Reviews: the bar keeps rising
BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey is the benchmark study here, and the 2026 edition shows expectations tightening fast. 41% of consumers now say they 'always' read reviews when browsing for local businesses, a big jump from 29% the previous year. Even more striking: 31% say they will only use a business rated 4.5 stars or higher — nearly double the 17% who said so a year earlier.
| Statistic | 2026 | Prior year |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers who 'always' read reviews when browsing | 41% | 29% |
| Will only use a business rated 4.5+ stars | 31% | 17% |
| Have used generative AI for local business recommendations | 45% | 6% |
| Google's share of reviews consumers read | 71% | 83% |
| Average number of review platforms consulted | 6 | — |
Two structural shifts hide in that table. First, review management is no longer a Google-only game — consumers spread their reading across an average of six platforms, and Google's share of review reading dipped from 83% to 71%. Second, a 4.4-star business is now invisible to nearly a third of the market. Review velocity and recovery (responding to and resolving bad reviews) went from nice-to-have to survival.
AI has entered local search — fast
The single most dramatic number in BrightLocal's 2026 survey: 45% of consumers have used ChatGPT or another generative AI tool to get local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. That is one of the fastest consumer behavior shifts ever recorded in this survey. AI assistants build local answers largely from the same public signals — reviews, business profiles, consistent citations, and what's written about you on the web — which means local SEO fundamentals now feed two channels at once.
Search-to-visit behavior: Google's own data
Google's published consumer research (Think with Google) found that 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day, and 28% of those local-intent searches result in a purchase. Google representatives have also stated that roughly 46% of Google searches have local intent — a figure Google shared publicly and that BrightLocal's statistics roundup tracks. Local queries are as close to bottom-of-funnel as organic search gets.
Google Business Profile
In BrightLocal's surveying of local marketers, Google Business Profile management ranked as the single most valuable local SEO service (cited by 76% of marketers). Google's own published guidance adds the completeness case: per Google (as reported in BrightLocal's local SEO statistics roundup), customers are 2.7x more likely to consider a business reputable when they find a complete Business Profile, and complete profiles are 70% more likely to attract location visits.
A note on numbers I left out
You may notice some famous local SEO stats missing here — '50% of near-me searches lead to a store visit within a day,' the various billion-count near-me volume claims, and similar. Many of those trace to studies from 2014–2016 or to sources that no longer exist. I'd rather give you eleven current, checkable numbers than thirty stale ones.