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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

What Percentage of Verified Businesses Use Google Posts?

TLDR: ~7% of businesses world wide that have verified their business listing are using Google Posts and roughly 26% of verified business in the US were doing so. On a percentage basis the use of posts was highest, around 30%, in Spain, Italy and Japan. The developed world has significantly more updake of this feature than Asia & South America.

Phil Rozak of Localvisibility did a nifty post a few weeks ago exploring business utilization levels of Google Posts. He manually examined a large sample of businesses in medium and large cities to determine that 17% of businesses in the US had used the feature.

In doing my Google Websites uptake analysis I realized that I might be able to use the Google site: search technique to examine this number both in the US and in countries around the world .  While it wouldn’t provide me with nuance like Phil ferreted out that 4% had done an update within the past 7 days, it would give me high level detail. And while Google Websites created is not a perfect proxy for verified businesses, it is a pretty good one.

% of Verified Businesses Using Google Posts
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Results:

As of today that stands at 26% of those businesses in the United States with Google Websites (and are thus verified) that are using posts.

As you might expect, utilization as a percentage of those that have created Google Websites is consistently higher in Europe, Canada, Japan and the US than in Asia, Turkey and South American countries:

Country

Total Websites

Posts

Posts %

Espana Posts VER TODAS

84,400

26,300

31%

日本 (Japan) Post すべて表示

123,000

37,800

31%

Deutschland

80,100

23,500

29%

United Kingdom

88,500

25,900

29%

Italia “MOSTRA TUTTO”

121,000

34,500

29%

Polska (Poland) Posts WYŚWIETL WSZYSTKO

70,200

18,400

26%

United States

472,000

121,000

26%

France Posts TOUT AFFICHER

114,000

27,800

24%

South Africa

35,800

8,600

24%

Australia

68,000

15,200

22%

Canada

71,900

15,700

22%

Brasil

371,000

73,000

20%

Türkiye (turkey)

286,000

51,900

18%

Malaysia

51,200

8,840

17%

Viet Nam Posts XEM TT C

111,000

16,590

15%

Mexico

241,000

20,900

9%

Україна (Ukraine) Posts ПЕРЕГЛЯНУТИ ВСІ

40,700

2,890

7%

Argentina

89,100

5,010

6%

India

4,200,000

197,000

5%

Indonesia

4,410,000

27,600

1%

Россия (Russia)

81300

0%

Methodology:

Using the searches: site:business.site “United States” and site:business.site “United States” + “View All”  you can get a rough idea of the use of Posts amongst businesses that are verified*.

Why is the number higher than Phil’s? Because my methodology is looking at usage of those that have created Google Webpages. That is a more engaged group and they have verified their listing. Both reasons would explain the higher than the overall usage number.

I am also making an assumption that the cohort of businesses that have created a Google Website is similar in behaviors to those that have just verified.

Some notes:

1- After a Twitter convo I realized that since Hotels and a few other categories don’t have posts, these numbers might be slightly high. That being said they are directionally accurate.

2- Also since we have no way of knowing how many businesses are verified in any country we have no way of knowing what the upside opportunity is for Google (or an agency). I did see Bill Hartzer noting that in a 10,000 listing sample of US SABs that 68% of them had been claimed. If that is the case then that would make my US numbers align perfectly with Phil’s. (.68 X .26 = .17)

* To see these numbers for any country you need to modiy the site:business.site search with the name of the country (in its original language) and the phrase “View All” translated to that language. So a search on Poland would look like: site:business.site Polska + “WYŚWIETL WSZYSTKO”