State of Small-Business Websites 2026

We fetched the homepages of 1,173 independent US small businesses across 25 trades and 12 cities and ran the same checks as our free website grader. Median score: 78/100.

Key findings

  1. 61% of the 1,173 small-business homepages we measured had at least one basic accessibility failure readable from the HTML (missing alt text, unlabelled form fields, no page language, unnamed links or buttons, or zoom blocked).
  2. 24% had no meta description, so Google writes its own snippet; among bakeries it was 41%.
  3. 28% had no structured data telling search engines the business name, address or hours.
  4. 41% had no tap-to-call phone link, and 24% showed no phone number in the page HTML at all.
  5. 26% of homepages with images had at least one image with no alt attribute.
  6. 38% had links or buttons with no accessible name, which screen readers announce as just "link" or "button".
  7. 68% took more than 2 seconds to deliver their homepage HTML (median 2.7 s, measured from a single location including redirects).
  8. 6% were still not served over HTTPS and 7% had no mobile viewport setting.

How often each check failed

By trade

TradeSitesMedian scoreNo meta descriptionNo structured data (JSON-LD)At least one image with no alt attributeLinks or buttons with no accessible nameNo tap-to-call (tel:) linkTook over 2 seconds to deliver the homepage HTML
Accountants568023%39%17%50%38%66%
Auto repair shops287914%36%27%39%46%71%
Bakeries517441%45%25%31%69%80%
Barbershops508020%28%32%34%52%56%
Chiropractors377924%27%30%38%41%60%
Cleaning services438221%26%24%35%26%61%
Dentists367919%22%28%61%8%75%
Electricians497935%31%16%27%37%57%
Florists447423%34%24%27%55%86%
Hair salons337630%24%28%49%52%82%
Landscapers448032%25%32%48%50%55%
Lawyers48796%8%28%46%17%83%
Locksmiths298024%28%12%38%14%66%
Massage therapists577532%33%28%40%54%84%
Nail salons577632%49%35%39%40%74%
Painters518018%20%27%41%18%63%
Personal trainers487717%35%21%31%63%85%
Pest control50828%20%29%46%10%56%
Photographers518026%29%32%39%78%57%
Physical therapists517822%14%24%28%43%57%
Plumbers528212%21%10%39%23%60%
Restaurants487733%23%31%27%54%75%
Roofers508218%20%19%52%22%58%
Veterinarians528023%25%25%35%27%67%
Yoga studios587638%35%35%22%72%72%

By city

CitySitesMedian scoreNo meta descriptionNo structured data (JSON-LD)At least one image with no alt attributeLinks or buttons with no accessible nameNo tap-to-call (tel:) linkTook over 2 seconds to deliver the homepage HTML
Atlanta998023%26%23%34%42%60%
Chicago1137724%27%27%38%43%73%
Columbus917725%21%20%39%36%70%
Denver1058022%30%27%40%31%68%
Houston928023%30%27%39%39%65%
Los Angeles1017821%29%23%31%41%71%
Miami857728%33%28%39%38%71%
Nashville978022%23%32%38%35%66%
New York1087724%32%29%43%44%67%
Philadelphia907823%38%26%40%50%76%
Phoenix937926%22%20%36%41%67%
Seattle997926%27%24%40%52%66%

Methodology

Sample. We ran Google Maps searches for "<trade> near me" for 25 local trades in 12 US cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle) through the DataForSEO API, collecting 6,023 listings. We kept the website each listing links to, removed directories, social profiles and booking platforms (Yelp, Facebook, Angi, Thumbtack, BBB, Yellow Pages, Google and similar), and removed any domain that appeared in three or more cities as a likely chain or franchise. That left 4,357 independent domains.

From those, we drew a random sample of up to 64 sites per trade (1,600 sites). 1,173 returned a readable HTML homepage; the rest timed out, refused the request, returned an error or were not HTML, and are excluded.

Measurement. Each homepage was fetched once on 2026-09-23 with the same code as our free website grader: the same checks, the same 12-second limit and 2 MB cap, with at most 8 requests at a time and a user agent identifying the crawler as we.inc-research. We also fetched robots.txt and sitemap.xml. Phone, tap-to-call, dead-link and copyright-year checks were added for this study and read from the same HTML.

Privacy. Only public homepage HTML was read. No personal data was stored, and only aggregate figures are published. No business is named.

Limitations

Cite this page

Free to cite and reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link back to this page.

Suggested citation: We.Inc (2026). State of Small-Business Websites 2026: measurements of 1,173 US small-business homepages. https://we.inc/research/state-of-small-business-websites-2026

Related: We.Inc website builder data 2026, what people build with AI website builders, small business website statistics, accessibility statement generator.

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