Local SEO for Electricians: How UK Electrical Firms Get Found

In 2023, BrightLocal studied 1,050 business locations across seven verticals to see whether extra Google Business Profile categories moved map rankings. Electricians were one of the seven.

Electricians came last, using an average of 1.0 additional category. Department stores used 4.7. In the same dataset, profiles with no additional categories averaged a map rank of 7.6. Profiles with four averaged 5.9, the best result in the study.

So the trade doing the widest spread of work describes itself the most narrowly. Consumer units, rewires, EICRs, EV chargers, fault finding, testing, all filed under one word.

That is free ground, left uncovered.

The short version

• Electricians averaged just 1.0 additional Google category, the lowest of seven verticals studied (BrightLocal, 2023). Zero-category profiles averaged the worst map rank.
• Part P is a building regulation about the work, not a licence for the person. Almost every competitor page gets this wrong.
• Scheme registration is a commercial advantage, not a legal requirement. Say so plainly on your site.
• Landlord EICRs run on a five-year legal cycle in England. That is plannable revenue nobody is writing content for.

Why do electricians leave the most ground uncovered on Google?

Because most profiles list one category and stop. BrightLocal's 2023 study found electricians averaged 1.0 additional category, the fewest of any vertical it measured, while profiles carrying none averaged a map rank of 7.6 against 5.9 for those carrying four. The gap is the opportunity.

Your profile has one primary category and room for additional ones. The primary decides which searches you are eligible to appear for. The additional ones widen that eligibility without touching the primary. Think of the primary as a switch rather than a dial.

That profile is also the surface that matters most. Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 found Google Maps was the third most-used smartphone app in the UK, reaching 77% of online adults in May 2025. Even on iPhones it out-reaches Apple Maps, 72% to 28%.

The market you are actually in

The ONS counted 49,730 VAT or PAYE registered electrical installation businesses in the UK in March 2025. More than eight in ten of them, 41,455, employ four people or fewer. London holds 5,485.

Two things follow. There are more registered electrical businesses than plumbing ones, 49,730 against 46,450. And nearly all of them are tiny, which means nearly none of them have anyone doing this properly.

Why one category is not enough for this trade

An electrician's week is rarely one job type. Monday is a fault call. Tuesday is a consumer unit. Wednesday is an EICR for a letting agent. Thursday is a charge point on a driveway. Friday is second fix on a kitchen.

A single category asks Google to infer all of that. It does not have to infer anything if you tell it.

Take charge points. The Department for Transport's chargepoint grant statistics to 1 April 2026 record 410,081 grant-funded home installations since 2013, with 11,762 in the last twelve months. Every one was a job for an electrician, and grant-funded work is a floor rather than a total.

Two honest caveats

The BrightLocal sample was American, the study is from 2023, and correlation is not causation. Read it as direction, not as a UK measurement.

Google's own guidance is blunt too: "Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business from the provided list." Categories complete the sentence "this business IS a", never "this business HAS a". So this is not permission to stuff the list. It is permission to stop under-describing yourself.

What does Part P actually require of you?

Part P is a requirement about electrical work in dwellings, not a qualification held by a person. It sits in Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010 and says reasonable provision must be made in design and installation to protect people from fire or injury. In law there is no "Part P qualified electrician".

The exact wording of requirement P1, from legislation.gov.uk, is this: "Reasonable provision shall be made in the design and installation of electrical installations in order to protect persons operating, maintaining or altering the installations from fire or injury."

That is the whole functional requirement. It applies to low and extra-low voltage installations in or attached to a dwelling, in its common parts, or in a garden fed from a dwelling's supply.

This matters commercially because it is written wrong everywhere. Pages advertising "Part P certified electricians" describe something that does not exist. Explaining the actual position reads as competence, to a homeowner and to a search engine.

The three jobs that are notifiable

Notifiable work is a short, closed list. Approved Document P, the 2013 statutory guidance for England, reproduces regulation 12(6A) of the Building Regulations: a new circuit, the replacement of a consumer unit, or any addition or alteration to existing circuits in a special location. A special location means the zone around a bath tap or shower head, or a room with a swimming pool or sauna heater.

Approved Document P is equally clear about the rest: "All other electrical installation work is not notifiable, namely additions and alterations to existing installations outside special locations, and replacements, repairs and maintenance anywhere."

Its own worked example belongs on a service page. Installing a built-in cooker is not notifiable unless a new circuit is needed. Connecting an electric gate to an existing isolator is not notifiable, but running a new circuit to it is.

The three ways to certify it

Approved Document P sets out exactly three procedures for notifiable work: self-certification by a registered competent person, third-party certification by a registered third-party certifier, or certification by a building control body. Put that on your website in plain English, because it explains what your registration is actually for.

If you are registered, you self-certify, and you or your scheme must give the occupier a Building Regulations compliance certificate within 30 days. If you are not, your customer is going through building control instead.

Why is "NICEIC registered" not the trust signal you think it is?

It is a real signal, just not the one most sites imply. Registration is not a legal requirement to work as an electrician. It is authorisation to self-certify Part P work. The government body that authorises these schemes is MHCLG, and several operators are approved, not one.

On the government's current list of authorised competent person schemes, the operators approved for installing fixed low or extra-low voltage electrical installations in dwellings are BESCA, Blue Flame Certification, Certsure, NAPIT and OFTEC.

The brands appear under their legal names. NICEIC appears as "Certsure LLP trading as NICEIC". NAPIT appears as "NAPIT Registration Limited". ELECSA does not appear anywhere on that list.

NAPIT launched its competent person scheme in 2004 and reports over 22,000 registered installers across the UK. Treat that figure as NAPIT's own.

How to display it properly

Name the scheme and explain the benefit. "Registered with a government-authorised competent person scheme, so notifiable work is self-certified and you receive a Building Regulations compliance certificate" beats a logo in a footer.

Then put your registration number where a customer can copy it into the scheme's checker. A homeowner who can verify you in ten seconds stops shopping around.

Why is landlord EICR work the most plannable revenue you are not marketing?

Because it runs on a legal clock. In England, the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 require private landlords to have every electrical installation inspected and tested by a qualified person at intervals of no more than five years. Every property you test is a diarised job five years out.

The duty, from legislation.gov.uk, is to "ensure every electrical installation in the residential premises is inspected and tested at regular intervals by a qualified person", with regular intervals defined as "at intervals of no more than 5 years". The standard is "the eighteenth edition of the Wiring Regulations", BS 7671: 2018. The document you produce is an Electrical Installation Condition Report.

The deadlines are tight and belong on a landlord page. The report goes to each existing tenant within 28 days, and to the local housing authority within seven days of a written request. Where remedial work is needed, government guidance says it must be done within 28 days.

The wording most electricians misread

The regulations say "qualified person", defined as "a person competent to undertake the inspection and testing". They do not name NICEIC or NAPIT.

Scheme registration is strong evidence of that competence. It is not the statutory test. Saying this accurately on your site is more persuasive than claiming a legal monopoly you do not have.

The market just got bigger

Privately rented homes are 19% of households in England, according to the English Housing Survey 2024 to 2025 published by MHCLG in December 2025. Every one of them sits on that five-year clock.

Then the regime widened. Government guidance published on 1 November 2025 states: "The regulations come into force for the social rented sector on 1 November 2025 and will apply to social housing tenancies granted after 1 December 2025." Social landlords supplying appliances must have those checked too.

Landlords also buy other things. The same DfT statistics record 1,772 charge point sockets installed for residential landlords under the current grant, and 24,759 for renters and flat owners. The landlord who books an EICR today is the landlord fitting a charge point next year.

Count the electrician websites in your borough with a page about any of this. Usually zero.

Is electrical demand emergency-led or planned?

Both, and honestly nobody has published a UK split that stands up. Anyone quoting you a precise percentage is guessing. What is clear is that the trade carries two different kinds of search at once, and most profiles are built for only one of them.

Emergency work is a fuse board tripping at nine at night. Planned work is an EICR, a rewire or a charge point on a driveway, researched over days.

Those two behaviours want different things. Emergency searches want honest hours and a phone that gets answered. Planned searches want a page explaining the job, the paperwork and the certificate.

So build your own picture. Open Google Trends, set the region to the United Kingdom, and plot "emergency electrician", "EICR" and "EV charger installation" over five years. Free, and it is your market rather than someone else's.

One limitation. Trends reports a relative index, not a count of searches. Read the shape and the timing of the peaks. Do not convert it into jobs.

Frequently asked questions

Do I legally need to be on a competent person scheme?

No. Part P is a requirement about the work. Registration is what lets you self-certify notifiable work instead of routing your customer through building control. It is a commercial advantage, not a licence.

Do EICR pages actually bring work in?

They bring a different kind of enquiry. Landlords and letting agents search deliberately, compare, and then book. Because the duty repeats every five years, one good customer is a recurring appointment rather than a one-off.

Is Checkatrade worth it alongside this?

It can fill gaps in the diary, but the audience belongs to the platform. Your Google profile and your website stay yours, whatever a directory does next with its prices or its rankings. Rated People shows the risk: it closed to trades in September 2026, after the company resolved to wind up voluntarily.

What to do this week

Six jobs, in order.

1. Open your Google Business Profile and count your additional categories. If the number is one, you are exactly average for the trade, and average lost in BrightLocal's study.
2. Add the ones you actually are. Work from your invoices, not from a keyword list. Skip anything you would rather refuse.
3. Rewrite your Part P line. Delete "Part P certified". Replace it with what your scheme registration lets you do: self-certify notifiable work and issue a Building Regulations compliance certificate.
4. Publish one landlord EICR page. Five-year interval, the 28-day tenant copy, the seven-day authority copy, the 28-day remedial window. Name the regulations.
5. Put your registration number where it can be checked, not just a logo in the footer.
6. Build the Google Trends chart for your own patch. UK region, five years, three terms.

At Business Opt we start electrical accounts with the profile, because the categories are the cheapest thing on the list and the most consistently neglected.

The fuse board will trip on a Sunday night. The landlord will remember the certificate in March. Be findable for both.