Limara Labs / Guides
Local business websites in 2026: what 7,450 sites show.
In October 2026 we opened the websites linked from 8,311 Google Maps listings of local businesses in 19 cities across the UK, US, Canada and Australia. Of the 7,450 that loaded, about one in three gives a visitor no way to book or ask for a quote on the homepage.
Key findings
- 32.5% of homepages have no booking, quote or contact form and no link to a booking tool: the only option is to call or hunt for a contact page.
- Trades are the worst: 48% of auto repair shops, 41% of plumbers and 41% of HVAC contractors have no form on the homepage. Restaurants do best at 16%, mostly thanks to table-booking widgets.
- 4.3% still show a copyright year of 2021 or earlier in the footer, a quick sign to visitors that nobody is looking after the site.
- 2.1% are not built for phones (no mobile viewport), and 1.4% have no working HTTPS, so Chrome labels them "Not secure".
- For 67 listings the linked domain no longer exists at all: the business's own Google listing sends customers to a dead address.
No booking or quote form on the homepage, by sector
| Sector | No form on homepage | Sites checked |
|---|---|---|
| Auto repair | 48% | 500 |
| Plumbing | 41% | 516 |
| HVAC | 41% | 496 |
| Landscaping | 40% | 449 |
| Dental | 37% | 682 |
| B&Bs and small hotels | 36% | 424 |
| Electrical | 35% | 460 |
| Accounting | 32% | 663 |
| Roofing | 31% | 536 |
| Physiotherapy | 28% | 676 |
| Aesthetic clinics | 26% | 653 |
| Law firms | 26% | 699 |
| Restaurants and cafes | 16% | 696 |
By country
| Country | No form on homepage | Copyright ≤ 2021 | Sites checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 26% | 6.0% | 1,523 |
| Canada | 36% | 4.5% | 1,698 |
| United Kingdom | 30% | 4.7% | 1,857 |
| United States | 36% | 2.8% | 2,372 |
How we measured
- Sample: for 13 kinds of local business in 19 cities (Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, Glasgow, Austin, Denver, Phoenix, Charlotte, Tampa, Columbus, Calgary, Ottawa, Hamilton, Edmonton, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Gold Coast) we took up to the first 40 results Google Maps returns and kept listings that link to a website. This favours established businesses, so the real picture is likely worse.
- Each linked homepage was fetched once by an automated check on 1–2 October 2026. Shares are of the 7,450 sites that loaded; sites that refused automated visits were left out rather than counted as broken.
- "No form": no HTML form on the homepage and no link to a common booking tool (Calendly, Fresha, Booksy, OpenTable, ResDiary and similar). Some of these businesses have a form on a separate contact page.
- "Not secure": HTTPS does not answer or presents an invalid certificate; sites with a valid certificate but a missing intermediate (which browsers fix themselves) were counted as secure.
- "Domain no longer exists": the domain has no DNS record. Slow or unresponsive sites were not counted, because blocking and network issues can look the same.
You are welcome to cite these figures with a link to this page. For the underlying breakdown or a quote, write to [email protected].