Do State Farm and Allstate agents own the Google Maps pack? We read 440 insurance agency listings in 22 cities

Independent insurance agents tend to assume the big captive carriers own local search. A State Farm or Allstate agent has the brand, the corporate website and a review program behind them, so the thinking goes, and an independent agency is fighting for whatever is left of the map pack.

We measured it. On the morning of Sunday, October 25, 2026 we captured the Google Maps top 20 for “insurance agency” in 22 US cities, 11 large metros and 11 small cities, and read every listing by hand: 440 results, 367 insurance agencies after screening, 22 searches.

The belief is backwards. Listings carrying a national brand held 26 percent of the list but only 16 percent of the top three, and at the same review count they sat lower than independent agencies, not higher. The bigger surprise was the screen: 64 of the 440 results, about one in seven, were keyword-named listings that could not be confirmed as businesses, and 8 of them held a top-three slot.

The number to write down first

Count the brands in your own pack. In the median city, 4 listings carried a national carrier’s name or a storefront chain’s, and in 15 of the 22 cities no brand at all reached the top three. Position one belonged to a brand in 2 of 22 markets, both of them the same auto insurance storefront chain.

The median agency on the list has 87 reviews and a 4.9 rating. The median agency in the top three has 221. Treat those as the benchmark for a list where national brands are present but not winning.

	Large metros	Small cities
Brand listings, share of the list	17 percent	33 percent
Brand listings, share of top-three slots	7 percent	23 percent
Median reviews, brand listings	347	132
Median reviews, independents	142	38
Median top-three agency, reviews	267	221
Least reviewed agency in a typical top three	142	118

Brands carry more reviews and sit lower

Across all 22 cities the 94 brand listings had a median of 148 reviews against 70 for the 273 independents, roughly twice as many. They still sat at a median position of 13 against 10.

Review volume does not explain it away. We split every listing into thirds by review count, so each comparison holds volume roughly constant, and the brand listings sat lower in all three:

Review count third	Brand median position	Independent median position
1 to 46 reviews	16	13
46 to 168 reviews	14	10
168 reviews and up	11	7

All three differences were statistically significant (rho 0.229, 0.211 and 0.231, where a positive value means brand listings sit lower). The pattern was strongest where independents are thin on the ground. In small cities, among the most reviewed third (96 reviews and up), brand listings sat at a median position of 11 and independents at 4 (rho 0.472). In large metros the gap appeared only in the most reviewed third, 13 against 7 (rho 0.366), and the two lower thirds showed none.

That does not prove the brand costs a listing positions. It shows no sign that a national name buys a better spot, which is the belief independents act on.

Which brands showed up, and where they landed

The single most common brand was State Farm: 19 agent listings in 11 of the 22 cities, a median of 183 reviews, a median position of 12, two in a top three and none at position one. Small cities carried most of them. Rochester, Minnesota alone had 6 State Farm agents in its top 20.

The brand that did reach the top was not a captive carrier at all. Acceptance Insurance, an auto insurance storefront chain, held 12 listings in 9 cities, 4 top-three slots and both of the brand-held first positions. Freeway Insurance, another storefront chain, had 8 listings in 6 cities with a median of 423 reviews and sat at a median position of 14.

The other captive carriers were rarer and lower. American Family agents held 8 listings in 4 cities, none in a top three, at a median position of 16. Farmers agents held 7 and Allstate agents 5, again with none in a top three.

One difference is visible on the listing itself. Captive agents mostly title it with their own name followed by the carrier; independents title it with the agency name and the word insurance or agency. We searched “insurance agency”, and a name built around that phrase may simply match it better.

Reviews order the list; rating does not

Review count ordered the list, as it has in every trade and profession we have measured (rho -0.292, more reviews sitting higher). Rating did not order it at all (rho -0.039, not significant), because almost everyone is rated well: the median listing is a 4.9, and 21 percent of rated listings are a perfect 5.0.

The top three carried 1.8 times the median listing of their own market in large metros and 2.45 times in small cities. To use it, search insurance agency plus your city, read the twenty review counts, take the middle one and multiply by the figure for a market your size.

The floor is lower than the median suggests. In 7 of the 22 cities a top-three agency had fewer than 50 reviews, and 47 percent of all top-three agencies had fewer than 200. Small cities were not the easy market they are in most trades: the least reviewed agency in a typical small-city top three had 118 reviews, close to the large-metro figure of 142.

One result in seven could not be confirmed as a business

The first pass of this study excluded nothing, which in our experience means the screen has not been tested, not that the list is clean. Reading every row by hand found 64 listings that could not be confirmed as an agency.

They followed three patterns. Some were SR-22 filing names built from the keyword and the city (“SR22 Insurance” plus a town), some were price-word names (“Low Cost Auto Insurance” plus a word), and some were the city name followed by “Insurance Company” or “Insurance Agency”. Their median review count was 2, 47 of them were rated a perfect 5.0, and 45 had no website. Where a site existed it was usually a template on a keyword domain, a multi-state lead site with a toll-free number, or a page that failed to load.

They took 20 percent of all results in large metros against 9 percent in small cities, and 11 of the 20 in Atlanta. Two held position one, in Indianapolis and in Wausau, Wisconsin, and 8 held a top-three slot somewhere. Every excluded row stays in the published dataset with its reason.

For an owner, that may be the most useful line in this study. Before comparing yourself with your pack, take out the listings with a keyword name, two reviews and no site. Your real competition is shorter than the list, and a listing that names no business can be reported to Google.

What the screen caught

Beyond the keyword listings, three corrections mattered. Captive agents run their own domains, so detecting a brand by its website alone counted each State Farm agent as a brand of one; brands are now named from the listing title first. Three carrier claims offices and six carrier headquarters or national online insurers were filed under agency categories and would have counted as agencies. And a multi-state SR-22 lead site appeared in three of our cities under three local-sounding names, which the “same host in three or more markets” check had tagged as a chain. Every figure above comes from the third run, built from the same 22 searches.

Limits

• One query, one moment. We searched “insurance agency”. Customers also search “insurance agent”, “car insurance” and “home insurance”, and those queries may favor captive agents, who name their listings as agents. The search ran on a Sunday morning, when almost every agency was closed, so hours could not be tested.
• What counts as a brand. A listing is a brand if its title names a national or regional carrier or chain, or if it links to that company’s site. Some carriers sell only through independent agencies, and an independent agency that names one of them in its title is counted as a brand here.
• Range restriction. Every listing measured is already in a top 20. The study can say how brands and independents are ordered inside the list, not what keeps an agency off it.
• Unverifiable is a judgment. The 64 excluded listings could not be confirmed from the listing and its site. Some may be real, small or new agencies; the exclusion reason is published with every row so a reader can check.
• What else could explain it. The brand gap could come from the listing name matching the query, from proximity to the searcher, from categories, or from signals we do not see. This study measures the order, not its cause.

The dataset, including every excluded row and its reason, is available below.