A measurement of 2,165 Newcastle trade listings
Nobody owns Newcastle. Not one trade business sits in the top three right across the city.
The same measurement for your own business: where you are visible, where you disappear, and what the businesses above you are doing.
By Reece Rainer
spareday, Newcastle NSW
Last updated
13 September 2026
Read time
3 minutes
Since it went live my phone hasn’t stopped ringing.
He created a stunning website for us that captures and nurtures leads with an automated email marketing system, which has filled a huge gap in the business and saved a lot of time (and money!).
Reece has been generous, reliable and knowledgeable in creating an online presence for our sporting club. He is good to work with and has good technical abilities.
Searching for a tradesperson in Newcastle gives a different answer depending on which suburb you are standing in, and nobody had measured by how much.
Eight trades were searched from 49 points across the city on 13 September 2026. Here is what those 2,165 listings showed.
Not one business in any of the eight trades holds the top three across Newcastle. Almost every one that reaches it does so in a quarter of the city or less, and nearly a quarter of listings carry no website.
The grid covered Newcastle at two kilometre spacing, roughly a suburb apart, so each point is what a customer there actually sees.
Electricians and mechanics had the most listings and the most without a website. Painters and pest control had the fewest competing at all.
The pattern holds in every trade measured, which makes it a Newcastle finding rather than a quirk of one industry.
Being shown and being chosen are different jobs. The map decides whether a business appears, the website decides what happens next, which is why local SEO and the site go together.
One snapshot on one day, eight trades, six results captured per point. Google's map moves, and this is a photograph of it rather than a law about it.
A statistic that gets quoted and then found to be overstated does real damage, so the limits are set out here.
Related reading from us: spareday in Newcastle.
493 of the 2,165 listings shown across eight trades, or 23 per cent. Painters were highest at 29 per cent, pest control lowest at 18.
No. Not one business in any of the eight trades held a top three position at all 49 points measured.
Not far. Of the 416 reaching the top three anywhere, 401 did so in a quarter of the city or less.
Those in the top three carried about double the reviews, 28 against 13. That is an association; this study cannot show it causes the position.
Yes, with a link back. The method, the dataset and its limits are all published so the numbers can be checked.