Survey of over 1,000 US consumers: 77% say they use Google Maps when searching for information on nearby businesses, while 38% use Facebook and 35% use Yelp
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land :
Context & Ripple Effects
Search Engine Land's 1,000-consumer survey puts Google Maps at the center of US local-business discovery, with Facebook at 38% and Yelp at 35% trailing well behind. That mirrors the pattern BloomReach documented for product search, where Amazon overtook Google as shoppers' starting point — discovery keeps migrating to whichever surface owns the intent, not the general search box.
The stakes have since sharpened: with 42% of US adults now saying search engines are becoming less useful, Yelp's move to license its reviews and business data to OpenAI for ChatGPT local recommendations reads as a direct attempt to escape the surface hierarchy this survey measured.
First-order effects
- Google Maps' 77% share makes it the default storefront for nearby-business queries, reinforcing its pricing power over local advertisers while Facebook and Yelp fight over the remaining discovery traffic.
- Yelp, at just 35%, is positioned as the challenger whose review corpus matters more than its own app traffic — leverage it can rent out rather than only monetize directly.
Second-order effects
- Yelp's deal letting ChatGPT users request quotes from local service providers converts its data into distribution through answer engines, hedging against a Maps-dominated discovery market.
- Facebook's 38% showing pressures it to keep local Pages and recommendations competitive inside the feed, since social discovery of businesses competes with Maps for the same query intent.
Third-order effects
- If answer engines become the next local-discovery front door, the structural contest shifts from who owns the map UI to who licenses the underlying business data — favoring data-rich incumbents like Yelp even with smaller consumer reach.
- Local search could consolidate around a two-layer structure: one dominant interface layer (Maps) above multiple licensable data layers, changing how small businesses buy visibility.
The trend: Local-business discovery is migrating from owned apps toward whatever surface captures the query — first Maps over social, now answer engines negotiating for the data underneath.