Auto Shop Growth

Auto repair shops on Google: the 2026 benchmark report

By Steve Meitler · Data refreshed 2026-09-07 · 90,000 listings · 51 states

Review counts, ratings, website presence and hours for 90,000 auto repair shops and mobile mechanics, computed from public Google Business Profile listings across 51 states.

90,000
auto repair shops and mobile mechanics in our Google Business Profile dataset
44
median review count
44.3%
have no website listed
24.3%
have fewer than 10 reviews
85 vs 20
median reviews with a website vs without
72.4%
rated 4.5 stars or higher

Reviews

Review countValue
Median44
Average (mean)129.6
25th percentile10
75th percentile125
90th percentile343

Share of auto repair shops and mobile mechanics by review count:

BucketShare of listings
0 reviews8.5%
Under 1024.3%
Under 2537.5%
100 or more30%
500 or more6.4%

Ratings

MetricValue
Average rating4.56
Rated 5.018%
Rated 4.5 or higher72.4%
Rated under 4.08.5%
No rating yet5.1%

Websites

Website statusShare
Website listed55.7%
No website listed44.3%
Own domain52%
Social profile only2.9%
Free or DIY builder0.7%

Median review count for auto repair shops and mobile mechanics with a website: 85. Without one: 20.

Profile completeness and hours

Profile fieldShare
Has a profile photo97.9%
Public email on profile13.2%
Open 24 hours3.8%
Open Saturday42.4%
Open Sunday10.2%
No hours listed13.4%

Where the listings are

StateListings
CA6,909
TX5,698
FL4,649
NY3,865
NJ3,711
PA3,575
OH3,460
IL3,391
NC3,057
MA2,898
GA2,825
VA2,773

Primary categories

Google categoryListings
Auto repair shop73,162
Car repair and maintenance service6,324
Mechanic5,318
Tire shop2,087
Auto body shop587
Repair service219
Auto machine shop213
Transmission shop190

Read the median before you read anything else

Half of every repair shop and mobile mechanic on Google has 44 reviews or fewer. That is the line. If your shop is above it you are already ahead of most of the trade, which feels good for about ten seconds until you remember who you actually lose jobs to. Google's map pack shows three businesses. In a metro of any size those three are drawn from the top tenth, and the 90th percentile here is 343 reviews. That, not the median, is the number that decides whether a stranger with a check engine light ever sees your name.

The spread is severe at both ends. 8.5% of listings have no reviews at all and 37.5% have fewer than 25, while 6.4% have cleared 500. The mean of 129.6 is inflated by a handful of high-volume tire and quick-lube operations and is useless for planning. Use the percentiles. The 25th sits at 10, the 75th at 125.

Stars are table stakes, count is the differentiator

The average rating across the set is 4.6 and 72.4% of shops are at 4.5 or better. A 4.8 does not distinguish you. It makes you ordinary. What distinguishes you is volume and recency: a shop at 4.7 with 400 reviews beats a shop at 5.0 with 14, both in Google's ranking and in the head of the person choosing where to tow the car.

There is one place the star number decides things. 8.5% of shops sit below 4.0, and below 4.0 most people stop reading and move on. If that is you, the fix is not more reviews. It is the two or three operational problems the bad reviews keep naming, usually comeback work or a quote that grew without a phone call.

Another 5.1% of listings carry no rating at all, which reads as a shop that either just opened or never asked anyone.

The website gap is the widest gap in the trade

44.3% of repair shops and mobile mechanics list no website on their Google profile. Only 55.7% link anything. The shops that do have a median of 85 reviews. The shops that do not have 20.

We are not claiming the website produced the reviews. Owners who treat the business seriously tend to do both things. But the correlation is wide enough to be useful in two directions. When you scout a competitor with no linked site, you are looking at someone who is not going to fight you for the map pack. When it is your own listing, it is the single clearest thing to fix, and a five-page site with service pages and tap-to-call is a week of work, not a quarter.

Hours, photos and the details that cost nothing

97.9% of listings have at least one photo, so a profile with none puts you in the bottom couple of percent by itself. Only 42.4% show Saturday hours and 10.2% show Sunday, which is a real opening for any shop willing to run a half day when the dealer is closed. 13.4% list no hours whatsoever, and Google fills that silence with nothing useful. 3.8% claim to be open 24 hours, mostly mobile and roadside operators.

Only 13.2% publish an email address. Fleet managers and insurance adjusters look for one.

What to do with this

  1. Pull up your own Google Business Profile and write down three numbers: review count, star rating, and whether a website is actually linked.
  2. Place yourself against the percentiles. Below 44 is the bottom half. Below 125 is the bottom three quarters. 343 and up is where map-pack winners live.
  3. If you are in the 44.3% with no site, build one before you spend anything on advertising. Service pages, town pages, tap-to-call, hours, and photos of the actual bays.
  4. Set a review velocity and measure it weekly. One review per happy car, asked at the counter, moves a 25-review shop past the 75th percentile inside a year. Scripts are in the reviews guide.
  5. Fill in Saturday hours if you work them, add an email, and turn on missed-call text-back. Put your average repair order into the calculator to see what the unanswered phone is costing.
  6. Only then buy ads. Traffic pointed at a listing with 9 reviews and no website pays for your competitor's education, not yours.

Method

This report aggregates 90,000 public Google Business Profile listings collected from Google Maps searches for auto repair shops and mobile mechanics across every US state, deduplicated by place. Review counts and ratings are as displayed on the listing at collection time. "Website listed" means the profile links to any URL; we classify the URL as an owned domain, a social profile, or a free site builder by hostname. Figures are refreshed monthly. Cite this page as: Auto Shop Growth, "Auto repair shops and mobile mechanics on Google benchmark report", 2026.

SM
Steve Meitler, Editor
Steve has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, auto repair shops and mobile mechanics among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About this site

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