Local Citations by Category: 45 Verticals, Measured

The short answer to “what are the best local citations for my category”: in our index the trades share Angi, HomeAdvisor and Houzz (all DR 91, free), real estate gets Zillow (DR 94, free), legal gets FindLaw (DR 90, free), while healthcare pays for Doctolib (DR 91) and restaurants pay for OpenTable (DR 90). And ten of the 45 categories we track have no category platform at all.

That last finding is the one most “top citation sites by category” lists never mention, because they only ever publish the categories that have a good answer. This page publishes all 45, including the ones where the honest answer is “your category does not have a directory of its own.”

How we measured this

The numbers come from the live Citation Builder catalog, the same index the tool uses to rank directories for a given country and industry: 1,134 active sources, each carrying an industry mapping and a cost tier (free, freemium or paid). Where a third-party score exists we also store an Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) as an authority proxy.

Two limits worth stating up front, because they change how you should read the table:

• DR coverage is partial. We hold a DR for 214 of the 1,134 active sources. Every DR figure below is the score of one named platform, not an average over a category, so nothing here is a median computed on a handful of rows.
• “Category platform” excludes the universal anchors. Nextdoor, Foursquare and Yelp are mapped to all 45 categories, so counting them as a category’s top site would make every row identical. The platform column below shows the strongest directory that serves that category specifically.

Counts are of sources mapped to a category and active on the date of writing. No estimates, no rounded-up marketing math.

Finding 1: ten categories have no platform of their own

Pet services, camping and caravans, nursing and childcare, arts and antiques, graphic and web design, IT services, marketing, driving schools, security services, and taxi and car hire. Ten of 45. For a business in one of these, there is no Angi, no Zillow, no OpenTable to claim.

That is not a gap in our data, it is the market. These categories are served by the universal anchors and by general country directories, which is exactly why 97% to 98% of their mapped sources are free: there is no gatekeeper platform in a position to charge. If you run a marketing agency or a taxi firm, the strategy is not “find my niche directory.” It is the anchors, done accurately, plus depth in your country’s general directories.

Finding 2: more sources does not mean better citations

Contractors top the index at 95 mapped sources, the largest of any category. Taxi and car hire sit at 32. It is tempting to read that as “contractors have three times the citation opportunity,” and it would be wrong.

The trades carry a long tail of small directories that add coverage, not authority. Hotels, with just 35 sources, concentrate their weight in a handful of strong platforms. Volume and authority are different axes, and the number of rows in your category’s list tells you almost nothing about how much of it is worth building. This is the same pattern we found across countries in the state of local citations 2026 study: precision beats volume.

Finding 3: whether your flagship is free is luck of the vertical

This is the split that decides how much a complete citation profile costs you, and it has nothing to do with how competitive your market is:

• Free flagship: trades (Angi, HomeAdvisor, Houzz, all DR 91), real estate (Zillow, DR 94), legal (FindLaw, DR 90), chiropractors (Healthgrades, DR 90), weddings, photography, catering and florists (WeddingWire, DR 90).
• Paid flagship: healthcare and dentists (Doctolib, DR 91), restaurants, hotels and venues (OpenTable, DR 90), car dealerships (mobile.de, DR 89), pubs and bars (TheFork, DR 80), gyms and yoga studios (Mindbody, DR 70).

Real estate agents are the most paid-gated category overall: only 59% of their 81 sources are free, the lowest share of all 45. Pet services, camping, childcare, arts and web design sit at 98%.

A restaurant and a plumber can do identical citation work and end up with different bills, purely because of which platform owns their vertical. Worth knowing before you budget, and worth knowing that in every category the free layer (the anchors plus your country’s directories) is the part that does most of the work anyway.

Local citations by category: all 45

Counts are active mapped sources in our index. “Free” is the share of that category’s sources that cost nothing to list on. “Top category platform” excludes the universal anchors, with its DR and cost tier.

Category	Sources	Free	Top category platform
Contractors	95	81%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Building & Construction	94	81%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Removals & Storage	87	79%	CHECK24 Profis (DR 79, freemium)
Attorneys	86	94%	FindLaw (DR 90, free)
Legal Services	86	94%	FindLaw (DR 90, free)
Plumbers	86	79%	Angi (DR 91, free)
HVAC	85	79%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Gardening & Landscaping	84	79%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Real Estate Agents	81	59%	Zillow (DR 94, free)
Health & Medical	80	84%	Doctolib (DR 91, paid)
Dentists	79	85%	Doctolib (DR 91, paid)
Wedding Services	78	81%	WeddingWire (DR 90, free)
Tradespersons	75	76%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Counsellors & Therapists	73	88%	Doctolib (DR 91, paid)
Cleaners	72	75%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Restaurants	70	90%	OpenTable (DR 90, paid)
Doctors	59	78%	Doctolib (DR 91, paid)
Electricians	59	69%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Pest Control	57	68%	Angi (DR 91, free)
Architects	56	96%	Houzz (DR 91, free)
Pet Services	56	98%	None
Car Dealerships	55	73%	mobile.de (DR 89, paid)
Mechanics & Auto Parts	54	94%	WhoCanFixMyCar (DR 62, paid)
Financial Services	53	94%	Insurance Journal (DR 80, free)
Chiropractors	52	92%	Healthgrades (DR 90, free)
Photographers	50	70%	WeddingWire (DR 90, free)
Beauty & Cosmetics	49	84%	Fresha (DR 76, freemium)
Camping & Caravans	49	98%	None
Locksmiths	49	63%	CHECK24 Profis (DR 79, freemium)
Catering	48	63%	WeddingWire (DR 90, free)
Nursing & Childcare	47	98%	None
Arts & Antiques	44	98%	None
Florists	43	65%	WeddingWire (DR 90, free)
Graphic & Web Design	43	98%	None
IT Services	38	97%	None
Marketing	38	97%	None
Driving Schools	37	97%	None
Clubs & Venues	35	89%	OpenTable (DR 90, paid)
Hotels	35	94%	OpenTable (DR 90, paid)
Pubs & Bars	35	86%	TheFork (DR 80, paid)
Security Services	34	97%	None
Gyms & Sports Clubs	33	88%	Mindbody (DR 70, paid)
Insurance Agents	33	97%	Insurance Journal (DR 80, free)
Taxi & Car Hire	32	97%	None
Yoga Teachers & Studios	32	88%	Mindbody (DR 70, paid)

Several categories share a top platform because the platform genuinely serves them all: Angi, HomeAdvisor and Houzz all sit at DR 91 across the trades, and the pick between them is a tie our data cannot break. Where you see the same name twice (attorneys and legal services, health and doctors), those are separate category mappings in the index that resolve to the same flagship.

What to do with this

Read your own row, then ignore the rest of the table. Three moves follow from it:

1. Claim your category platform if you have one. It is the single highest-authority category signal available to you, and in the trades, legal and real estate it costs nothing.
2. If your row says “None”, stop looking. Your citation profile is the universal anchors plus your country’s general directories, built accurately. That is not a consolation prize, it is the whole game in your vertical.
3. Do not chase the long tail because your number is big. 95 sources is not 95 jobs worth doing. Work down by authority, not by row count.

The country layer decides the rest. The same category has a different list in Germany than in the United States, which is why our citation sites by country pages exist alongside the by industry ones. Layer them: anchors, then your country, then your category.

If you would rather not work the list by hand, Citation Builder builds the ranked set for your country and industry combination, and the listings stay yours: no recurring fee that removes them, while your subscription keeps them monitored and corrected as directories and your details change.