Auto detailers and car washes on Google: the 2026 benchmark report
Review counts, ratings, website presence and hours for 73,083 detailing and car wash businesses, computed from public Google Business Profile listings across 51 states.
Reviews
| Review count | Value |
|---|---|
| Median | 24 |
| Average (mean) | 157 |
| 25th percentile | 3 |
| 75th percentile | 124 |
| 90th percentile | 400 |
Share of auto detailers and car washes by review count:
| Bucket | Share of listings |
|---|---|
| 0 reviews | 14.1% |
| Under 10 | 37.2% |
| Under 25 | 50.5% |
| 100 or more | 28.4% |
| 500 or more | 8% |
Ratings
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Average rating | 4.6 |
| Rated 5.0 | 43.9% |
| Rated 4.5 or higher | 72.1% |
| Rated under 4.0 | 12.1% |
| No rating yet | 11.2% |
Websites
| Website status | Share |
|---|---|
| Website listed | 65.7% |
| No website listed | 34.3% |
| Own domain | 60.5% |
| Social profile only | 3.9% |
| Free or DIY builder | 1.3% |
Median review count for auto detailers and car washes with a website: 51. Without one: 5.
Profile completeness and hours
| Profile field | Share |
|---|---|
| Has a profile photo | 96.4% |
| Public email on profile | 17.9% |
| Open 24 hours | 10.6% |
| Open Saturday | 49.9% |
| Open Sunday | 38% |
| No hours listed | 36% |
Where the listings are
| State | Listings |
|---|---|
| TX | 5,635 |
| CA | 3,556 |
| FL | 2,733 |
| PA | 2,600 |
| WA | 2,179 |
| NJ | 2,086 |
| VA | 2,068 |
| TN | 1,750 |
| WI | 1,653 |
| GA | 1,559 |
| MO | 1,510 |
| UT | 1,496 |
Primary categories
| Google category | Listings |
|---|---|
| Car detailing service | 40,896 |
| Car wash | 20,479 |
| Auto repair shop | 1,620 |
| Auto body shop | 1,504 |
| Self service car wash | 1,373 |
| Window tinting service | 633 |
| Oil change service | 602 |
| Pressure washing service | 445 |
Read the median before you read anything else
Half of every detailing business and car wash on Google has 24 reviews or fewer. That is the whole industry, 73,083 listings across 51 states, and it is a low bar. If you have 60 reviews you are already in the top quarter of the country.
Being in the top quarter of the country is not the same as winning your zip code. Google shows three businesses in the map pack, and in any metro worth working those three sit near the top tenth. The 90th percentile here is 400 reviews. That is the number that decides whether a customer searching "car detailing near me" ever sees your name.
The spread is extreme. The 25th percentile is 3 reviews, the 75th is 124, and 8% have passed 500, mostly high-volume tunnel washes counting years of transactions. That long tail drags the mean to 157, which describes nobody. Compare yourself to the percentiles and ignore the average.
The rating everybody has
43.9% of listings show a perfect 5.0. Read that number carefully before you take comfort in yours. A shop reaches 5.0 by having seven reviews from seven happy customers, and it stops being 5.0 the first month it does real volume. The dataset average is 4.6 stars and 72.1% sit at 4.5 or higher, so the star line separates almost nobody.
Where rating does matter is the floor. 12.1% are below 4.0, and below 4.0 a buyer about to hand over a $1,400 coating job simply moves on. Another 11.2% carry no rating at all, which reads to a customer as a business that has never finished a car.
The website gap is the biggest one in this trade
34.3% of detailing and wash listings have no website attached. Shops with a site have a median of 51 reviews. Shops without one have 5. That is a ten-to-one difference in the middle of the distribution.
We are not claiming a website generates reviews. Operators who take the business seriously tend to do both, and an Instagram-only mobile detailer can run a full book. But detailing sells two very different products. A $40 maintenance wash is an impulse buy off a map pin. A $900 paint correction or a $1,600 ceramic coating is a considered purchase where the buyer wants to see twenty finished cars, read what the process is, and understand what the warranty covers. There is no version of that sale that happens inside a Google profile. If you sell high-ticket work and you are in the 34.3%, that is where the money is leaking.
Hours, photos, and what customers see at 8pm
36% of these listings show no hours at all, and 10.6% claim to be open 24 hours, which for a detailer is usually an error rather than a service. Only 49.9% list Saturday hours and 38% list Sunday, which is remarkable given that Saturday is the day most people think about their car. Photos are close to universal at 96.4%, so a profile without them lands in the bottom few percent immediately. Public email appears on 17.9% of listings, which matters if you ever want a fleet manager to reach you without calling.
What to do with this
- Open your own profile and write down four numbers: review count, rating, whether a website is linked, and whether Saturday hours are set.
- Place yourself against the percentiles. Under 24 is the bottom half. Under 124 is the bottom three quarters. 400 is where map-pack winners live.
- If you are in the 34.3% with no website, fix that before anything else, especially if you sell coating or correction. A five-page site with pricing bands and online booking is about a week of work. See the website guide.
- Set a review pace and hold it. One review per vehicle day, asked at handover with the customer looking at the car, moves a 25-review shop past the 75th percentile inside a year. Scripts are in the reviews guide.
- List real Saturday hours, and turn on missed-call text-back so the weekend calls you cannot take still turn into bookings. Run your own numbers through the calculator.
- Only then buy ads. Traffic sent to a profile with nine reviews and no site pays for your competitor's education. The Google Ads guide explains the order.
Method
This report aggregates 73,083 public Google Business Profile listings collected from Google Maps searches for auto detailers and car washes across every US state, deduplicated by place. Review counts and ratings are as displayed on the listing at collection time. "Website listed" means the profile links to any URL; we classify the URL as an owned domain, a social profile, or a free site builder by hostname. Figures are refreshed monthly. Cite this page as: Detailer Marketing HQ, "Auto detailers and car washes on Google benchmark report", 2026.