For most Tasmanian small businesses, the Google Business Profile is the first thing a prospective customer sees.
Not the website. Not the Instagram feed. The panel of information that appears in Google Maps and alongside the search results, carrying the opening hours, the photos and the star rating.
It is also, in our experience, the most overlooked asset a local business owns.
In August 2026 we reviewed 50 of them. Tasmanian small businesses, across eight industries and four regions, each assessed against the same set of publicly visible checks. This report sets out what we found.
The headline is that most Tasmanian small business profiles are half finished. Seven in ten have never published a Google post. More than one in five has not been claimed by its owner. Just over half have not replied to a single one of their ten most recent reviews.
Every statistic you read about Google Business Profiles comes from somewhere else. The best consumer research on the topic, BrightLocal's annual Local Consumer Review Survey, is a representative panel of 1,002 US adult consumers. Useful, genuinely, and we will lean on it below. But it is not Tasmania.
Dominic, owner of Wakeford Digital, explains the thinking:
"Whenever we sit down with a client and talk about their Google profile, we end up quoting Australia-wide numbers, or worse, American ones. Tassie is its own market and we talk about that constantly, so it felt a bit hollow."
"We wanted something we could put in front of a Hobart business owner and say, this is your actual market, not a national average."
There was straightforward curiosity in it too. As far as we can tell nobody had looked at Tasmania specifically, so we did.
With all that in mind, let's get into what the data actually shows.
Not "haven't posted lately". Never. Not once.
That last figure only counts businesses with at least one post to their name, so it flatters the picture considerably.
Dom's tip: "The number being that high did surprise me. I get that posts are easy to overlook, they're not the biggest needle mover on their own."
"But there are so many tools for scheduling this stuff in advance, and Google Business Profile has its own scheduler built in. Digital marketing works when it's holistic, and posting is one of the simpler ways to signal to Google that you're active and relevant."
The examples stick with you. One Launceston plumber replies diligently to nine of its ten most recent reviews, but the newest item in its post feed is a promotional offer from March 2021. That offer has been live for over five years.
The takeaway: posting is the single easiest gap to close in this entire report, and almost nobody is closing it.
This is the one that costs nothing and customers notice immediately.
As Dominic points out: "Review velocity and replying to reviews are both signals to Google, but honestly the human side matters more here, and it's amplified in Tasmania because word of mouth is everything."
"Picture two businesses side by side. One has a one star sitting there unanswered. The other is four and a half stars and the owner has written a real, personal reply to every single person. You already know which one you're ringing."
Across the 47 profiles carrying any reviews at all, 24 had not replied to a single one of their ten most recent. Widen it to businesses replying to fewer than half and it is 34 of 47.
Three that stood out:
Now set that against what customers expect. 80% of consumers say they are likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews, and 42% say they are unlikely to use one that never replies. 89% expect a response at all, and generic or templated replies put off 50% of consumers.
That last one matters, because we found a Hobart landscaper whose four owner replies were all posted on the same day in near identical wording. Technically replied to. Not exactly convincing.
The takeaway: replying badly sits closer to not replying than most owners think.
Eleven of the 50 had never been claimed by their owner.
No description. No posts. No replies. No control over any of the information sitting there. The business simply cannot edit its own listing.
What makes it striking is who it happens to. A Launceston cafe carrying 150 reviews at 4.8 stars is unclaimed. A Burnie accommodation provider with 68 reviews is unclaimed, including unanswered one and two star complaints.
These are not failing businesses. They are well liked businesses with nobody's hand on the wheel.
Dom's tip: "It just shows what a sleeper Google Business Profile is. And I do get it. If customers are walking in the door and you've got a website and you're busy on socials, the profile is a long way down the food chain."
"But think about how often the map pack is the entire answer now. Someone searching for a cafe is rarely clicking through to a website, they're picking straight out of the map. Go and search your own business today and check you've actually claimed it. It's free and it takes a minute."
We kept unclaimed profiles in the sample deliberately. Taking them out would have flattered every other number in this report.
The takeaway: if you have never logged in to your profile, someone else could claim it before you do.
Two fields do a lot of quiet work in local SEO, and both are widely ignored.
Additional categories are the main lever for turning up in searches beyond your primary category. Thirty two of the 50 profiles had none at all.
Services is the other one. Twenty one profiles listed none whatsoever. In retail it was every single business in the sample, which is worth flagging, because Google does offer the field to retail categories. That is an empty field, not an unavailable one.
Then there are the basics:
One Devonport bakery had a website field pointing at a third party directory listing rather than its own site. Free advertising, for someone else.
The takeaway: these fields take an afternoon to fill in, once, and then they keep working.
We put this to Dom directly, because the data throws up both. One Hobart accounting firm stopped posting in March 2020 and its newest review is over two years old. A Hobart landscaper posted weekly right through to October 2022, then stopped dead.
Dom suggests: "They're about as bad as each other, but they fail in different places. An unclaimed or empty profile probably means you don't rank at all."
"An out of date one might rank fine, but you lose the job at the comparison stage, because the customer is checking your profile against someone else's who's got a post going up every week. Both need fixing."
The data backs the comparison problem up. 74% of consumers want reviews written in the last three months, and the average Tasmanian profile in our sample had gone 268 days since its most recent review. 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 40% of our sample sits under that line.
The standout in the entire sample was a mobile mechanic in Burnie. A 100% reply rate across its ten most recent reviews, with the newest response posted within about two hours. Fortnightly posting since April 2026. Nine additional categories, and 273 services listed.
Not a big firm with a marketing department. One person with a van.
Dominic, owner of Wakeford Digital, shares: "Some of that is just volume, a mobile mechanic gets through more jobs in a week than a builder does in a couple of months, so there's more to work with."
"But mostly it's someone taking it seriously. Whether they're doing it themselves or working with someone, they've decided it matters. It says more about the bigger businesses in the sample that they haven't."
Some industries are quietly competent. Trades had the best completeness scores across the board, with only 14% missing a description and the second highest average number of additional categories.
Retail was the weakest by a distance. Every retail business in the sample listed no services, half were unclaimed, 83% had fewer than 20 reviews, and the average review count was 9.3 against a sample average of 91.6.
Tourism and hospitality show a different failure. These businesses have the reviews, hundreds of them, and hundreds of photos. What they do not have is anyone replying or posting. Every tourism profile in our sample had never published a post, and every hospitality business replied to under half its recent reviews.
The sample is 50 Tasmanian small businesses, reviewed on 19 August 2026 across 50 Google map pack searches of a service plus a suburb. Businesses were taken in the order Google returned them. None were selected or rejected on the quality of their profile.
The spread is Hobart region 17, Launceston region 16, Burnie region 8, Devonport region 7, plus two service area businesses with no public street address. Roughly six businesses per industry across eight industries.
We excluded national chains and franchise networks, along with four Tasmanian operators judged to be above roughly 20 staff, because this report is about small business. We kept unclaimed profiles in.
Review response rate is measured against the ten most recent reviews, or against however many exist where a business has fewer than ten. Review and post recency are measured against the audit date rather than today, so the figures stay stable.
Everything here is publicly visible information. We only recorded what any customer could see by looking at the profile.
No. Claiming and running a Google Business Profile is free. Google will verify you own the business, usually by phone, video or post. There is a difference between having a profile and having a good one, but the entry price is nothing.
Search your business name in Google. If you see a "Claim this business" or "Own this business?" prompt on the listing, it is unclaimed and anyone could claim it. If you are already signed in to the right Google account, you will see editing options instead.
Twenty is the number to clear first. 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and only 9% are willing to use one with five or fewer. After that, steady flow matters more than the total.
Reply, calmly and once. A measured response to a one star review is read by every future customer who scrolls past it, and it is often more persuasive than the complaint itself. Arguing is what does damage, and we saw a couple of examples of that in this sample.
Fortnightly is a realistic floor for most small businesses, weekly if you have the material. The businesses doing this well in our sample were not producing anything elaborate, just genuine updates about actual jobs.
Our favourite find in the whole sample was a Burnie tile store. Unclaimed, no services listed, and among its categories, sitting quietly alongside tile contractor, was seafood market.
Nobody at that business has ever looked. Which is the report in miniature, really. Not neglect exactly, just a thing that nobody has thought about since the day it appeared.
The encouraging thing about this data is how fixable most of it is. Claiming a profile is free. Writing a description takes twenty minutes. Replying to reviews takes a few minutes a week. None of the biggest gaps we found require a budget.
Dom's tip: "Go and do a self audit. Search your own business, look at what a customer sees, and be honest about it."
"Google Business Profile is only one part of a marketing campaign, and there are a handful of businesses where it barely applies, but for most local operators it's sitting right there doing nothing. Fix the free stuff first."
If you would rather someone else looked at it, we offer a free listings and reviews analysis where we go through your profile and tell you what is actually costing you work. No obligation, and we will tell you if there is nothing worth doing.
And if the wider picture is what you are after, our local SEO, listings and reviews work covers the lot, from profile optimisation through to getting reviews arriving consistently in the first place.
