We built extraction infrastructure to read Google Business Profiles at scale, and once it worked, we looked at what we had. We did not set out to publish research. We set out to build a product. Along the way we noticed the data was more useful than anyone in the local SEO space was publishing, so we wrote it up.
Here is what we saw, in plain terms.
The headline
27% of profiles in our sample are unclaimed or have unverified claim status. That is not a failure of the businesses. Google creates profiles automatically from public data, and most owners do not realize they have one to claim. The result: roughly one in four local business profiles in our sample is either not owner-managed, or not verifiably owner-managed.
The gap that surprised us most
We found 463 US local businesses in our sample that link active social media to a Google Business Profile that is not confirmed claimed. That is the inverted funnel. These businesses are posting on Facebook or Instagram, and they are paying social media managers to do it, while the channel where local buying intent actually lives is unmanaged. By vertical, chiropractic practices lead this paradox at 17.3%. Wedding venues, at 5%, are the least affected.
The rating compression
60% of US local business profiles in our sample rate 4.9 or higher. The effective competitive ceiling is 4.9, not 5.0, and a 4.7 rating is below median in most Tier Special verticals. Day care is the one category where the ceiling sits meaningfully lower, at 4.43 average.
The contact funnel gap
Only 17% of profiles offer all five contact paths we checked (phone, website, email, WhatsApp, social). The median offers two. Phone is universal at 94%. Email is the outlier at 22%.
The keyword-in-name myth
0.43% of profiles contain superlatives like best, top, or premier. The panic about keyword-stuffed names is not matched by the prevalence. The actual pattern worth auditing is city-in-name, at 8.33%, which is where real policy risk lives.
The visual-business paradox
Hair salons link social media at 22.5%. Day spas at 26.7%. Meanwhile, veterinary practices hit 43.3%. The verticals we think of as visually-native are the ones least likely to cross-link their social channels from their Google profile.
What this is and is not
This is aggregate data on public Google Business Profile fields. It is not a ranking study, a revenue study, or a consumer survey. We did not measure customer acquisition cost, search position, or conversion rate. What we measured is what a searcher sees when they find a business on Google Maps, and whether the owner has set it up to be seen.
The sample is concentrated in six US states (Arizona, California, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Nevada). Findings may differ in the Northeast and Midwest. We will know more as we expand the extraction.
Read the reports
All seven reports are published at insights.inqik.com/reports. Each includes methodology, full findings, a downloadable dataset under CC BY 4.0, and a citation block. A short tour, in the order we would recommend reading:
- The Wrong-Channel Paradox. The argument piece. Why local businesses invest in social and ignore the channel that actually converts.
- State of Unclaimed GBPs. The macro dataset. Claim, photo, and website gaps across nine verticals.
- The 4.74 Ceiling. Why almost every profile rates above 4.5 and why a 4.7 is below median.
- The Contact Funnel Collapse. Only 17% of profiles offer all five contact paths.
- The Social Media Paradox. Why visual businesses cross-link social less, not more.
- The Keyword-in-Name Myth. The panic does not match the data.
- US Med Spa Benchmarks. A vertical deep dive.
What comes next
We publish on a cadence of two pieces per month, minimum. The next report will dig into a second vertical. Field notes like this one sit alongside the reports when a single observation is worth naming on its own.
We do not run a newsletter. If you want to follow the work, the site is at insights.inqik.com, and the RSS and sitemap are public. Press, researchers, or anyone who wants to discuss the data can reach us at research@inqik.com.