First party research, August 2026
The Louisville probate search report
We audited every probate and estate law firm we could find in Louisville, then compared it against the live search results. Here is everything we found, including the part that contradicted what we expected.
What we did
How this was measured
On the twenty third of August 2026 we captured the first forty organic results and the local map pack for the phrase a person actually types, then fetched and read the homepage of every law firm in the set. Where a firm had a separate probate page we followed the link and read that too, because judging a firm on its homepage alone had already produced one wrong answer.
Our first list came from directories and held twenty two firms. Capturing the live results is what took it to thirty seven, because fifteen firms were ranking that no directory we checked had listed. That is worth saying plainly. A competitor list drawn from directories was missing about four firms in every ten.
We recorded thirty nine of the top forty positions. One position was not captured cleanly and we have left it out rather than guess at it.
Finding one
Most firms never say what they do.
Of the thirty seven firms we read:
- Thirty one had no mention of probate in the title of their homepage.
- Fourteen had no page anywhere on the site about probate.
- Twelve did not have the word Louisville in the title either.
- Six had no main heading on the page at all.
None of that is a competitive problem. It is an unopened envelope. The work required to fix all four is measured in hours.
The one that surprised us
Borders and Borders holds two hundred and fifty three Google reviews. That is the highest count we recorded anywhere in the study, and more than seven times the next highest firm we measured.
They do not appear anywhere in the top forty for the phrase.
One honest caveat. We read review counts from each firm's own site and that method is incomplete: English Law Group came back as zero from it, while the map pack shows two hundred and eighty eight for the same firm. So Borders is not the most reviewed probate firm in Louisville. It is a firm holding a great deal of earned public trust that produces nothing in the organic results, which is the cleanest example of the gap we work in.
Finding two
Nine firms had a perfect page. They ranked thirty eight places apart.
This is the finding that decided how we work, and it argued against what we assumed going in.
| Firm | Position |
|---|---|
| English Law Group | 2 |
| Roz Law | 3 |
| Brightwell Elder and Probate Law | 5 |
| Cochran Gersh Law Office | 13 |
| Scheynost Law Offices | 20 |
| Attorney Louisville KY | 29 |
| Gibson Law Offices | 32 |
| Dixie Law Group | 40 |
| Hebel and Hornung | Not in the top forty |
Every one of those nine has a real heading, a dedicated page about probate, and structured data. Not one failed a single check we ran. Positions two through forty, and one of them nowhere at all.
They are not identical in every respect. Five of the nine still do not carry the word probate in their homepage title and they rank anyway, which is its own lesson about how little that one tag decides once a proper service page exists.
We went into this expecting on page work to be the story, because it is the part that is easy to see and easy to sell. The data says it is the entry fee. Once everyone has it, the thing that separates second place from fortieth is what the rest of the internet says about you.
Finding three
Eleven of the top forty places are not law firms at all.
Of the thirty nine positions we captured, eleven belong to directories: Justia at number one, Super Lawyers at six, Primerus at eight and eleven, the Better Business Bureau at seventeen, LawInfo at nineteen, FindLaw at twenty five, LegalMatch at twenty seven, Expertise at thirty three, Avvo at thirty five, and Martindale at thirty nine.
Read that again from a firm's point of view. More than a quarter of the first page and a half of the results a searcher will ever look at are held by websites that are not competitors. They are lists. Most of them let you add yourself for nothing, and most local firms never have.
Being straight about the limits
What this study does not prove
This is one phrase, in one town, captured on one day. Search results move, and a capture is a photograph rather than a law. We are publishing the method along with the numbers so anyone can repeat it and disagree with us.
It also does not prove that we can move any particular firm. It shows a market where the basic work is undone and where identical pages sit thirty eight places apart. That is a description of an opportunity, not a promise about your site.
If you want the same study run on your trade and your town, that is exactly what the free market check is.