Every index compared: what trade and area actually explain
Each Local Digital Visibility Index covers one trade in one town, and until now they could only be read one at a time. There are 34 of them: 1371 businesses across 11 trades and 8 towns, all scored the same way.
This page reads them together. Every figure is computed from the published datasets when the page is built.
All 34, ranked
Section titled “All , ranked”| Index | Town | Trade | Firms | Median score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exeter Solicitor | Exeter | solicitors | 8 | 73 |
| Swindon Estate Agent | Swindon | estate agents | 8 | 70.5 |
| Bath Estate Agent | Bath | estate agents | 15 | 66 |
| Cheltenham Law Firm | Cheltenham | law firms | 8 | 64.5 |
| Bristol Dentist | Bristol | dentists | 9 | 59 |
| Bristol Estate Agent | Bristol | estate agents | 18 | 59 |
| Swindon Vet | Swindon | veterinary practices | 17 | 58 |
| Cheltenham Vet | Cheltenham | veterinary practices | 20 | 57.5 |
| Worcester Vet | Worcester | veterinary practices | 15 | 57 |
| Bristol Vet | Bristol | veterinary practices | 29 | 56 |
| Swindon Physiotherapy | Swindon | physiotherapy clinics | 40 | 54 |
| Bristol Physiotherapy | Bristol | physiotherapy clinics | 62 | 53 |
| Exeter Physiotherapy | Exeter | physiotherapy clinics | 53 | 53 |
| Gloucester Accountant | Gloucester | accountants | 41 | 53 |
| Worcester Architect | Worcester | architects | 25 | 53 |
| Gloucester Physiotherapy | Gloucester | physiotherapy clinics | 46 | 52.5 |
| Cheltenham Physiotherapy | Cheltenham | physiotherapy clinics | 68 | 52 |
| Exeter Architect | Exeter | architects | 63 | 52 |
| Exeter Vet | Exeter | veterinary practices | 21 | 52 |
| Gloucester Vet | Gloucester | veterinary practices | 21 | 52 |
| Bath Physiotherapy | Bath | physiotherapy clinics | 67 | 51 |
| Bath Architect | Bath | architects | 80 | 50 |
| Bristol Double Glazing | Bristol | double glazing companies | 116 | 50 |
| Cheltenham Architect | Cheltenham | architects | 59 | 50 |
| Gloucester Construction | Gloucester | construction firms | 13 | 50 |
| Gloucester Restaurant | Gloucester | restaurants | 44 | 50 |
| Gloucestershire Double Glazing | Gloucestershire | double glazing companies | 99 | 50 |
| Bath Vet | Bath | veterinary practices | 10 | 49 |
| Bristol Architect | Bristol | architects | 80 | 49 |
| Gloucester Architect | Gloucester | architects | 35 | 49 |
| Swindon Architect | Swindon | architects | 29 | 49 |
| Worcester Construction | Worcester | construction firms | 55 | 48 |
| Worcester Physiotherapy | Worcester | physiotherapy clinics | 45 | 48 |
| Cheltenham Construction | Cheltenham | construction firms | 52 | 46 |
The spread runs from 73 (Exeter Solicitor) to 46 (Cheltenham Construction), against a pooled median of 51.
Before reading anything into that order: the cohorts are very uneven. The largest holds 116 businesses and the smallest 8. A median drawn from eight firms moves if two of them change.
Does trade or area matter more?
Section titled “Does trade or area matter more?”The obvious question, and the data answers it in a way that undercuts both options.
- Which trade you are in
11 sectors 9.9% - Which town you are in
8 towns 2% - Both together
34 cohorts 11.9% - Everything else
differences between businesses in the same trade and town 88.1%
Trade explains 9.9% of the variation between businesses. Town explains 2%. Both together explain 11.9%.
Which leaves 88.1% — about seven eighths — as differences between businesses in the same trade in the same area.
That is the most useful finding on this page. The two explanations a business reaches for first, everyone in my trade is like this and it’s harder here, together account for 11.9% of what separates the best from the worst. Most of the difference is between you and the firm down the road doing the same job in the same place.
That share got larger, not smaller, when the index tripled in size. On eleven indices trade and area explained about a third; on 34 they explain 11.9%. Adding three trades and 885 businesses did not reveal a trade effect that the smaller sample had hidden.
The natural experiment
Section titled “The natural experiment”Some trades appear in more than one area, and some areas hold more than one trade, which lets the two be separated a little.
| Same trade, different areas | Areas | Index medians | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| estate agents | 3 | 59 · 66 · 70.5 | 11.5 |
| veterinary practices | 7 | 49 · 52 · 52 · 56 · 57 · 57.5 · 58 | 9 |
| physiotherapy clinics | 7 | 48 · 51 · 52 · 52.5 · 53 · 53 · 54 | 6 |
| architects | 7 | 49 · 49 · 49 · 50 · 50 · 52 · 53 | 4 |
| construction firms | 3 | 46 · 48 · 50 | 4 |
| double glazing companies | 2 | 50 · 50 | 0 |
| Same area, different trades | Trades | Index medians | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swindon | 4 | 49 · 54 · 58 · 70.5 | 21.5 |
| Exeter | 4 | 52 · 52 · 53 · 73 | 21 |
| Cheltenham | 5 | 46 · 50 · 52 · 57.5 · 64.5 | 18.5 |
| Bath | 4 | 49 · 50 · 51 · 66 | 17 |
| Bristol | 6 | 49 · 50 · 53 · 56 · 59 · 59 | 10 |
| Worcester | 4 | 48 · 48 · 53 · 57 | 9 |
| Gloucester | 6 | 49 · 50 · 50 · 52 · 52.5 · 53 | 4 |
Architects sit between 49 and 53 across all 7 areas they are measured in, a spread of 4 points — the trade travels with the firms. Estate agents vary more than twice as widely by area, 11.5 points. And the single widest gap anywhere is within one town: Swindon, where 4 trades sit 21.5 points apart on the same streets.
Where trades actually differ
Section titled “Where trades actually differ”| Sector | Firms | Speed & CWV | Technical | Local presence | Visibility | AI search presence | Content & trust | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| solicitors | 8 | 71.5 | 100 | 80.5 | 42.5 | 50 | 70 | 73 |
| law firms | 8 | 77 | 75.5 | 77 | 38 | 30 | 77 | 64.5 |
| estate agents | 41 | 69 | 88 | 83.5 | 37 | 20 | 70 | 64 |
| dentists | 9 | 58 | 88 | 83 | 29 | 0 | 70 | 59 |
| veterinary practices | 133 | 65.5 | 88 | 78 | 10 | 0 | 53 | 54 |
| accountants | 41 | 65.5 | 75 | 79 | 13 | 0 | 54 | 53 |
| physiotherapy clinics | 381 | 62 | 88 | 75 | 4 | 0 | 53 | 52 |
| architects | 371 | 64 | 75 | 76 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 50 |
| double glazing companies | 215 | 63 | 88 | 72 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 50 |
| restaurants | 44 | 69 | 75 | 84 | 0 | 0 | 26.5 | 50 |
| construction firms | 120 | 61 | 75 | 76 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 48 |
Cohorts are uneven — 8 businesses in the smallest, 381 in the largest — so a median from a small trade moves on a few firms. Local presence carries a known sector effect and is the one column to read with most caution.
Read the columns rather than the rows and the point arrives immediately.
Local presence varies by only 12 points between the best and worst trade, and it carries 20% of every score. The other pillars measuring the website itself are nearly as flat. Every trade has broadly the same website quality.
Content & trust varies by 50.5 points. So do the other two pillars about publishing and being found. The trades at the top of the table publish things and appear in results; the trades at the bottom have comparable websites and are invisible.
Restaurants are the clearest case. They top the table on Local presence — busy Google profiles, plenty of reviews — and sit last on content, with a median search visibility of zero. A restaurant is findable on a map and absent from a search. Architects and construction firms share that zero, from much weaker Google profiles.
What this does not prove
Section titled “What this does not prove”The design is unbalanced and observational. Not every trade appears in every town, cohorts run from 8 to 116 firms, and the trades were not chosen at random. The variance shares above describe the businesses we measured; they are not estimates about UK business in general.
Trade and town are entangled. Because the coverage is incomplete, some of what is attributed to trade is really town and the reverse. That is why both figures are reported separately and the two are not added together.
Local presence deserves particular caution. That pillar includes review velocity, which is substantially a property of a trade rather than of a business. Comparing it across sectors compares review cultures.
One quarter is not a pattern. Every figure here is Q3-2026, including the 23 indices added on 1 September, which were measured into the same quarter rather than starting a new one. The second measurement is the real test, and the sensible use of this page is to check afterwards which of these relationships survived.
What to take from it
Section titled “What to take from it”If you run one of these businesses, the ranking of trades is the least useful thing here. The useful part is the 88.1%.
Your trade and your town set the conditions. They do not set your score. 88.1% of what separates the best firm in your index from the worst is neither, and on the evidence of the fingerprint above it is concentrated in whether you have published anything worth finding.
The scorecard for your own business names the specific faults, and the Digital Visibility Score page explains what the number is made of.