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The Australian Tradie Website Study: 2,444 Websites, 14 Trades
86% of Australian tradie websites do not name their own suburb in the homepage title. The method, every count, a CSV and a citation, in one place.
By Tom Syddall, 5 Star TradieData collected 12 August 2026Published 8 October 2026
We checked the homepage titles of 2,444 Australian tradie websites across 14 trades. 2,100 of them, 86%, do not name the suburb the business is actually in. No trade cleared 17%, and custom home builders were lowest at 6%.
Cite this study
Every figure on this page is free to quote, chart or republish with a link back here. Please keep the sample size and the caveat with the number.
Suggested citation
5 Star Tradie (2026). The Australian Tradie Website Study: 2,444 websites, 14 trades. Data collected 12 August 2026. https://www.5startradie.com.au/guides/australian-tradie-website-study-2026.htmlFor media, use the headline as written: 86% of 2,444 Australian tradie websites do not name their own suburb in their homepage title. It is an Australian figure, not a Melbourne one.
Download the data
The CSV holds every count behind every chart and table on this page: by trade, by state, and by trade group, with the denominators. It contains no business names, phone numbers or addresses.
Download the CSV (counts by trade, state and group)
Finding 1: no trade names its suburb more than 17% of the time
Across all 14 trades, 344 of 2,444 homepages (14.1%) name the suburb the business is recorded in. Electricians lead at 17%. Custom home builders are last at 6%, 9 of 150.
Homepage title names own suburb, by trade
Bar scale runs to 25%. Each bar is the share of tested homepages in that trade.
The full trade table
| Trade | Businesses | Tested | Names own suburb | Zero reviews | No meta description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electrician | 925 | 350 | 61 (17%) | 16% | 56% |
| Plumber | 717 | 284 | 49 (17%) | 14% | 55% |
| Landscaper | 424 | 132 | 22 (17%) | 26% | 54% |
| Painter | 439 | 175 | 28 (16%) | 22% | 52% |
| Cabinet maker | 249 | 162 | 25 (15%) | 17% | 58% |
| Roofing contractor | 382 | 159 | 23 (14%) | 16% | 47% |
| Home builder | 683 | 373 | 53 (14%) | 28% | 53% |
| Tree service | 320 | 122 | 17 (14%) | 14% | 58% |
| Pest control | 255 | 98 | 13 (13%) | 13% | 53% |
| Carpenter | 204 | 45 | 5 (11%) | 30% | 60% |
| Fence contractor | 266 | 103 | 11 (11%) | 22% | 56% |
| Concrete contractor | 355 | 133 | 14 (11%) | 26% | 56% |
| Construction company | 295 | 158 | 14 (9%) | 17% | 49% |
| Custom home builder | 273 | 150 | 9 (6%) | 17% | 53% |
| All 14 trades | 5,787 | 2,444 | 344 (14.1%) | 20% | 54% |
Suburb share is of tested homepages. Review and meta description shares are of all businesses in the trade.
Finding 2: New South Wales and Victoria localise most, the ACT and Queensland least
Within the 2,444 tested homepages, 21% of New South Wales tradies name their suburb against 6% in the ACT. Queensland is lowest at 3%, but on only 118 tested sites, so treat it as indicative.
Homepage title names own suburb, by state
State table, both cuts
| State | Tested (14 trades) | Names own suburb | Whole dataset, all 96 categories |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 234 | 49 (21%) | 398 (23%) |
| Victoria | 984 | 191 (19%) | 1,404 (19%) |
| Tasmania | 271 | 38 (14%) | 468 (16%) |
| South Australia | 574 | 47 (8%) | 1,084 (8%) |
| Australian Capital Territory | 263 | 15 (6%) | 673 (5%) |
| Queensland | 118 | 4 (3%) | Not in that cut |
| Total | 2,444 | 344 (14.1%) |
The last column repeats the test across every business in the export, not just the 14 trades. The order of the five states is the same in both cuts. Queensland was not in that earlier cut.
It may scale with metro size. In Canberra the city name is the whole market, so there is little reason to name Belconnen. In Sydney or Melbourne the city name is too broad to win, so the businesses that have worked it out name the suburb.
What would change our mind: search volume showing Canberra and Adelaide customers search suburb terms as often as Sydney and Melbourne customers do.
Finding 3: urgent trades hold big review counts about 4 times as often
14.9% of urgent callout businesses (386 of 2,599) hold more than 50 Google reviews, against 3.6% of considered project businesses (61 of 1,704). Project trades are also more likely to have none at all: 23.1% against 14.9%.
| Group | Businesses | More than 50 reviews | Zero reviews | Names own suburb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Urgent callout: plumber, electrician, tree service, pest control, roofing | 2,599 | 386 (14.9%) | 387 (14.9%) | 163 of 1,013 (16.1%) |
| Considered project: home builder, custom home builder, construction, cabinet maker, carpenter | 1,704 | 61 (3.6%) | 393 (23.1%) | 106 of 888 (11.9%) |
The grouping is ours, not an industry standard. Landscapers, painters, concreters and fencers sit in neither group.
Finding 4: the basics are missing on half the sites
Between 47% and 60% of businesses in each trade have no meta description, the short summary under the blue link in Google. Between 13% and 30% have no Google reviews at all.
Method
- Source. Google Maps business listings exported through Scrap.io on 12 August 2026, in 96 category and area pulls across Australia, filtered to businesses that list a website. 9,585 unique businesses, deduplicated on Google Place ID.
- Sample. The 14 trades on this page, 5,787 businesses, classed by their main Google category.
- The suburb test. Does the homepage title, as read by the export, contain the suburb recorded as the business address, ignoring capital letters? It can only run where both exist: 2,444 businesses.
- Reviews. The export gives review bands (0, 1 to 50, 51 to 200, 201 to 500, 501 and over). More than 50 means the top three bands.
- Analysis. First run 14 August 2026. Every figure on this page was recomputed from the 96 raw export files on 8 October 2026, and the August trade figures reproduced exactly.
Limitations
- Every business in the export already has a website. This says nothing about tradies without one.
- Geography is uneven. Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT are large; New South Wales and Queensland are small. 2,615 of the 5,787 businesses have no recorded state or suburb and could not be tested.
- The suburb test is an exact text match. A different spelling of the same suburb counts as a miss, so the true share that name their area may be a little higher.
- Review counts are bands, so we can report shares above and below a band edge but not averages.
- Homepage only, read once in August 2026.
- The explanations offered for the state and review gaps are hypotheses. The data shows the pattern, not the cause.
Corrections
Until 8 October 2026, our write ups of this data, including our local SEO guide, quoted 83%. That was the figure from the first two trades we checked, landscapers and painters. Across all 14 trades it is 86%, and every page on this site now says so. They also quoted 14.4% and 3.5% for more than 50 reviews; that count left out the 501 and over band, and the corrected figures are 14.9% and 3.6%. The four times gap stands. The 83% figure for landscapers alone is correct and stays on our landscaper page.
What it means if you are a tradie
If most of your local competitors do not name their suburb, naming yours is one of the cheapest edges in local search. The local SEO guide has the title formula and a five minute self check. If you would rather have it done, that is what our tradie websites and tradie SEO are built around.
Who ran this study?
5 Star Tradie, a small Melbourne web design business for tradies, ran it in August 2026. Tom Syddall did the analysis from Google Maps business data and re checked every figure from the raw files on 8 October 2026.
Can I quote these figures?
Yes. Quote, chart or republish any figure on this page with a link to this page as the source, and please keep the sample size and the caveat next to the number.
Is this a Melbourne study?
No. It is an Australian study with large Victorian, South Australian and ACT samples. Victoria is the biggest tested group at 984 businesses, so describe it as Australian, never as Melbourne only.
How was naming your own suburb measured?
We checked whether the homepage title contains the suburb Google Maps records as the business address, ignoring capital letters. A different spelling, such as St Kilda written as Saint Kilda, counts as a miss.
Why were 2,444 websites tested and not all 5,787?
The test needs both a homepage title and a recorded suburb, and 3,343 of the 5,787 businesses were missing one or the other. Every other measure on this page, such as reviews and meta descriptions, uses all 5,787.
Where can I download the data?
The CSV link in the data section of this page has every count behind every chart. It holds counts by trade, state and trade group, not individual business names.
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