“Near Me” Search Query Purchase Conversions

On doing research for a “near me” optimization article, I came across this the statistic that claimed: 28% of “near me” searches result in a purchase. I wanted to separate this information out so as to not clutter the original article.

This 28% conversion number was listed in many different articles on this subject, however I was not initially able to find the source.

Searching for the source of that “near me” number led me to other articles with a similar claimed number that 28% of local searches resulted in a sale.

I was able to find the source for that, it was a Think With Google Consumer Insights post that said that

“76% people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a physical place within 24 hours and 28% of those searches result in a purchase”

We can assume that when adding a “near me” modifier to a search query, it is a local search. So the inference that 28% result in a purchase seems legitimate.

However, the caveats here are that these conversion numbers are for smartphone searches, which may convert differently than desktop. As well as this was a study done in 2016.

So, is the 28% number still valid? Hard to know without an updated study, which I was unable to find.

Is it still worth optimizing for “near me” searches? Definitely! Even if the 28% number is lower nowadays (who knows, it could be higher), it would still represent a significant amount of search impressions and resulting sales.