Local SEO scores lowest of the non-AI tools, and the reason is a sampling artefact worth stating plainly: most pages scanned are not local businesses, and a page with no address is correctly marked as having no address. Read this tool's figures as a description of pages that were checked, not of local businesses in general. Where it is genuinely useful is on a page that should have this information and does not.
Here is where that sits. The median SeoMods score is 22/100, which ranks it 23 of the 25 tools with a published benchmark by median. The ranking runs over the 25 tools on the main benchmark page; 1st is the highest median. The middle half of results falls between 18 and 36 — a band 18 points wide. That is wide: in this sample sites’ scores diverge markedly on this measure.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 5,076 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. The distribution banks up against the floor: most scans in this sample score low, so even a middling result sits above the majority of them.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | Local SEO |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 44% · 2,213 |
| 20–39 | 32% · 1,615 |
| 40–59 | 19% · 948 |
| 60–79 | 5% · 273 |
| 80–100 | 1% · 27 |
| Total runs | 5,076 |
The grade mix
The same data as letters: A+ 95–100, A 85–94, B 75–84, C 65–74, D 50–64 and F below 50.
Where does my score sit?
If the page you scanned is not a local business, ignore the score entirely — it is answering a question that does not apply. If it is, the score is close to a checklist: name, address, phone, hours, map, schema. Each item is either present or not, and the ones that are missing are missing because nobody put them there, not because they were difficult.
| Tool | P10 | P25 | Median | P75 | P90 | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local SEO | 0 | 18 | 22 | 36 | 50 | 24.7 | 0 | 100 |
A score from the Local SEO Audit can be read against the five values below. All of them are calculated from the scans in this benchmark: they place a SeoMods score within this sample, not in Google’s results.
| Percentile | Score | What it means for a score |
|---|---|---|
| P10 | 0 | About one scan in ten scored 0 or lower. Below it, a page is in the lowest tenth of this sample. |
| P25 | 18 | The edge of the bottom quarter. A score under 18 is below about three quarters of the scans. |
| Median | 22 | The middle of the sample: half the scans scored lower, half higher. A score of 22 is the typical result here. |
| P75 | 36 | Where the top quarter begins. A score of 36 or more is at or above about three quarters of the scans. |
| P90 | 50 | Where the top tenth begins. A score of 50 or more is among the highest 10% of scans in this sample. |
Percentiles describe the sites SeoMods scanned, not the whole web, and they apply to this tool only: the same number on another tool sits somewhere else.
The SeoMods checks most often unmet
Everything here traces back to one requirement: a machine has to be able to extract the business's identity and location without guessing. Consistency matters as much as presence — an address in the footer, a different one in the schema and a third on the map listing is worse than one address in one place, because now nothing can be trusted.
| Check | Not met (share of scans) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Geo coordinates | 98% | Partial |
| Opening hours | 98% | Partial |
| Google Maps link / embed | 97% | Partial |
| Physical address (NAP) | 88% | Hard fail |
| Contact email | 82% | Partial |
| LocalBusiness / Organization schema | 80% | Hard fail |
| Linked social profiles | 41% | Partial |
| Phone number (NAP) | 26% | Hard fail |
The rate is the share of scans in which a SeoMods check was not met. It is SeoMods’ criterion, not Google’s assessment of these pages. “Hard fail” means the check’s full weight is deducted from the SeoMods score; “partial” means part of it.
The weakest areas
This tool groups its checks into categories. The chart below shows how often each category was the lowest-scoring one in a scan — which area is most often the weak link. It is not the average score in that category; it is how often it came last.
“Maps & hours” was the weakest area in 73% of scans.
What to fix first
Add LocalBusiness structured data with the name, address, phone and opening hours, and make sure it matches exactly what the page displays and what your business listings say. NAP consistency is not a stylistic preference: two variants of the same address are two businesses as far as an automated system is concerned.
A typical scan passes 1.9 of 8 checks and leaves 6.1 open items behind. In this sample what brings a SeoMods score down is mostly not one large omission but accumulated small ones.
Run the Local SEO Audit on your own page
Month by month
This page adds every published month together. Underneath it, each month is frozen as an edition of its own whose figures are never edited again — which is the only reason two months can be set side by side at all. Below is the Local SEO Audit across the 2 published editions, with the combined figure in the last row of the table.
Between August 2026 and September 2026 the median held at 22, and scans at 80 or above appeared for the first time (1%). The two months do not measure the same sites — the September 2026 sample has about 3 times as many sites — so read the gap as a change in the cross-section measured, not as the same sites getting better or worse.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 22 | baseline | 0% | 6.0 | 1,365 |
| September 2026 | 22 | no change | 1% | 6.2 | 3,711 |
| All published months, combined | 22 | — | 1% | 6.1 | 5,076 |
Reading a monthly difference. Each month is a separate sample, and its size changes from month to month. A change in sample size can move a median and a distribution by itself, so a monthly difference should not be mistaken for a change in scores: it does not show that sites improved or got worse.
Which checks moved
Each check’s rate in the first edition that measured it, beside its rate in the latest. Moves under two points are marked as no change: these are independent monthly samples of a shifting set of sites, and a difference that small is not evidence that anything on the web changed.
| Check | Not met in August 2026 | Not met in September 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linked social profiles | 30% · August 2026 | 45% · September 2026 | +15 pp |
| LocalBusiness / Organization schema Hard fail | 77% · August 2026 | 81% · September 2026 | +4 pp |
| Physical address (NAP) Hard fail | 86% · August 2026 | 89% · September 2026 | +3 pp |
| Phone number (NAP) Hard fail | 28% · August 2026 | 25% · September 2026 | −3 pp |
| Contact email | 81% · August 2026 | 83% · September 2026 | no change |
| Geo coordinates | 99% · August 2026 | 98% · September 2026 | no change |
| Google Maps link / embed | 98% · August 2026 | 97% · September 2026 | no change |
| Opening hours | 98% · August 2026 | 98% · September 2026 | no change |
What this score does not measure
- It is not a Google ranking. A high score does not guarantee a better position, and a low one does not mean Google has penalised the page.
- It is not an organic traffic estimate. No click, impression or visit data goes into it.
- It does not represent the whole of the real user experience. What is measured is one URL’s HTML and server response at the moment of the scan.
About this benchmark. This benchmark is calculated from data on the sites SeoMods has scanned. The results do not necessarily represent all websites, or a random selection of them. The scores express SeoMods’ own measurement and scoring criteria; they are not ranking, quality, E-E-A-T or AI visibility scores issued by Google. Sample, anonymization and licence: the full methodology.
Frequently asked questions
What is NAP consistency and why does it matter?
Name, Address, Phone — written identically everywhere they appear, on your site and on every directory and map listing. Automated systems match businesses across sources by comparing these strings, so "Suite 4" in one place and "Ste. 4" in another can read as two separate businesses and split the signals that should have accumulated to one.
Do I need LocalBusiness schema if my address is already visible?
Yes, because visible and machine-readable are different things. A human sees an address in the footer; a parser sees a block of text that might be an address. Schema states unambiguously what each part is, which is what allows the information to be used rather than merely displayed.
Does this replace Google Business Profile optimisation?
No — this checks your own website, and the Business Profile is a separate property with its own optimisation. They support each other: consistent, marked-up information on your site corroborates the profile, and a well-maintained profile drives the local visibility that brings people to the site.
What is a good score on the Local SEO Audit?
In this dataset the median SeoMods score is 22/100, so scoring 22 sits exactly in the middle of the sample. 36 is the start of the upper quartile and 50 or above is the top 10%; below 18 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 tools with a published benchmark have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing. They place a page among the sites SeoMods scanned; they say nothing about Google rankings.
Is the score from the Local SEO Audit issued by Google?
No. It is a benchmark score calculated against the check list SeoMods defined for this tool. A SeoMods check going unmet does not mean Google has penalised the page or ranked it lower.
Which SeoMods check goes unmet most often on the Local SEO Audit?
“Geo coordinates”, which was not met in 98% of scans. The largest losses on the SeoMods score, though, come from the checks scored as hard fails — this tool has 3, the most common being “Physical address (NAP)” at 88%.
Questions that govern the whole series — how the sample is collected, how sites are anonymized, how often the figures are refreshed — are answered in the methodology on the hub.
Using this data
The figures, tables and charts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; the only condition is a link back to this page. Suggested citation: SeoMods — Local SEO Audit benchmarks, 2 October 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/local-seo. If you need to cite by date, use the September 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.