The Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 2026
Propeller assessed 516 Australian trade and local-service businesses between May and July 2026. 8.9% had no findable website at all, and of those that did have a scored site, 69.4% were rated in the weakest category — prime rebuild candidates. Combined, 72% of businesses assessed either had no website or a website in the weakest band: most Australian tradies are effectively invisible to AI search.
The headline findings
69.4% of assessed Australian trade businesses’ existing websites were rated in the weakest category on a 0–3 upgrade-readiness scale — prime rebuild candidates.
Propeller Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 2026 (326 of 470 scored sites; n=516)72.1% of the 516 businesses assessed either had no findable website or a website in the weakest category.
Propeller Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 20268.9% of assessed businesses had no findable website at all — and counting social-media-only pages and rented site-builder subdomains as no real website, the figure rises to 11.8%.
Propeller Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 2026 (46/516; 59/498 with consistent URL data)Google star ratings don’t differentiate tradies — the cohort averaged 4.88★ — but review volume does: the median business had just 30 reviews, and a third (33.9%) had fewer than 20.
Propeller Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 2026 (378 businesses with review data)Tilers (95.2%), landscapers (87.0%) and personal trainers (78.0%) had the highest share of scored businesses rated in the weakest website category; lawn-mowing businesses were the most likely to have no website at all (25.0% of those scored).
Propeller Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 2026 (per-trade table below; small-n trades interpret with caution)What we measured, and why it matters
AI assistants — ChatGPT, Gemini, Google’s AI results — only recommend businesses they can find, read and corroborate. A tradie with no website, a Facebook-only presence, or a site that fails basic structure checks is effectively invisible to that layer of search, no matter how good their work is. This report quantifies, for the first time with Australian field data, how big that visibility gap is — and where it is worst, trade by trade.
Methodology
Between May and July 2026, Propeller’s prospect-research pipeline assessed Australian trade and local-service businesses identified through public Google Maps and web listings, concentrated in Queensland and NSW metro areas. Each business was checked for whether it has a real website (social-media-only pages, rented site-builder subdomains and invalid URLs count as none), and each found website was scored on a 0–3 upgrade-readiness scale assessing loading performance, mobile rendering, structure and contactability — where band 0 means no website was found at assessment and higher scores mean a weaker site (a better rebuild prospect).
From 580 exported CRM records: 1 non-Australian business, 2 internal records, 10 junk/name-only records, 9 duplicates, 5 records scored on a different scale and 37 unscored records were excluded, leaving n=516 (CRM record dates 2 May – 1 July 2026; exported 4 July 2026). In 18 further records the recorded website and the assessment disagreed — 13 scored from their Maps listing without the URL being captured, and 5 scored as having no site while a URL was recorded; all 18 are excluded from both sides of the no-website statistic. Trade labels are as recorded, case-normalised; synonyms are not merged. The sample is an observational prospecting cohort, not a random sample: it skews toward owner-operated businesses without enterprise web budgets, and carpet cleaning is over-represented (n=177) from a dedicated sweep. Percentages describe this cohort. Aggregates only; per-business data is not published.
How were the scores distributed?
| Score | Meaning | n | % of cohort |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | No website found at assessment | 46 | 8.9% |
| 1 | Strong site — poor rebuild prospect | 48 | 9.3% |
| 2 | Middling site | 96 | 18.6% |
| 3 | Weakest — prime rebuild candidate | 326 | 63.2% |
Results by trade
| Trade | n scored | % of scored rated 3 (weakest) | % of scored: no site found |
|---|---|---|---|
| carpet cleaning | 177 | 58.8% | 10.7% |
| electrician | 73 | 67.1% | 5.5% |
| personal trainer | 41 | 78.0% | 2.4% |
| handyman | 29 | 55.2% | 0.0% |
| lawn mowing | 24 | 25.0% | 25.0% |
| plumber | 23 | 65.2% | 8.7% |
| landscaper | 23 | 87.0% | 13.0% |
| cleaner | 22 | 45.5% | 22.7% |
| tiler | 21 | 95.2% | 4.8% |
| carpenter | 14 | 35.7% | 28.6% |
| other trades (each n<10; 38 labels) | 69 | 71.0% | 1.4% |
Per-trade percentages use each trade’s full scored cohort including band 0 — a different base from the 69.4% headline figure, which uses existing sites only (470). Interpret small-n rows with caution.
What should tradies do about it?
- Exist, structurally: a real website on your own domain — not a Facebook page or a rented builder subdomain — is the entry ticket to AI recommendations.
- Make it machine-readable: answer-first pages, structured data and consistent business details are what assistants extract. The full playbook is free: how to get recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI.
- Work the reviews: at a cohort average of 4.88★, your star rating won’t set you apart — steady review volume and owner replies will.
- Move early: with 7 in 10 competitor sites rated prime-for-rebuild, the tradies who fix this in 2026 inherit the AI recommendations their rivals can’t contest.
Cite this report
Propeller Consulting Group (2026), The Australian Tradie AI Visibility Report 2026, propeller.net.au. Free to cite with attribution and a link to this page. Media enquiries: contact us.