We tested 1,137 Lancashire small business websites. Here is what we found.

One in three has no website of their own

Start with the simplest question: when a customer finds an independent Lancashire business on Google Maps and taps "Website", what happens? For 65% of the 7,803 businesses we looked at, they reach a website the business owns. For 27% there is no website button at all. The remaining 8% send the customer somewhere the business does not control: 58% of those links go to a Facebook page, and most of the rest to Instagram, a booking app or a free site-builder address.

A Facebook page is not nothing, and for some businesses it is honestly enough; we say when in our guide to whether you need a website if you have Facebook. But it is rented space. The business cannot decide what shows first, cannot be found for "trade near me" in the way a website can, and loses the lot if the account is locked.

By trade

The gap between trades is far wider than the gap between towns. 76% of nail salons have no website of their own; for estate agents it is 8%. Trades where customers book by message or walk in sit at the top. Trades where the customer compares several firms before ringing sit at the bottom.

By town

Fleetwood has the highest share of independents without their own website (49%), and Lancaster the lowest (25%). Blackpool itself, the largest group in the data at 977 listings, is at 29%. The mix of trades in each town explains part of this, so read it as a description of the high street, not a league table.

Four in five of the websites that exist are slow on a phone

We ran 1,137 homepages through Google PageSpeed Insights, the mobile test Google itself publishes. It loads the page as a mid-range phone on a slow 4G connection would. Google's line for a good experience is the main content on screen within 2.5 seconds; over 4 seconds it calls poor.

• 82% took longer than 4 seconds to show their main content. Only 8% did it within 2.5.
• The typical site took 8.1 seconds. 40% took more than 10.
• The median PageSpeed score was 64 out of 100. 9% scored 90 or more; 16% scored under 50.
• The usual cause is weight: 62% of homepages were over 2MB and 29% were over 4MB, nearly always photos uploaded at full size.

Now the fair caveat, because this number is easy to oversell. The lab test is deliberately harsh, and a customer on a new phone with good signal will see most of these sites faster than that. Google also publishes what real visitors experienced, where a site has enough traffic to measure. Only 25% of the sites we tested had that data, and of those, 74% passed. So the honest reading is this: most small business sites are heavier than they need to be and fail Google's test, the busiest ones mostly get away with it, and the quiet majority have no real-visitor data to fall back on. The lab score is what Google has to go on.

Being found: the basics are often missing

None of these is advanced search engine optimisation. They are the labels Google reads to work out what a business is and where it is.

• 31% have no search description at all, so Google makes up the text under their link. Another 25% have one that is too short or too long to be shown properly.
• 5% have no page title, and 29% have one that is very short ("Home") or long enough to be cut off.
• 39% do not show a postcode anywhere on the homepage. Only 16% show an address and also mark it up in the structured format Google reads for local businesses.
• 29% do not point Google at a sitemap.
• 35 sites (3%) are actively telling Google not to list them, usually a "noindex" setting left on from when the site was being built. The owners almost certainly do not know.

That last figure is the one we would most like local business owners to check. It is a one-line fix, and until it is made nothing else about the site matters to Google. Our guide to getting your business on Google Maps and Search covers the listing side of the same problem.

Being contacted, and being trusted

• 27% show neither a phone number nor an email address on the homepage. 69% show a phone number.
• 6% still load without a secure connection, so browsers label them "Not secure".
• 7% are not built for phones at all: the visitor gets a shrunken desktop page.
• 52% show a blank or text-only card when someone shares the site on WhatsApp or Facebook.
• Of 830 homepages we read in more detail, 34% had no visible privacy policy link, and 32% offered online booking.
• 461 of those homepages showed a copyright year. 22% of them were three or more years out of date, which is a fair sign of how long it is since anyone touched the site.

Websites by trade

Trades with at least 30 websites tested, ordered by the share with three or more serious problems. Shops and accommodation come out worst; plumbers and electricians, whose sites tend to be small and put the phone number first, come out best.

Websites by town

Towns with at least 30 websites tested. Blackpool is the largest group (321 sites): 84% slow on mobile and 45% with three or more serious problems. The differences between towns are small next to the differences between trades.

What a business owner can do with this

Most of what we found is cheap to fix, and some of it is free. In the order we would do them:

• Check you are not blocking Google. Run your address through the free website check. It takes about a minute, needs no email address and tells you in plain English if a "noindex" is switched on.
• Put your phone number and postcode on the homepage. In the footer is fine. It helps customers and it helps Google place you.
• Shrink the photos. Oversized images are behind most of the slow results above. Resizing them before upload is the cheapest speed win there is.
• Write a title and a description. Trade, town, and one reason to pick you. Our small business website checklist has the wording.
• Claim your Google Business Profile if you have not, and link it to a website you own instead of a social page.

If the site needs more than that, or there is no site, that is the work we do: pay monthly websites from £29.99 a month, built and looked after from Blackpool. But the list above comes first, and none of it needs us.

How we measured it, and the limits

We would rather you trusted a modest figure than doubted a dramatic one, so here is exactly what the numbers are.

• The listings. 7,803 businesses found on Google Maps between 11 October 2026 and 9 November 2026, by searching for 37 kinds of independent business in 20 Lancashire towns. It is a large sample, not a census, and it leans towards the trades we work with. National chains and franchises were excluded where we could identify them.
• "No website of their own" means the Google listing has no website link, or the link goes to a social profile, a booking or delivery app, a directory page or a free site-builder address.
• The websites tested. 1,137 homepages, tested between 11 October 2026 and 9 November 2026. These belong to businesses in the sample that had a Google review in the last twelve months, so they are trading businesses, and the group leans towards Blackpool and the Fylde Coast. Sites that could not be reached were left out, not counted as failures.
• Speed is the Google PageSpeed Insights mobile test of the homepage, run once per site. It is a lab simulation, and a single run can vary by a few points. "Slow" means a performance score under 50 or main content taking more than 4 seconds.
• The other checks read the homepage only. A business with its phone number on a contact page but not the homepage counts as not showing one.
• "Serious problems" are checks our tool marks as bad: slow on mobile, no secure connection, not built for phones, blocked from Google, no title, no description, no contact details, no postcode, or a homepage over 4MB.
• No business is named. We publish counts and percentages only, and no group smaller than 30 businesses.

Use the figures. The tables are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a credit and a link to this page. Download the data (CSV). We plan to repeat the study so the figures can be compared year on year.