
Florida Local Search
Statistics (2026)
| Data: Q1 2026 deep audit, Q3 2026 statewide measurement (July 2026), Q2 2026 AI instrument
Every statistic on this page was measured by L3ad Solutions from real Florida businesses: a 97-business Brevard County deep audit, Google Places data across 91 Florida cities and 12 industries, and 2,560 recorded AI assistant answers. No national surveys, no estimates. Each number is scoped and dated so you can quote it as is.
How Many Florida Businesses Use Schema Markup?
Two different scopes, two very different numbers, and both are true. The broad market barely uses schema markup. The businesses actually winning the rankings almost all do.
Across the 97 Brevard County businesses L3ad Solutions deep-audited in Q1 2026, 18.6 percent have LocalBusiness schema markup on their website.
That means 81.4 percent of this broad local sample have no LocalBusiness structured data at all, 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, only 7 percent carry Service schema, 4 percent carry FAQ schema, and 2 percent carry Review schema.
Beyond the basic LocalBusiness block, richer structured data is close to nonexistent in the broad market.
Among Florida's top-ranked local businesses, schema adoption averages 73.8 percent (3,007 top-ranked business websites sampled across 1,085 Florida city-industry markets, measured July 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 42.9 percent of the 860 Florida city-industry markets where all three top-ranked business websites were sampled in July 2026, all three carry schema markup.
Only 2.8 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 85.4 percent, and real estate the lowest at 60.8 percent (top 3 ranked sites per market, 91 Florida cities, July 2026).
Auto repair (82.2 percent) and dentists (79.2 percent) are next behind HVAC. Even the "lowest" trade is above 60 percent among winners, which is why the 18.6 percent broad-market figure in stat 1 is such a gap.
How Complete Are Florida Google Business Profiles?
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.
Businesses ranking in the Google map pack top 3 average 88 percent GBP completion, against 58 percent for the rest of the market (Brevard County audit, Q1 2026).
A 30-point completion gap separates the map pack from everyone else. Completion is not a ranking factor by itself, but in our data the businesses that win treat the profile as a system, not a listing.
Of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026, only 60.8 percent have a website at all.
Nearly 4 in 10 businesses 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.
What Do Reviews Look Like in Florida Local Search?
The median business among the 97 audited in Brevard County in Q1 2026 has 55 Google reviews and a median rating of 4.6 stars.
Ratings cluster high. The real separation between businesses is review count and review recency, not the star average.
72 percent of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026 respond to at least some of their Google reviews.
Response is common but shallow. The map pack leaders in stat 11 respond at a completely different rate than the market as a whole.
Businesses in the Google map pack top 3 average 185 reviews and respond to 92 percent of them (Brevard County, Q1 2026, tracked across 120 high-intent local queries).
The rest of the market averages 42 reviews with a 55 percent response rate. Review depth plus response discipline is the most visible pattern separating winners in the audit.
Businesses with fewer than 10 Google reviews appeared in map pack results only 4 percent of the time across 120 high-intent local queries (Brevard County, Q1 2026).
Below roughly 10 reviews, a business is effectively invisible in the map pack regardless of how good its website is.
Across Florida's 1,092 measured city-industry markets (July 2026), the median market's top-ranked Google listings carry 94 reviews, and the average star rating among top-ranked listings is 4.75.
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 1,092 markets, July 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 4.67 stars across the 1,090 measured markets with rated listings (July 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.
How Fast Are Florida Local Business Websites?
The median mobile PageSpeed score across the 97 Brevard County business websites audited in Q1 2026 is 42 out of 100.
Scores come from Google PageSpeed Insights mobile testing. A median of 42 means the typical local business site is slow on the device most local searches happen on.
Zero of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026 scored 90 or higher on mobile PageSpeed, and more than a third scored below 50.
Not one business in the sample reached Google's "good" performance band. Site speed is the least contested factor we measure: nobody local is winning it yet.
Only 31 percent of the Brevard County business websites audited in Q1 2026 pass Core Web Vitals.
More than two-thirds of local sites fail Google's own user-experience thresholds. Run your own site through our free local SEO audit tool to see where you land.
70 percent of the 97 Brevard County businesses audited in Q1 2026 have a mobile-friendly website.
Which leaves 3 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.
Which Florida Industries Have the Most Room to Win?
General contractors have the highest average market opportunity score across the 91 measured Florida cities at 77 of 100, and restaurants the lowest at 5 of 100 (July 2026).
The opportunity score is a versioned formula computed from measured Google Places inputs (listing density, review depth, ratings, established competitors). Landscaping (71) and real estate (70) are next behind contractors; restaurants (5), dentists (18), and HVAC (33) are the most locked-up markets. Full rankings live on the Florida Local Search Index.
Do AI Assistants Recommend the Businesses Google Ranks?
These numbers come from the Q2 2026 roofing edition of our AI visibility instrument: a frozen set of 8 local-intent questions, each run 5 times per assistant, recorded verbatim. Full write-ups in the State of Roofing Search report and the AI visibility report.
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.
What Do AI-Recommended Businesses Have in Common?
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.
How to Cite
Every statistic on this page is free to cite with attribution. Quote the stat sentence as written (each includes its scope and date) and link this page as the source.
L3ad Solutions. (2026). Florida Local Search Statistics (2026). https://l3adsolutions.com/research/florida-local-search-statisticsL3ad Solutions. (2026). Florida Local Search Statistics (2026). https://l3adsolutions.com/research/florida-local-search-statisticsWhere These Numbers Come From
Manual audit of 97 Brevard County businesses across 12 industries, 47 data points each: GBP completion, schema, reviews, response patterns, and mobile speed. Collected March 2026 (Q1 2026 edition). Stats 1, 2, 6 to 12, and 16 to 19.
Market structure measured from the Google Places API across 91 Florida cities and 12industries (just over 20,000 listings sampled), with schema adoption measured by fetching the top-ranked businesses' websites. Refreshed July 2026 (Q3 2026 edition). Stats 3 to 5, 13 to 15, and 20.
A frozen set of local-intent prompts run repeatedly against ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude via their APIs with web search or grounding on, recorded verbatim, with recommended businesses, citations, and on-site signals extracted from the records. Q2 2026 roofing edition. Stats 21 to 32.
Honest limits: Tier 1 covers one county deeply, not the whole state. Tier 2 samples the leading listings in each market, not every business. Tier 3 measures assistant APIs, which are close proxies for, but not identical to, the consumer apps. Full process, formulas, and known limitations: our research methodology.
Statistics FAQ
Where do these Florida local search statistics come from?
L3ad Solutions measured all of them directly: a manual deep audit of 97 Brevard County businesses (Q1 2026), Google Places API measurement plus site crawls across 91 Florida cities and 12 industries (Q3 2026, collected July 2026), and 2,560 recorded AI assistant answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude (Q2 2026). No number on this page is pulled from a national survey.
How are these different from the local SEO statistics on other sites?
Most published "local SEO statistics" are national survey results repeated from a handful of industry studies. Every statistic here was measured from Florida businesses by us, with the scope and date stated inside each sentence, and the methodology published so the work can be verified.
Why do the schema adoption numbers look so different from each other?
Because they measure different populations. 18.6 percent is the broad market: 97 Brevard County businesses of all ranks, audited in Q1 2026. 73.8 percent is the winners: only the top 3 ranked websites per market statewide, measured July 2026. And 83 percent is the AI-recommended set: 29 roofer sites the assistants actually recommend. Same metric, three scopes, and the gap between them is the story.
How often are these statistics updated?
Statewide Places measurement refreshes quarterly, the Brevard deep audit runs quarterly, and the AI visibility instrument publishes per edition. This page states the collection date next to every number, and the dateline at the top reflects the latest revision.
Can I use these statistics in my own content?
Yes, free of charge, with attribution. Quote the stat sentence as written, since each one carries its own scope and date, and link to this page or use the citation formats on the page.