Research
The State of Small Business Websites
What we found reviewing 99 small business websites for speed, mobile, search, security, accessibility and email. No business is named; these are totals.
99
websites reviewed
77/100
median score
89%
earned a C or better
The most common problems
Share of the websites we checked that had each problem, most common first.
Security
99%
of sites
were missing at least one of six standard browser security headers
98 of 99 checked
Email
94%
of sites
had no DMARC policy, or one that only monitors, leaving their email open to spoofing
93 of 99 checked
Email
75%
of sites
had a missing or weak SPF record for their email
74 of 99 checked
Search
66%
of sites
had a missing or weak search description
65 of 99 checked
Search
46%
of sites
had a missing or weak page title
46 of 99 checked
Quality
41%
of sites
had broken links
41 of 99 checked
Accessibility
41%
of sites
had text with too little contrast to read easily
41 of 99 checked
Search
36%
of sites
had missing or incomplete structured data for search engines
36 of 99 checked
Accessibility
33%
of sites
had images with no text alternative for screen readers
33 of 99 checked
Search
32%
of sites
had a missing sitemap or one with problems
32 of 99 checked
Mobile
25%
of sites
had a missing or flawed mobile viewport setting
25 of 99 checked
Polish
8%
of sites
had a missing or broken browser-tab icon
8 of 99 checked
Security
1%
of sites
did not consistently use HTTPS
1 of 99 checked
Scores by area
The median score in each area we review, out of 100, weakest first.
Business Credibility
53
Email Security
60
Platform & Build Quality
60
Content Quality
63
Trust Signals
71
Technical Professionalism
74
SEO
74
Design Quality
80
Performance
82
Accessibility
83
Navigation & UX
83
Security
83
Mobile Responsiveness
88
Red Flags
90
Technical Health
91
Image Quality
92
How the grades fall
A
0%
0 sites
B
21%
21 sites
C
68%
67 sites
D
10%
10 sites
F
1%
1 site
What they are built with
Custom or unknown
39%
WordPress
36%
Wix
7%
Squarespace
5%
Shopify
4%
Other
8%
How we got these numbers
- Each website was reviewed by our crawler, PremierCodeBot, which reads public pages only and obeys robots.txt.
- When we reviewed a site more than once, only the most recent review counts.
- Parked domains, our own website and websites we build or host for customers are left out, so the numbers describe sites we had no hand in.
- A site counts as having a problem when that check failed or raised a warning. Checks that did not apply to a site (local business data for an online-only shop, say) are left out of that problem's count.
- The sites are mostly small and local businesses that we looked at while offering our services, so they are not a random sample of the web.
Updated daily. Last calculated October 17, 2026.