A statewide audit of Google Business Profiles across 18 South Carolina counties: 11,534 collected in February 2026, 11,267 in the scored index after a data audit, each scored on Business Profile completeness, AI search readiness, and overall digital presence.
Business Profile grades skew A and B, because most owners have a reasonably complete listing. AI readiness tells a different story. No business earned an A, and nearly a third score D or F.
Switch the metric to change the chart. Click any column header in the table to re-sort it.
| # | County | Digital presence | GBP score | AI readiness | Profiles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greenville | 67.6 | 83.8 | 59.7 | 1,352 |
| 2 | Charleston | 67.3 | 83.5 | 59.3 | 1,290 |
| 3 | Richland | 65.0 | 81.0 | 56.2 | 1,154 |
| 4 | Horry | 66.6 | 83.2 | 58.8 | 820 |
| 5 | Lexington | 66.0 | 82.0 | 57.7 | 803 |
| 6 | Spartanburg | 64.7 | 80.7 | 55.9 | 799 |
| 7 | Berkeley | 64.9 | 80.6 | 56.2 | 775 |
| 8 | York | 65.6 | 81.6 | 56.7 | 727 |
| 9 | Aiken | 63.2 | 78.7 | 54.4 | 437 |
| 10 | Anderson | 65.0 | 81.0 | 56.1 | 413 |
| 11 | Beaufort | 63.7 | 79.5 | 54.4 | 413 |
| 12 | Florence | 62.9 | 78.8 | 53.0 | 413 |
| 13 | Dorchester | 65.4 | 81.6 | 56.6 | 365 |
| 14 | Sumter | 56.0 | 70.0 | 43.9 | 318 |
| 15 | Orangeburg | 57.3 | 71.8 | 45.8 | 305 |
| 16 | Laurens | 57.8 | 72.2 | 46.8 | 301 |
| 17 | Greenwood | 62.9 | 77.8 | 54.0 | 292 |
| 18 | Pickens | 60.8 | 76.0 | 50.8 | 290 |
| # | Category | AI readiness | GBP | Profiles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roofing Contractor | 62.9 | 83.4 | 555 |
| 2 | Urgent Care | 61.8 | 80.0 | 508 |
| 3 | Gym | 61.7 | 84.2 | 557 |
| 4 | Dentist | 61.6 | 86.2 | 884 |
| 5 | Plumber | 61.1 | 83.7 | 353 |
| 6 | Moving Company | 59.7 | 86.4 | 154 |
| 7 | Hair Salon | 58.9 | 81.3 | 756 |
| 8 | Caterer | 58.9 | 80.6 | 246 |
| 9 | Auto Repair | 57.7 | 82.2 | 806 |
| 10 | Car Dealership | 57.6 | 82.2 | 1,130 |
| # | Category | AI readiness | GBP | Profiles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pediatrician | 45.7 | 70.5 | 1,065 |
| 2 | General Contractor | 49.7 | 76.2 | 451 |
| 3 | Cleaning Service | 50.6 | 81.8 | 130 |
| 4 | Pest Control | 50.7 | 83.3 | 280 |
| 5 | Attorney | 52.0 | 78.7 | 1,074 |
The full scored dataset is CC BY 4.0. Every aggregate on this page is computed from these files, so any number above can be checked against the download.
louislynn Consulting (2026). South Carolina Digital Presence Index, v1.1. research.louislynnco.com. Data collected February 2026; audited August 2026. CC BY 4.0.
v1.1, 4 August 2026. A data audit found that some South Carolina county names had pulled in businesses from out-of-state places sharing the same name: Dorchester is also a Boston neighborhood, Berkeley and Richland are also California and Washington counties, Lexington is also Kentucky's second city. 239 listings that named an out-of-state place were removed, along with 28 exact duplicate rows. 11,267 of the original 11,534 remain. National chains are now flagged in the download. Every aggregate on this page was recomputed from the published rows; v1.0 quoted a few figures from the raw collection file that could not be exactly reproduced, including the at-risk count of 1,392, now 1,203 under the stated rule. No headline finding changed: average scores moved by a tenth of a point or less, and the count of A grades for AI readiness remains zero.
v1.0, 24 February 2026. Initial publication.
Search by business name, county, or category. Switch to the at-risk view for businesses with a strong profile and weak AI readiness.
| Business | County | Category | GBP | AI readiness | Digital presence |
|---|
Everything below is published so the numbers can be checked, argued with, and reproduced. The limitations table at the end is the part we would want to read first if this were somebody else's research.
How complete and competitive a Google Business Profile is as a traditional search listing. Four components, weighted and summed.
| Component | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Trust | 35% | Star rating, review volume, sentiment |
| Conversion | 30% | Website, phone, hours, price level |
| Completeness | 25% | Name, address, categories, rating present |
| Engagement | 10% | Review count above 5, owner responses |
How well a profile is structured for AI-driven search. Seven signals scored.
| Signal | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Structured data | 25% | Hours, price level, multiple categories |
| Trust signals | 20% | Rating quality and review volume |
| Entity clarity | 20% | Editorial summary, website presence |
| Freshness | 15% | Review recency, review count above 20 |
| Visual content | 10% | Photos present, photo count above 4 |
| Response engagement | 5% | Owner responses to reviews |
| Accessibility | 5% | Wheelchair accessible entrance listed |
| Dimension | Weight |
|---|---|
| GBP score | 40% |
| AI readiness | 30% |
| Mobile readiness | 20% |
| Social presence | 10% |
| Grade | Range | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| A | 85 to 100 | Highly optimized |
| B | 70 to 84 | Above average |
| C | 55 to 69 | Average, improvement needed |
| D | 40 to 54 | Below average, significant gaps |
| F | 0 to 39 | Critical, foundational issues |
Collected in February 2026 using the Google Places API across 18 South Carolina counties and 20 business categories, using a grid-based geographic search.
| Tier | Counties | Grid | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1, major metro | Greenville, Richland, Charleston | 3×3 cells, 4km radius | 1,500 each |
| Tier 2, secondary | Spartanburg, Horry, Lexington, York, Berkeley | 2×2 cells, 5km radius | 800 each |
| Tier 3, micropolitan | Anderson, Beaufort, Florence, Aiken, Dorchester | 2×2 cells, 7km radius | 400 each |
| Tier 4, rural | Pickens, Sumter, Orangeburg, Greenwood, Laurens | 1 cell, 10km radius | 300 each |
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AI gap | The difference between GBP score and AI readiness. A positive gap means the profile looks better on traditional search than it is structured for AI discovery. |
| At-risk | GBP score above 70 and AI readiness below 50. Strong traditional presence, vulnerable to AI-driven search shifts. |
| AI-ready | An AI readiness score of 60 or higher, meeting the baseline threshold for structured, entity-clear, fresh data. |
| Entity clarity | How clearly a business's identity, category, and purpose are communicated in the structured fields AI systems use to build business knowledge. |
| Freshness | Recent review activity. Businesses with reviews in the last 90 days and 20 or more total reviews score higher. |
| Mobile readiness | Estimated from website URL patterns. A full implementation uses Google PageSpeed Insights for real lighthouse scores. |
| Limitation | Impact | Planned resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Review text not collected | Owner response rate and sentiment default to neutral, understating engagement sub-scores. | Re-run with review fetching enabled. |
| Editorial summaries not collected | Entity clarity loses up to 12 points for businesses that have a Google editorial summary, so AI readiness may be slightly understated. | Re-run with editorial fetching enabled. |
| Mobile score is heuristic only | Estimated from URL patterns, not real performance data. Treat as directional. | Integrate the Google PageSpeed Insights API. |
| Social score is a stub | Estimated from website existence alone, which is too weak to be actionable. | Integrate SerpAPI or a manual enrichment pass. |
| Geographic sampling bias | Tier 1 counties have roughly five times more profiles than Tier 4, so rural businesses are underrepresented. | Normalize by county business density using census data. |
The index scores what a profile looks like from the outside. The free scan does the same thing for your website and your AI search presence, and sends you the numbers.
Run the free scan →Or score any site as you browse. We built the same benchmarks used in this index into a free Chrome extension: Get Found On Google: Visibility Scan.