Read the video transcript
- 0:00 How many reviews to rank #1?
- 0:09 The study: 120 map pack spots
- 0:25 More reviews didn't mean #1
- 0:37 Distance from the searcher
- 0:50 Your category sets the bar
- 1:02 St. Pete neighbourhoods compared
- 1:15 Ratings and the full picture
- 1:30 What to do about it
How many Google reviews does it take to rank #1?
You'd think more reviews means a higher spot.
But here, 11 reviews beat 915.
So we ran 40 Google Maps searches in St. Petersburg.
10 business types, 4 neighborhoods, the top 3 each time. 120 spots.
The median listing had 180 reviews.
But 31 of the 120 had fewer than 50.
On average, more reviews does mean a higher position.
But this salon, with 10 reviews, beat one with 536.
That happened in 19 of 40 searches.
Reviews matter. They don't decide everything.
Now plot every winner by its distance from the searcher.
58% were within a mile.
83% within two. None beyond three.
And the small listings ranked from closer in.
Category moves the bar, too.
In AC repair, the median was 35.
In auto repair, 706.
There's no universal target.
And the city isn't one market.
Search for a hair salon from four parts of town, and the top 3 changes every time.
Where they search changes who they see.
85% were rated 4.5 stars or higher.
A strong rating gets you in. It rarely sets the order.
Together, reviews, distance, category and rating describe the landscape you compete in.
A picture, not a formula.
So stop asking how many reviews you need.
Ask what the top 3 look like where your customers actually search.
Benchmark them. Keep reviews steady. Match the search.
The goal isn't the most reviews in town.
It's being competitive where your customers are looking.
How many Google reviews does a St. Petersburg business need to show up in the top 3 on Google Maps? We wanted a real answer, not a rule of thumb, so we went and counted.
On 3 October 2026 we ran 40 Google Maps searches across St. Petersburg: 10 common business types, each searched from 4 neighbourhoods, recording the top 3 results every time. That gave us 120 map pack spots to study. The median listing in a top-3 spot had 180 reviews. But 31 of the 120 spots (26%) went to listings with fewer than 50, and in nearly half of the searches the #1 business had fewer reviews than one ranked below it.
Here is what we found, how we found it, and what it means if you are trying to win those three spots yourself.
How we ran the study
We chose 10 business types that live on local searches: plumber, dentist, auto repair, roofing contractor, hair salon, AC repair, personal injury lawyer, veterinarian, chiropractor and pest control. Each was searched from four points across the city:
- Downtown, near Central Avenue and 4th Street
- North, in Meadowlawn near 62nd Avenue North
- South, between Lakewood and Childs Park
- West, in Tyrone near 66th Street North
The results came from Google Maps through DataForSEO, as a phone would see them, at a neighbourhood-level zoom. We recorded the top 3 organic listings for each search, leaving out ads, along with each listing’s review count, star rating, whether it was claimed, its photo count and its straight-line distance from the search point.
Three limits are worth stating up front. This is one snapshot from one day, and map rankings move. We counted total reviews, not how recent they were, which also matters. And the data shows what the winners have in common; it cannot prove what caused their rankings. We publish the full data below so you can check our reading of it.
The short answer: about 180 reviews, with a very wide range
Across all 120 spots, the median review count was 180. Position mattered: the median #1 listing had 303 reviews, #2 had 146 and #3 had 94. So more reviews do tend to go with a higher position, on average.
The average hides the spread, though. 25 of the 120 listings had 500 or more reviews, and the biggest had over 2,600. At the other end, 21 had fewer than 20, 12 had fewer than 10, and 3 had none at all.
More reviews did not guarantee the #1 spot
If reviews decided the order, the business with the most reviews would come first every time. It came first in 21 of our 40 searches. In the other 19, a listing with fewer reviews sat above one with more.
Some of the gaps were large. In the west of the city, the #1 plumber had 11 reviews and the #3 plumber had 915. A west-side hair salon ranked first with 10 reviews, ahead of one with 536. Downtown, the #1 chiropractor had a single review, ranked above practices with 231 and 350. In 16 of the 40 searches, the top 3 included both a listing with fewer than 50 reviews and one with 300 or more.
Reviews still count. The median #1 listing had more than three times as many as the median #3. They are one input among several, and in a lot of searches they were not the deciding one.
Distance does a lot of the work
The clearest pattern in the data is distance. The median top-3 listing was 0.76 miles from where the search was made. 58% were within a mile and 83% within two. None of the 120 was more than three miles away.
Distance also explains most of the small listings that ranked well. Listings with fewer than 50 reviews sat a median of 0.43 miles from the searcher. Listings with 300 or more reviews ranked from a median of 0.9 miles. A small business can win the map pack on its own doorstep. A well-reviewed business can hold its position further out, because its reviews and reputation carry more weight once the distance advantage runs out.
For a business owner, the practical point is that your ranking is different on every street. A listing can be #1 outside its door and missing a mile away. We cover how that plays out on each side of the bay in why “near me” ranks you differently in Tampa Bay.
Your category sets the bar
The review counts needed to compete varied hugely by business type. The median top-3 listing for AC repair had 35 reviews. For auto repair it was 706, twenty times as many.
Categories where customers visit often, like auto repair, dentists and vets, have built up large review counts over years. Categories with occasional, high-value jobs, like roofing and personal injury law, run lower. That makes a city-wide target almost useless. A roofer chasing a dentist’s numbers is aiming far above what the competition actually has.
Where in the city you search changes the bar too
The same 10 searches gave different results in each neighbourhood. Downtown, the top-3 listings were remarkably close to the searcher, a median of just 0.17 miles, because so many businesses are packed into a few blocks. In the south, the winners were a median of 2 miles away, because there are fewer businesses nearby to choose from.
The north was the toughest area for small listings: only 5 of its 30 top-3 spots went to listings under 50 reviews, and the median was 266. Downtown and the west each gave 9 of 30 spots to smaller listings. If your customers are concentrated in one part of the city, that is the part to benchmark.
A note on low-review listings at the top
Not every small listing at the top looked like a genuine small business. In the AC repair and pest control searches in particular, several top-3 spots went to listings with no more than two reviews and one or two photos, or none, and some had names that were little more than the search term plus “St. Petersburg”. Google’s guidelines say a business name should be the real-world name, without added keywords, and listings like these are sometimes removed.
We are not naming them, and we cannot confirm which are legitimate. The point for business owners is simpler: if a listing like that is outranking you, report it through Google Maps and keep working on your own profile, because a ranking built that way can disappear overnight.
What this means for your business
- Benchmark the three listings your customers actually see. Search your main service from where your customers are, not from your office, and note the review counts of the top 3. Our guide to how many Google reviews you need in the St. Pete map pack walks through that check step by step.
- Compare against your category, not the city. If you are a roofer, the businesses to measure against have dozens of reviews, not hundreds.
- Keep reviews coming steadily. You do not need the most reviews in town. You need enough to compete with the listings near your customers, and a steady flow keeps the listing active.
- Accept what distance does, then plan around it. Your listing will rank best close to your address. For the areas further out, a strong website with pages for those areas does the work the map pack cannot.
- Make the profile match the search. The right primary category, a complete service list and a website that confirms the same details all help Google match you to the search.
If you would rather have someone run this for your business, it is the first check in our St. Petersburg FL SEO work, and the method behind our local SEO services more generally.
Five findings to remember
The full data
Every search, with the review counts of the top 3 listings in rank order and their straight-line distance from the search point. Business names are left out. The complete data set, including ratings, photo counts and whether each listing was claimed, is available as a CSV file.
| Category | Area | #1 reviews | #2 reviews | #3 reviews | Distance to #1, #2, #3 (miles) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plumber | Downtown | 295 | 10 | 828 | 0.1, 0.0, 1.1 |
| Plumber | North | 477 | 2,095 | 2,646 | 1.0, 2.0, 0.7 |
| Plumber | South | 16 | 59 | 1 | 2.4, 2.3, 2.4 |
| Plumber | West | 11 | 86 | 915 | 0.4, 0.5, 2.1 |
| Dentist | Downtown | 297 | 496 | 88 | 0.1, 0.2, 0.1 |
| Dentist | North | 1,058 | 297 | 602 | 0.6, 0.6, 0.8 |
| Dentist | South | 582 | 302 | 994 | 0.8, 1.5, 2.3 |
| Dentist | West | 27 | 316 | 241 | 0.2, 0.2, 0.2 |
| Auto repair | Downtown | 1,003 | 747 | 789 | 0.7, 0.9, 1.0 |
| Auto repair | North | 55 | 664 | 75 | 0.8, 0.8, 0.9 |
| Auto repair | South | 14 | 123 | 916 | 1.0, 1.9, 2.5 |
| Auto repair | West | 2,200 | 48 | 945 | 0.4, 1.9, 0.4 |
| Roofing contractor | Downtown | 341 | 14 | 47 | 0.1, 0.2, 0.1 |
| Roofing contractor | North | 111 | 213 | 84 | 1.7, 2.2, 1.7 |
| Roofing contractor | South | 41 | 35 | 53 | 2.1, 1.3, 2.4 |
| Roofing contractor | West | 750 | 71 | 57 | 1.2, 2.2, 0.7 |
| Hair salon | Downtown | 182 | 636 | 311 | 0.2, 0.1, 0.1 |
| Hair salon | North | 51 | 116 | 148 | 0.1, 0.1, 0.7 |
| Hair salon | South | 374 | 213 | 2,210 | 1.6, 1.6, 2.2 |
| Hair salon | West | 10 | 98 | 536 | 0.1, 0.4, 0.1 |
| Ac repair | Downtown | 445 | 1 | 2 | 0.2, 0.1, 0.3 |
| Ac repair | North | 2 | 8 | 1,998 | 0.6, 0.8, 1.7 |
| Ac repair | South | 760 | 136 | 51 | 0.7, 0.9, 1.8 |
| Ac repair | West | 104 | 19 | 4 | 0.3, 0.4, 0.4 |
| Personal injury lawyer | Downtown | 55 | 59 | 71 | 0.1, 0.2, 0.0 |
| Personal injury lawyer | North | 240 | 38 | 44 | 1.3, 1.4, 0.9 |
| Personal injury lawyer | South | 258 | 166 | 24 | 2.1, 2.2, 2.2 |
| Personal injury lawyer | West | 312 | 126 | 42 | 1.5, 1.5, 0.4 |
| Veterinarian | Downtown | 600 | 30 | 99 | 1.1, 0.5, 0.4 |
| Veterinarian | North | 931 | 312 | 265 | 2.6, 0.1, 1.3 |
| Veterinarian | South | 1,347 | 251 | 177 | 1.1, 0.9, 2.3 |
| Veterinarian | West | 430 | 211 | 121 | 0.4, 0.2, 0.1 |
| Chiropractor | Downtown | 1 | 231 | 350 | 0.1, 0.2, 0.0 |
| Chiropractor | North | 375 | 494 | 0 | 0.3, 2.0, 0.3 |
| Chiropractor | South | 266 | 138 | 17 | 2.4, 2.2, 2.0 |
| Chiropractor | West | 475 | 184 | 2 | 0.5, 0.3, 0.2 |
| Pest control | Downtown | 120 | 0 | 0 | 0.4, 0.1, 0.3 |
| Pest control | North | 1,790 | 308 | 267 | 2.3, 1.9, 1.8 |
| Pest control | South | 309 | 229 | 1 | 1.7, 2.5, 1.4 |
| Pest control | West | 367 | 154 | 16 | 1.4, 0.3, 0.9 |
Quiz: test what you learned
Five questions on the findings. Tap a question to see the answer.
1. What was the median review count for a top-3 listing in St. Petersburg?
180 reviews. The median #1 listing had 303, #2 had 146 and #3 had 94.
2. In how many of the 40 searches did the #1 listing have the most reviews of the top 3?
21 of 40. In the other 19, a listing with fewer reviews ranked above one with more.
3. How far away was the typical top-3 listing from the searcher?
A median of 0.76 miles. 58% were within one mile and none were more than three miles away.
4. Which category needed the fewest reviews to reach the top 3, and which needed the most?
AC repair needed the fewest, with a median of 35. Auto repair needed the most, with a median of 706.
5. What share of top-3 listings were rated 4.5 stars or higher?
85%, which is why rating alone rarely decides the order once you are in the top group.
About this study
The study was carried out by Techy Toes, a local SEO and web design agency in St. Petersburg, Florida. Results were collected on 3 October 2026 from Google Maps through DataForSEO, using a mobile device profile at a neighbourhood-level zoom, from four fixed search points. We recorded the top 3 organic results for each search and left out ads. Distances are straight-line from the search point to each listing’s map pin. You are welcome to use the figures with credit and a link to this page.
