What counts as a good local SEO score?
The short answer: against our measurements of 1371 real businesses, the median is 51, half fall between 45 and 58, and the best anyone manages is 93. A score only means something if you know the spread it sits in.
Businesses are shown scores out of 100 constantly — in audits, in dashboards, in sales decks — almost always with nothing to compare them against. A 46 sounds like a failure. Whether it is depends entirely on what everyone else scores.
So here is the distribution behind one such number, the Digital Visibility Score, computed from the published data when this page is built.
The actual spread
Section titled “The actual spread”Nobody scores above 93. 46 of 1371 reach 75. A score is hard to get because it requires being findable as well as technically sound.
Nobody scores above 93. Only 46 of 1371 reach 75. 595 of 1371 are below 50.
If you have been given a 51, you are exactly average for a real local business — not failing. If you have been given a 90 by any tool, be suspicious of the tool rather than pleased.
Three questions to ask about any score you are given
Section titled “Three questions to ask about any score you are given”1. What is the distribution behind it? A score with no spread is a number with no meaning. If nobody can tell you the median and the range across comparable businesses, the score is decoration. This is the single most useful question and it is almost never asked.
2. What goes into it, and can you check the arithmetic? Ours is six weighted pillars combined with plain arithmetic, published in full, recomputable from open data. If the calculation is proprietary, you are being asked to trust a number you cannot verify — and it can be revised without notice.
3. What happens when a signal cannot be measured? This is the question that catches bad scoring. If a signal is missing and the tool scores it zero, the business is punished for the tool’s blindness. We exclude it and renormalise the remaining weights instead — 207 of 1371 businesses currently have at least one pillar excluded, and each scorecard names which.
What the pillars are worth
Section titled “What the pillars are worth”| Pillar | Weight | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Speed & CWV | 20% | 64 |
| Technical | 20% | 88 |
| Local presence | 20% | 76 |
| Visibility | 15% | 4 |
| AI search presence | 15% | 0 |
| Content & trust | 10% | 49 |
Note the shape. Most businesses score reasonably on the technical pillars and poorly on the ones about being found. The middle of the market has a decent website that nobody arrives at, which is why an overall score of 51 is so common.
Why our own score is not the last word
Section titled “Why our own score is not the last word”We publish this index and we sell SEO, which is a conflict worth stating rather than burying. Two things follow.
The data is open and the pipeline is public, so the number can be recomputed by someone who does not trust us.
And we have published, at our own expense, that our own weighting is probably wrong — Speed is 20% of the score and correlates −0.13 with whether a business can be found — along with every correction we have made this quarter. A score whose author has never announced an error has either never checked or is not telling you.
Where to see yours
Section titled “Where to see yours”Every business in the 34 indices has a scorecard showing its score, the six pillars behind it, the sector median beside each one, and the specific faults found on the site. Free, nothing to fill in.