PoolRoute AIThis page is the full list, so you can check any figure you see us use.
Word of mouth and Google are not two different things anymore. They are the same thing with an extra step.
- 97% read reviews before choosing a local business. 41% always do, up from 29% in a year.
- AI went 6% to 45% for local recommendations in twelve months.
- Google slipped to 71% of review traffic and the average buyer now checks six sites.
- The old channels shrank. Newspaper circulation is at its lowest since 1940.
- None of it is pool-specific. Only a map of your own service area is. That is the Route Rank Report.
Consumer search and review behavior
Source: BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. Conducted with a representative panel of 1,002 US adult consumers. View the study
| Finding | Figure |
|---|---|
| Consumers who read reviews before choosing a local business | 97% |
| Consumers who say they always read reviews when browsing | 41%, up from 29% in 2025 |
| Consumers using AI tools like ChatGPT for local business recommendations | 45%, up from 6% in 2025 |
| Google's share as the most-used review platform | 71%, down from 83% in 2025 |
| Average number of review sites a consumer checks | 6 |
| Consumers who expect a response to their review the same day | 19%, up from 6% in 2025 |
What we take from this
The AI number is the one that matters most. Six percent to forty-five percent in twelve months is not a trend, it is a shift. It is also why we run ads inside ChatGPT for every client, which almost nobody in this industry is doing yet.
The review number is not new but the intensity is. Everybody already knew people read reviews. The jump from 29% to 41% on "always" is what changed, and it happened in a year.
Google losing twelve points does not mean Google stopped mattering. It means the number of places people check is growing, and being invisible on any one of them costs more than it used to.
Where attention went
Source: Pew Research Center, Local News Fact Sheet. Survey of US adults conducted December 8 to 14, 2025. View the fact sheet
| Finding | Figure |
|---|---|
| Americans who follow local news very closely | 21%, down from 37% in 2016 |
| Local TV news viewers who primarily watch on an actual television | 56%, down from 76% in 2018 |
| Local newspaper readers who primarily read it online | 68%, up from 43% in 2018 |
Source: Pew Research Center, State of the News Media.
| Finding | Figure |
|---|---|
| US daily newspaper circulation | Lowest level since 1940 |
What we take from this
None of this means a newspaper ad reaches nobody. It means the pool of people it reaches is a fraction of what it was, it is still shrinking, and it skews older than the homeowner who just bought a house with a pool.
Even the people still using local TV and local papers are mostly consuming them on a phone. The device won before the channel did.
What we do not claim
We are strict about this because the industry is not.
- We do not claim a specific percentage of pool customers find their pool guy on Google. Nobody knows that number.
- We do not claim guaranteed rankings, guaranteed leads, or a guaranteed timeline.
- We do not present general local search research as pool industry data.
- We do not run ads on Perplexity. They ended advertising in early 2026 and any agency telling you otherwise is behind.
Measure your own market instead
General research tells you which direction the world moved. It does not tell you what happens when someone in your service area picks up a phone.
That is measurable, and it is free to find out.
The Route Rank Report runs the same search from 49 separate points across your service area and shows you where you show up and where you do not, plus the three companies beating you.
Two days. Nothing to sign. Yours to keep.