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
- 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).
- 24% had no meta description, so Google writes its own snippet; among bakeries it was 41%.
- 28% had no structured data telling search engines the business name, address or hours.
- 41% had no tap-to-call phone link, and 24% showed no phone number in the page HTML at all.
- 26% of homepages with images had at least one image with no alt attribute.
- 38% had links or buttons with no accessible name, which screen readers announce as just "link" or "button".
- 68% took more than 2 seconds to deliver their homepage HTML (median 2.7 s, measured from a single location including redirects).
- 6% were still not served over HTTPS and 7% had no mobile viewport setting.
How often each check failed
- No skip-to-content link: 62%
- No structured data (JSON-LD): 28%
- At least one image with no alt attribute: 26%
- Links or buttons with no accessible name: 38%
- Heading levels skipped: 56%
- No meta description: 24%
- No social share image: 39%
- Links that go nowhere (empty, # or javascript:void): 39%
- Not exactly one H1 heading: 45%
- No tap-to-call (tel:) link: 41%
- No sitemap.xml: 14%
- At least one unlabelled form field: 21%
- No phone number visible in the HTML: 24%
- No page language declared: 6%
- Pinch-zoom blocked: 9%
- Took over 2 seconds to deliver the homepage HTML: 68%
- Fewer than 50 readable words in the HTML: 10%
- No mobile viewport setting: 7%
- No page title: 4%
- Not served over HTTPS: 6%
- Homepage HTML over 500 KB (before images): 15%
By trade
| Trade | Sites | Median score | No meta description | No structured data (JSON-LD) | At least one image with no alt attribute | Links or buttons with no accessible name | No tap-to-call (tel:) link | Took over 2 seconds to deliver the homepage HTML |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accountants | 56 | 80 | 23% | 39% | 17% | 50% | 38% | 66% |
| Auto repair shops | 28 | 79 | 14% | 36% | 27% | 39% | 46% | 71% |
| Bakeries | 51 | 74 | 41% | 45% | 25% | 31% | 69% | 80% |
| Barbershops | 50 | 80 | 20% | 28% | 32% | 34% | 52% | 56% |
| Chiropractors | 37 | 79 | 24% | 27% | 30% | 38% | 41% | 60% |
| Cleaning services | 43 | 82 | 21% | 26% | 24% | 35% | 26% | 61% |
| Dentists | 36 | 79 | 19% | 22% | 28% | 61% | 8% | 75% |
| Electricians | 49 | 79 | 35% | 31% | 16% | 27% | 37% | 57% |
| Florists | 44 | 74 | 23% | 34% | 24% | 27% | 55% | 86% |
| Hair salons | 33 | 76 | 30% | 24% | 28% | 49% | 52% | 82% |
| Landscapers | 44 | 80 | 32% | 25% | 32% | 48% | 50% | 55% |
| Lawyers | 48 | 79 | 6% | 8% | 28% | 46% | 17% | 83% |
| Locksmiths | 29 | 80 | 24% | 28% | 12% | 38% | 14% | 66% |
| Massage therapists | 57 | 75 | 32% | 33% | 28% | 40% | 54% | 84% |
| Nail salons | 57 | 76 | 32% | 49% | 35% | 39% | 40% | 74% |
| Painters | 51 | 80 | 18% | 20% | 27% | 41% | 18% | 63% |
| Personal trainers | 48 | 77 | 17% | 35% | 21% | 31% | 63% | 85% |
| Pest control | 50 | 82 | 8% | 20% | 29% | 46% | 10% | 56% |
| Photographers | 51 | 80 | 26% | 29% | 32% | 39% | 78% | 57% |
| Physical therapists | 51 | 78 | 22% | 14% | 24% | 28% | 43% | 57% |
| Plumbers | 52 | 82 | 12% | 21% | 10% | 39% | 23% | 60% |
| Restaurants | 48 | 77 | 33% | 23% | 31% | 27% | 54% | 75% |
| Roofers | 50 | 82 | 18% | 20% | 19% | 52% | 22% | 58% |
| Veterinarians | 52 | 80 | 23% | 25% | 25% | 35% | 27% | 67% |
| Yoga studios | 58 | 76 | 38% | 35% | 35% | 22% | 72% | 72% |
By city
| City | Sites | Median score | No meta description | No structured data (JSON-LD) | At least one image with no alt attribute | Links or buttons with no accessible name | No tap-to-call (tel:) link | Took over 2 seconds to deliver the homepage HTML |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | 99 | 80 | 23% | 26% | 23% | 34% | 42% | 60% |
| Chicago | 113 | 77 | 24% | 27% | 27% | 38% | 43% | 73% |
| Columbus | 91 | 77 | 25% | 21% | 20% | 39% | 36% | 70% |
| Denver | 105 | 80 | 22% | 30% | 27% | 40% | 31% | 68% |
| Houston | 92 | 80 | 23% | 30% | 27% | 39% | 39% | 65% |
| Los Angeles | 101 | 78 | 21% | 29% | 23% | 31% | 41% | 71% |
| Miami | 85 | 77 | 28% | 33% | 28% | 39% | 38% | 71% |
| Nashville | 97 | 80 | 22% | 23% | 32% | 38% | 35% | 66% |
| New York | 108 | 77 | 24% | 32% | 29% | 43% | 44% | 67% |
| Philadelphia | 90 | 78 | 23% | 38% | 26% | 40% | 50% | 76% |
| Phoenix | 93 | 79 | 26% | 22% | 20% | 36% | 41% | 67% |
| Seattle | 99 | 79 | 26% | 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
- Homepage only, and only the HTML the server sends. Sites that build their content with JavaScript may look emptier to these checks than they do in a browser; that is also roughly what many crawlers see.
- Response time was measured from one location on one day, so it includes network distance and is a single snapshot, not a Core Web Vitals score.
- Accessibility checks cover what can be read reliably from HTML. Colour contrast, keyboard use and screen-reader behaviour were not tested, so this is not a WCAG audit and passing does not mean a site is accessible.
- The sample is businesses that appear in Google Maps results for these searches in these cities. It is not a random sample of all US small businesses, and businesses without a website are not included.
- 427 sampled sites could not be measured (most often they blocked automated requests, timed out, or their domain no longer resolved). Sites that block crawlers may differ from those that do not.
- Chain detection is a heuristic (three or more cities). Some small multi-location businesses may have been removed and some franchises kept.
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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