The State of Google Business Profiles in Perth: What 4,999 Local-Service Listings Show
We studied 20 Perth trades and services. 80% of sampled profiles list services, yet only 7% of 3,555 service entries have a description.
We studied 20 trades and services, then pulled a random sample of 240 profiles live to see what businesses fill in, what they leave thin, and how reviews and visible posts vary.
Published by Search Scope Research, 5 October 2026. Data collected 4 to 5 October 2026. Wider-list values are provider snapshots, with a median age of 15 days.
Most Google Business Profiles in our Perth sample have the basics in place. The deeper we looked, the thinner they got. In a random live sample of 181 address-visible profiles across 20 trades and services, 80% listed services, yet only 7% of the 3,555 service entries we read had a description. Fewer than half (43%) showed any visible Google Post, and just 12% showed one from the previous 90 days.
The sample comes from a wider list of 4,999 address-visible profiles in Greater Perth, which we use for context. The method is summarised below. This is descriptive research, not ranking-factor research.
What we found
- Services are listed often but rarely described. In the live sample, 80% of profiles list services, but only 7% of the 3,555 service entries had a description and 1% showed a price.
- Claimed and unclaimed profiles look very different. None of the 27 unclaimed profiles in the sample showed a description, against 82% of the 154 claimed ones. This is an association, not an explanation.
- Visible posting is much less common than basic set-up. In the live sample, 43% of profiles showed any visible post and 12% showed one from the previous 90 days.
- Reviews are thin for many. In the wider list (snapshot counts), one in five profiles had no reviews and half had fewer than ten.
- The basics are mostly there. In the live sample, 85% are claimed, 84% show a website and 90% show opening hours.
- Visible posting rises across review-count bands. From 7% of live-sample profiles with no reviews to 92% of those with 200 or more. This is also an association.
Services: listed often, rarely described
This is the clearest gap in the data. Four in five profiles in the live sample list at least one service, with a median of 16.5 services each. But the entries say little. We read 3,555 service entries on the 144 profiles that list services: 266 had a description (7%) and 42 showed a price (1%).
| Measure | Count | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profiles listing at least one service | 144 | 181 profiles | 80% |
| Service entries with a description | 266 | 3,555 service entries | 7% |
| Service entries showing a price | 42 | 3,555 service entries | 1% |
| Profiles that list services and show a price for any | 8 | 144 profiles | 6% |
The denominators differ on purpose. Two rows count service entries and two count profiles.
Listing a service is common. Adding useful descriptive detail is not. The Google Business Profile optimisation guide covers how to write them. Many services are legitimately quoted case by case, so a missing price is not an error. The thin descriptions are a clearer gap, but we cannot say whether any business chose to leave them blank.
The basics are mostly there
In the live sample of 181 address-visible profiles, claimed status, hours and a website are present on most profiles. A description and selected attributes are less common. We checked the same fields in the wider list as a robustness test, and it describes a broadly similar market. That supports reading the sample as a guide to the list. It does not prove the list contains every Perth business.
| Feature | Live sample, 181 profiles (95% CI) | Wider list, 4,999 profiles (snapshot) |
|---|---|---|
| Claimed | 85% (79 to 90) | 81% |
| Shows a description | 70% (63 to 76) | 69% |
| Shows opening hours | 90% (84 to 93) | 85% |
| Shows selected attributes | 62% (55 to 69) | 68% |
| Shows a website | 84% (78 to 89) | 80% |
| Shows review topics | 61% (54 to 68) | 58% |
Visible posts are uncommon, and recent posts more so
Fewer than half of the profiles in the live sample showed any visible post, and about one in eight showed a newest post from within the previous 90 days.
| Measure (live sample, 181 profiles) | Share (95% CI) |
|---|---|
| Shows any visible post | 43% (36 to 50) |
| Newest visible post within 90 days | 12% (8 to 18) |
| Newest visible post within 180 days | 16% (11 to 22) |
| Returned exactly 10 visible posts | 17% (12 to 23) |
| Posts with a button or link, among the 78 profiles with a visible post | 68% (57 to 77) |
We requested deeper post histories during validation, but no profile returned more than 10. The endpoint appeared to truncate at 10 in our tests, so these figures describe the posts visible through the data source, not a business’s complete posting history. Our guide to Google Business Profile posts covers the formats and what each is for. We cannot say how often any business posts, how long posts stay visible, or whether a profile with no visible post has ever had one. A profile returning exactly 10 posts may have more than we can see.
Reviews: half of the listings have fewer than ten
These are snapshot counts from the 4,999 address-visible profiles in the wider list.
| Reviews (snapshot) | Share of profiles |
|---|---|
| None | 20% |
| 1 to 9 | 30% |
| 10 to 49 | 27% |
| 50 to 199 | 18% |
| 200 or more | 6% |
| Fewer than 10 (none plus 1 to 9) | 50% |
In the live sample of 181 profiles, most had at least one review and the median live count was 10. Among profiles with reviews, 62% had at least one owner reply in the latest 50 reviews we fetched, and 38% had none. Owners replied to 47% of the reviews we read. That 47% figure is descriptive at review level, so we report it without a confidence interval.
| Measure (live sample) | Result |
|---|---|
| At least one review | 83% (77 to 88) of 181 profiles |
| Median live review count | 10 |
| Profiles with reviews | 151 |
| Had at least one owner reply in the latest 50 | 62% (54 to 70) of those 151 |
| Had no owner reply in the latest 50 | 38% (57 of 151) |
| Reviews that carried an owner reply | 47% of 3,571 reviews read (no interval) |
We do not report how quickly owners reply, because the data source does not give true reply dates. We read only the latest 50 reviews per profile.
Claimed versus unclaimed profiles
The live sample had 154 claimed and 27 unclaimed address-visible profiles. The unclaimed group is small, so read its figures as indicative, and read the zeros as counts: none of the 27 showed a description, and none showed a visible post.
| Measure | Claimed (n=154) | Unclaimed (n=27) |
|---|---|---|
| Shows a description | 82% | 0 of 27 (0%) |
| Lists services | 87% | 37% |
| Shows any visible post | 51% | 0 of 27 (0%) |
| Has at least one review | 90% | 48% |
| Median photos | 13 | 1 |
In the wider list, just 2 of 928 explicitly unclaimed profiles showed a description.
What this does and does not show. These are descriptive associations. This study cannot tell us why claimed and unclaimed profiles differ, and it does not test whether claiming or completing a profile causes better search visibility.
Profile maturity and review-count bands
We grouped the live sample by live review count. Profiles with larger review counts also tended to have more of the other public-profile features filled in, and the share showing any visible post rises from 7% to 92% across the bands.
| Live review count | Profiles | Claimed | Shows a description | Lists services | Shows any visible post |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 30 | 53% | 37% | 57% | 7% |
| 1-9 | 58 | 78% | 59% | 69% | 28% |
| 10-49 | 49 | 100% | 82% | 94% | 49% |
| 50-199 | 31 | 100% | 90% | 94% | 77% |
| 200 or more | 13 | 100% | 100% | 92% | 92% |
Association, not causation. We do not know which direction this runs, and a business that has traded longer or is more active may show more of everything. We do not claim reviews or posts are ranking factors, and nothing here tests that.
How the 20 niches differ
The picture varies by trade. Using the wider list of address-visible profiles, median review counts run from 2 for solar installation to 54 for dentists, and median photos from 3 for pest control and solar installation to 32 for bathroom renovation. We do not rank niches, because the differences reflect how each category works as much as how its profiles are kept. The smallest niche has 21 profiles, and a business listed in two categories is counted in both.
The full 20-niche table is in the appendix.
Service-area businesses
We retrieved 1,438 relevant service-area profiles with no visible street address. We could not independently confirm where in Greater Perth they operate, so they are excluded from every geographic headline figure above and reported as a separate cohort. In the live sample, all 59 were explicitly claimed and 61% showed a visible post. They behave differently in the data, for example with shared or default map coordinates, so we do not compare them with address-visible profiles. The appendix has the detail.
What this study cannot tell us
- It captures one point in time.
- The wider list is a dated snapshot from the data provider, not a live reading.
- Posts are a partial visible window, not a posting history.
- For deep analysis we read only the latest 50 reviews per profile.
- It is descriptive, observational research. It does not test cause and effect.
- No ranking data was used.
- Businesses without a discoverable profile are absent, and the data provider is not proven to contain every Perth business.
- Service-area geography carries extra uncertainty.
- We cannot tell who manages a profile, whether an owner or an agency.
- Products, Insights and other owner-only fields were not visible to us.
How we did it
Business-listing and live Google Business Profile data were collected using DataForSEO’s Business Data API. We validated stored listing fields against live profile pulls before deciding which fields could support the published analysis. DataForSEO supplied the data. The study design, analysis and conclusions are Search Scope’s own.
- The wider list. 20 trade and service categories searched across Greater Perth, keeping profiles inside the Australian Bureau of Statistics Greater Perth boundary. The 4,999 address-visible profiles form a broad discoverable list. It is not a census.
- The live sample. 240 profiles drawn at random from all the relevant profiles we found, with a fixed, hash-ranked rule, at most one location per brand per niche and 12 per niche. The 181 address-visible profiles are the headline live cohort, with Wilson 95% intervals. The 59 service-area profiles are reported separately.
- Fixed in advance. Sampling and eligibility rules were written down and locked before the final draw. Later choices are logged as dated amendments.
- Exclusions. Search Scope-owned, current-client and former-client businesses were excluded to reduce conflicts of interest.
Search Scope sells Google Business Profile services, so we have a commercial interest in this subject. The study describes what is publicly visible and makes no claim about what any change to a profile would achieve.
One correction we made before publishing: an independent check of our own draft found that the list-versus-live comparison had included the 60 deliberately selected profiles. We recomputed it on the 240 random-sample profiles only, and the figures here use that version.
The full methodology and appendix tables cover the list-versus-live check, the 60-profile group we read separately and did not use for any figure here, and the data-collection dates.
Five questions for a business owner
These are prompts to look at your own profile. They are not a scoring system or a checklist.
- Is your profile currently claimed?
- Does it show the services you actually offer?
- Do those services say anything useful, or are they just names?
- What does a potential customer see when they look at your latest reviews and any owner replies?
- What does a customer see in the most recent visible post, if there is one?
Check your own Google Business Profile
The study describes the market. To see how your own profile looks, Search Scope offers a free Google Business Profile audit. It compares your profile with the businesses ranking above you in your suburb, takes about 60 seconds and needs no Google sign-in. Run a free Google Business Profile audit. Learn more about our Google Business Profile management service.
Data
Aggregate tables from this study can be downloaded as CSV. They contain no business names or identifiers. The methodology explains the denominators and cohorts, and the appendix holds the detailed tables, including the full 20-niche table, the service-area detail and our own grouping of the 20 niches into trade, recurring-service and professional-service results.