook and where else you are listed. Your free report shows what is working, what could move, and your Market Rank in each area, as "#4 of 27".
Seven days' free access then gives you the how for every finding, in the order that moves you fastest. Sort it yourself, or we'll do it for you. Find your business to see your free report.