Research
Australian pool services, by the numbers
We checked what 1,444 Australian pool services publish about themselves, and how much of it holds up against an independent source.
Measured 2026-09-22 · free to reuse with attribution
Of 1,444 Australian pool services measured in 2026, 17.9% publish an ABN that can be confirmed against the national register. Of the 836 whose listed phone number was compared with the number on their own website, 54.2% match and 8% contradict it. 82.5% of the 979 websites fetched responded, and 83.6% of the 1,062 cross-source matches found two or more independent sources. The median Australian pool service has 37 Google reviews. The comparable national figures across all 23 trades are 19.5% with a checkable ABN and a median of 40 reviews. Source: WhoToHire, 2026-09-22.
17.9%
publish a checkable ABN
of all 1,444. 8% below the national rate of 19.5%.
54.2%
phone number confirmed against their own site
of 836 compared. 9% below the national rate of 59.8%.
8%
phone number contradicting their own site
of 836 compared. 18% above the national rate of 6.8%.
82.5%
have a website that loads
of 979 fetched. In line with the 82.6% national rate.
37
Google reviews for the median business
The national median is 40. Review counts track how often people hire a trade, not how well they do it — a trade you call once a decade will always sit lower.
What stands out
Pool Services publish a checkable ABN at 17.9%, 8% below the 19.5% national rate — the easiest identity check a customer can run is unavailable for more of this trade than for most.
67 pool services — 8% of the 836 we compared — list a phone number that contradicts the one on their own website, 18% above the national 6.8%. That is worth knowing before you call: it is the signature of both a stale listing and of a lead-reselling middleman.
The median has 37 Google reviews against 40 nationally. That gap says more about how often households need pool services than about the standard of the work, which is why the ranking on this site weights review volume on a log scale rather than treating a 5.0 from four reviews as equal to a 4.6 from three hundred.
Pool Services by state
States with at least 40 pool services in the directory. Smaller groups are held back rather than published as percentages that move too far on a single record.
| State | Businesses | ABN | Phones checked | Phone confirmed | Phone mismatch | Sites checked | Site loads | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queensland | 452 | 18.6% | 255 | 51% | 7.8% | 299 | 81.3% | 40 |
| New South Wales | 430 | 20.2% | 249 | 51.8% | 8.4% | 298 | 81.9% | 30 |
| Victoria | 272 | 19.1% | 166 | 60.2% | 10.8% | 190 | 83.2% | 40 |
| Western Australia | 190 | 8.9% | 110 | 52.7% | 1.8% | 128 | 85.2% | 39 |
| South Australia | 64 | 15.6% | 36 | 66.7% | 8.3% | 42 | 83.3% | 48 |
Method, and what it can't tell you
1,444 Australian pool services. Every one of them gets the same four checks: an ABN lookup against the national register, a comparison of the listed phone number against the number on the business's own website, an HTTP request to that website, and a match against open mapping data maintained separately from Google.
Not all four have run everywhere yet, so the figures above are shares of what has been checked: 836 phone comparisons, 979 website fetches and 1,062 cross-source matches out of 1,444 businesses. A check that has not run counts in neither half of a percentage.
This is a census of a directory, not of the trade. It covers businesses with enough of a public footprint to be found at all, which if anything biases these figures upward — a business too small to appear here is less likely to publish an ABN, not more.
ABN registration is the one figure taken over every business in the group rather than over a checked subset, because an absent ABN is not a failed lookup — read it as a floor. Review counts and averages are held; individual reviews are not, so nothing here can tell you whether a business's reviews arrived steadily or all at once.
Full method and national figures: the state of Australian trade business data.
Common questions
- How many Australian pool services are in this dataset?
- 1,444, drawn from 565,935 scanned records and measured on 2026-09-22. That is a census of the pool services in this directory rather than of every pool service in Australia, and it skews toward businesses with enough of a public footprint to be found at all.
- How many Australian pool services publish an ABN you can check?
- 17.9% — 258 of 1,444. The national rate across all trades is 19.5%, so pool services sit 8% below it. An ABN is free and public, so a missing one is usually a business that never put it on their website rather than a business without one.
- How many pool services list a phone number that doesn't match their website?
- 8% of the 836 we compared, or about 67 businesses. This counts only cases where a listed number directly contradicts the number on the business's own site — not businesses with no phone number and not ones the comparison has not run for. It is often a stale listing, and sometimes a lead-reselling service sitting between you and the person who does the work.
- How many Google reviews does the median Australian pool service have?
- 37, against a national median of 40 across all trades. Half have fewer. Review counts track how often people hire a trade rather than how well it performs, so comparing a pool service against a trade people call more often tells you very little.
- Which state has the best-documented pool services?
- New South Wales leads on published ABNs at 20.2%, against 8.9% in Western Australia. Only states with at least 40 businesses are compared, because percentages taken over a handful of businesses move too far on a single record to mean anything.
Using these numbers
Free to quote, chart or republish under CC BY 4.0, which asks only for attribution and a link. The full aggregate dataset is available as a free download. If you need a cut that isn't published, ask.
WhoToHire, “Australian pool service data 2026”, 2026-09-22. https://whotohire.com.au/research/trades/pool-services
support@whotohire.com.auRelated
Other trades: Builders · Roofers · Tilers · Painters · Fencing Contractors · Garage Door Specialists · Electricians · Plumbers · Heating & Cooling · Solar Installers · Locksmiths · Gardeners & Landscapers · Arborists · Pest Controllers · Cleaners · Removalists · Mechanics · Car Detailers · Car Washes · Photographers · Pet Groomers · Driving Schools