Florida Local Search
Statistics (2026)

Across the 97 Brevard County businesses L3ad Solutions deep-audited in Q1 2026, 25.8 percent have structured data on their website, and every one of those 25 sites uses LocalBusiness or one of its subtypes.

That means 74.2 percent of this broad local sample have no structured data at all (35.1 percent have no website to carry it), even though it is free to implement and is one of the main signals AI systems read to confirm a business is real.

Among the same 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026, 18.6 percent use the generic LocalBusiness type, 12.4 percent carry an Organization block, and 2.1 percent carry FAQPage schema.

Beyond the basic LocalBusiness block, richer structured data is close to nonexistent in the broad market: no audited site carried Service or Review schema.

Among Florida's top-ranked local businesses, schema adoption averages 74.4 percent (3,073 top-ranked business websites sampled across 1,110 Florida city-industry markets, measured July and October 2026).

This is the same metric as stat 1 at a different scope: stat 1 samples the broad market in one county, this one samples only the winners statewide. Read together, schema is rare among average businesses and near-standard among the businesses that rank.

In 43.9 percent of the 877 Florida city-industry markets where all three top-ranked business websites were sampled (July and October 2026), all three carry schema markup.

Only 2.6 percent of those fully sampled markets had none of the top three carrying schema. In most Florida markets, showing up without structured data means competing against a top shelf that already has it.

HVAC has the highest schema adoption among top-ranked Florida business websites at 85.7 percent, and real estate the lowest at 61.9 percent (top 3 ranked sites per market, 93 Florida cities, July and October 2026).

Auto repair (82.9 percent) and dentists (79.8 percent) are next behind HVAC. Even the "lowest" trade is above 60 percent among winners, which is why the 25.8 percent broad-market figure in stat 1 is such a gap.

The 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026 average 69 percent Google Business Profile completion.

Most businesses set up their Google Business Profile once and never come back. The profile is often the only online presence they have, and it sits two-thirds finished.

Only 2.1 percent of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026 posted to their Google Business Profile weekly (four or more posts in 30 days), and 35.1 percent posted at all.

Photos are the one habit most keep: 85.6 percent carry ten or more. Two thirds (67 percent) list their services and 29.9 percent have an active Q&A section.

Of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026, 64.9 percent have a website at all.

More than a third (35.1 percent) rely entirely on their Google Business Profile for their online presence. Those businesses cannot carry schema markup, cannot pass Core Web Vitals, and give AI assistants nothing to read.

The median business among the 97 audited in Brevard County in Q1 2026 has 66 Google reviews and a median rating of 4.6 stars.

Ratings cluster high (the mean is 4.5). The real separation between businesses is review count and review pace, not the star average.

87.6 percent of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026 have answered at least some of their Google reviews; the median business answers 35 percent of them.

Response is common but shallow: most owners answer some reviews, few answer most. A reply within a day or two, in the owner's voice, is the habit that separates them.

The median Brevard County business added 2 Google reviews in the previous 30 days; the top tenth added 19.5 on average, and 14.4 percent added none (Q1 2026, 97 businesses).

Pace is where the field spreads out. Restaurants add a median of 15 a month; every home-service trade sits between 1.5 and 4.

Across the 1,114 Florida city-industry markets that returned listings (July and October 2026), the median market's top-ranked Google listings carry 96 reviews, and the average star rating among top-ranked listings is 4.76.

This is the statewide competitive bar: to look like a top-ranked Florida business, you need roughly triple-digit review counts and a rating in the high 4s.

The average Florida city-industry market has 9 established competitors with 100 or more Google reviews (measured across the 1,114 markets that returned listings, July and October 2026).

"Low competition" Florida markets are rarer than owners assume. In a typical market, around nine businesses have already built triple-digit review counts.

The 25th-percentile star rating among top-ranked Florida listings averages 4.68 stars across the 1,114 measured markets with rated listings (July and October 2026).

That is the rating floor of what ranks. A 4.3-star profile is not "pretty good" in Florida local search: in most markets it sits below the bottom quartile of the top-ranked set.

The median mobile PageSpeed score across the 63 Brevard County business websites audited in Q1 2026 is 48 out of 100 (mean 47).

Scores come from Google PageSpeed Insights mobile testing. A median of 48 means the typical local business site is slow on the device most local searches happen on.

Zero of the 63 Brevard County business websites audited in Q1 2026 scored 90 or higher on mobile PageSpeed, and 63.5 percent scored below 50.

Not one site in the sample reached Google's "good" performance band. Site speed is the least contested factor we measure: nobody local is winning it yet.

The main content of a Brevard County business website takes 4.0 seconds to show on a phone on average, and 1 of the 63 sites audited in Q1 2026 clears both the 2.5-second LCP and 0.1 CLS thresholds.

Nearly every local site misses Google's own loading threshold. Run your own site through the free local marketing audit to see where you land.

62.9 percent of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026 have a mobile-friendly website (96.8 percent of those with a site).

Which leaves almost 4 in 10 either without a mobile-usable site or without a site at all (see stat 8). For emergency trades, that is a direct handoff of after-hours leads to competitors.

General contractors have the fewest established rivals across the 93 measured Florida cities: in the typical city, 1 of the top 20 Google listings has passed 100 reviews, against 19 of 20 for restaurants (July and October 2026).

Established rivals are the measured component that used to feed a composite "opportunity score"; the score was retired on October 15, 2026 because one capped Places call cannot carry a formula, and the components are published instead. The 786 of 1,116 city and trade cells that returned the 20-result cap are an API limit, not a market reading.

In Q2 2026, L3ad Solutions recorded 2,560 AI assistant answers about Florida roofers: 8 questions, run 5 times each, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude in 16 cities.

Every answer was saved verbatim with its timestamp and model version, then the recommended businesses were extracted from the recorded text. Nothing in this section is an estimate.

All four major AI assistants agreed on the same top roofer in only 1 of the 16 Florida cities measured in Q2 2026.

That is a 6 percent agreement rate. "Are we visible in AI search?" has at least four different answers, and they usually disagree.

Asking four AI assistants for the best roofer in a Florida city produces, on average, 2.9 different number-one answers (16 cities, Q2 2026).

Out of a possible four. A business can lead on ChatGPT and be absent on Claude, so checking one assistant tells you almost nothing.

The roofer with the most Google reviews appears in only 28 percent of AI assistant answers on average (16 Florida cities, Q2 2026).

Reviews are no longer enough. AI visibility is a separate, measurable channel, and most review leaders are losing it by default.

In 2 of the 16 cities measured in Q2 2026, the Google review leader was named by none of the four AI assistants.

In Orlando, the review leader holds 1,626 Google reviews and was named by zero assistants. In Key West, the leader holds 535 reviews, also named by zero.

In Melbourne, Florida, the roofer with 1,765 Google reviews surfaced in roughly 1 percent of recorded AI answers (Q2 2026).

The largest review count in the market bought almost no AI visibility. The businesses the assistants named instead had far fewer reviews but stronger directory presence and structured data.

The Google review leader was named by all four AI assistants in only 8 of the 16 Florida cities measured in Q2 2026.

Half the time, at least one major assistant has never heard of the market's most-reviewed business.

Cape Coral was the only city of the 16 measured in Q2 2026 where every assistant shared the same top pick: one roofer appeared in 83 percent of all recorded answers there.

Total consensus is possible, but rare. In most Florida markets, the AI conversation is still up for grabs, which is exactly the window for businesses that move first.

We analyzed 2,091 source citations behind AI roofer recommendations in three Florida markets in Q2 2026, and two source types dominate: review directories and the businesses' own websites.

In Titusville the assistants cited Angi 50 times, Yelp 20, BBB 16, and Google 14. Orlando leaned on Yahoo Local (57 citations) and Google (40). If a business is absent from these directories, the assistants have nothing to pull.

83 percent of the roofers AI assistants recommend carry LocalBusiness structured data on their website (29 recommended-business sites crawled across three Florida markets, Q2 2026).

Note the scope: this is the AI-recommended set, not the broad market from stat 1. The winners look like real businesses in code, and the broad market mostly does not.

Only 17 percent of AI-recommended Florida roofers expose an aggregate rating inside their structured data (29 sites crawled, Q2 2026).

Even the winners mostly skip this. Adding an aggregateRating to LocalBusiness markup hands the assistants a number they can quote, and most competitors are not doing it.

The roofers AI assistants recommend average between 4.8 and 5.0 stars on Google across the three Florida markets measured in Q2 2026, with nearly all showing a phone number and address in plain sight.

Rating quality, directory presence, and machine-readable business details: that is the measurable recipe behind AI recommendations, and each piece is fixable.