One way to use Local Lead Finder. Local Lead Finder is a $10 Google Sheets template I built that turns any Google Maps search into a lead list: every business, with phone, website, rating and reviews. This post is one use case for it: counting how many local businesses have no website. I ran it for real with the template. Other ways to use it are listed at the end, or see all 18 lead generation ideas.
Most “how many businesses have no website” numbers online are surveys or guesses. You want a real number, maybe for a pitch deck, a blog post, or to decide which kind of business to sell websites to. Search “small businesses without websites” and page 1 is mostly lead tools (Botsol, an Apify scraper, an n8n workflow), a Reddit list of 10,000 businesses with no site, and a Quora thread. The one stat that shows up is a UK survey. None of them tell you how the gap changes by industry or by town.
So I counted. These are real counts I pulled from Google Maps with Local Lead Finder, a $10 Google Sheet I built that pulls every business on Google Maps into a spreadsheet. Five industries, one city each, four cities in all. By the end you’ll have the numbers, the one formula behind them, and how to get the same number for your own city.
TL;DR
- 40% of Chattanooga hair salons (131 of 325) list no website on Google, but only 7% of Spokane dentists (15 of 225) do.
- These are “no website listed on Google” counts from one city per industry, not a national survey.
- Don’t pitch “you need a website” to every industry: dentists mostly have one, salons often use a booking page instead.
Who this is for
- Freelance web designer: you can see which industries have the biggest gap before you spend a week pitching the wrong one.
- Digital marketing agency owner: you get a real, checkable number for how many local businesses list no website, by industry and by town.
- Journalist or blogger: you get counts with the method spelled out, instead of a survey number you can’t check.
- Small business owner: you can see how many businesses like yours skip a website, and what they list instead.
- Social media manager for small businesses: 25 Chattanooga salons list Facebook, Instagram or Linktree as their website, and this shows how to find them.
Before you start
- A Google Places API (New) key
- Local Lead Finder set up in your Google Drive
- Local Lead Finder itself
- Your city or region, like Chattanooga, Tennessee
- One business type you want a number for, like hair salons
Don’t have a Places API key yet? How to get one free. Haven’t set up the sheet? Setup takes 5 minutes.
What percentage of small businesses don’t have a website?
It depends a lot on the industry. Here’s what I found, counting businesses that list no website on their Google profile:
Industry, city Businesses No website listed Share Hair salons, Chattanooga 325 131 40% Property managers, Minneapolis 255 43 17% Plumbers, Boise 98 16 16% Coffee shops, Boise 142 15 11% Dentists, Spokane 225 15 7%
The property managers come from a separate Minneapolis summary I made for another post:
So the honest answer is somewhere between 7% and 40%, depending on what kind of business you mean.
Two things to keep in mind before you quote any of this:
- It’s “no website listed on Google”, not “no website anywhere”. The Website cell is whatever the business put in its Google profile. Some of them have a site and just never added it.
- It’s one city per industry. Hair salons are Chattanooga, dentists are Spokane. It’s not a national survey, and your city could look different.
Do hair salons have websites?
Hair salons had the biggest gap: 131 of 325 Chattanooga salons list no website on Google. That’s 40%.
But the other 194 don’t all have a real website either. Here’s what salons list in that Website field:
- 131 list their own website
- 38 list a booking page (GlossGenius 23, Vagaro 7, Booksy 4, Square 2, Fresha 1, StyleSeat 1)
- 25 list a Facebook, Instagram or Linktree page
- 131 list nothing
So only 131 of 325 salons, about 4 in 10, send you to a website of their own. A salon with a booking app and a website counts as “own website” here, because that’s what they listed.
And the salons with no website aren’t the bad ones. 117 of the 131 are rated 4.5 or higher. They’re a bit smaller: the median salon with no website has 28 reviews, and the median salon with a website has 51.
Are businesses in small towns less likely to have a website?
In this one search, yes, by a lot. In Chattanooga itself, 56 of 176 salons list no website (32%). Go a few miles out and it flips:
- East Ridge: 11 of 13 (85%)
- Whitwell: 4 of 5 (80%)
- Soddy-Daisy: 9 of 13 (69%)
- Signal Mountain: 6 of 9 (67%)
These are small numbers, so one or two salons moves the percentage a lot. But it’s the same pattern you’d guess: the city has more salons with websites, and the small towns around it have almost none.
Do dentists have websites?
Almost all of them. Only 15 of 225 Spokane dentists list no website. That’s 7%, the lowest of the five.
So don’t pitch “you need a website” to dentists. They already have one. The median Spokane dentist has 209 Google reviews, so if you want to sell to dentists, start from their reviews, not from a missing site.
How I counted
Each number came from one Local Lead Finder run: Find Areas for the region, then Search in All AREAS for one keyword.
- Hair salons, Chattanooga: 73 areas, 325 results
- Coffee shops, Boise: 42 areas, 142 results
- Plumbers, Boise: 42 areas, 98 results
- Dentists, Spokane: 59 areas, 225 results
- Property management companies, Minneapolis: 87 areas, 255 results
Every result row has a Website column. When it’s empty, the business didn’t list a website on Google. One formula counts those:
=COUNTIFS('hair salon (AREAS)'!A2:A,"<>",'hair salon (AREAS)'!I2:I,"")
That counts rows that have a name (column A) but no website (column I). Divide by the number of results and you have the share.
What this means if you build websites
- Pick the industry before the city. 40% of salons and 7% of dentists is a big difference in how many doors you knock on.
- Look outside the big city. In this run, the small towns around Chattanooga had the biggest gap.
- “No website” isn’t the only lead. 38 salons use a booking page and 25 use Facebook, Instagram or Linktree as their website. Those are different pitches, but they’re still pitches.
- Search the name before you pitch. An empty Website cell only means nothing is listed on Google.
If you want the full how-to for turning this into a call list, I wrote it up here: How to Find Local Businesses Without Websites.
Step by step
- Get a free Google Places API (New) key and set up Local Lead Finder.
- Put your city or region in SETTINGS and run Find Areas. Wait for the AREAS tab to fill.
- Untick any areas you don’t want.
- Run Search in All AREAS with one keyword, like “hair salon”.
- Clean the results tab: delete names that don’t fit the keyword and towns outside your region.
- Add the
COUNTIFSabove to count rows with a name and no website. - Divide by the total results to get your city’s share.
- Repeat for another business type to compare.
Common pitfalls
- Calling it a national number: each count is one industry in one city. Say “40% of Chattanooga hair salons”, not “40% of small businesses”.
- Treating an empty Website cell as proof: it only means nothing is listed on Google. Search the name before you quote it or pitch it.
- Counting Facebook and booking pages as “no website”: 25 salons list a Facebook, Instagram or Linktree page and 38 list a booking page. Their Website cell isn’t empty, so they’re not in the 131.
- Searching before Find Areas finishes: Find Areas takes a minute or two. In Minneapolis it started at 87 areas and later grew to 150, so wait for the AREAS tab to fill.
- Leaving junk in the results: neighborhood names that are also place names pull in odd rows, like a dentist in Dartford, England showing up in a Spokane search. Clean the list before you count.
- Reading too much into small towns: Whitwell is 4 of 5. One salon changes that by 20 points.
Learn the Google Sheets formulas in this post
-
3 Ways to Count in Google Sheets: the counting basics behind the
COUNTIFSthat finds rows with a name and no website. - 3 More Ways to Count in Google Sheets: more ways to count, handy when you split the no-website count by town or rating.
- Use Min and Max for More Average Averages: useful next to medians like 28 reviews for salons with no website.
- 200 REGEXMATCH Examples in Google Sheets: the kind of pattern you’d use to spot booking pages and Facebook links in the Website column.
Better Sheets has hundreds more tutorials like these. If you want to get better at Google Sheets, join Better Sheets.
Other ways to use Local Lead Finder
- How to Find Local Businesses Without Websites (131 hair salons, Chattanooga): for web designers looking for businesses that need a site.
- How to Sell Websites To Salons: for web designers pitching the 38 salons whose only website is a booking page.
- Where to Get Local Leads: Google Maps showed 20 plumbers, the sheet found 98: for anyone choosing where their leads come from.
- Property Management Companies in Minneapolis: all 255, ranked by reviews: for landlords, HOA boards and vendors who want the whole list.
All 18, grouped by who they’re for: Lead generation ideas: 18 local businesses to sell to.
FAQ
What percentage of small businesses don’t have a website?
In my counts it ranged from 7% to 40% depending on the industry: 40% of Chattanooga hair salons, 17% of Minneapolis property managers, 16% of Boise plumbers, 11% of Boise coffee shops and 7% of Spokane dentists. These count businesses with no website listed on Google, in one city per industry.
Which businesses are least likely to have a website?
Of the five I counted, hair salons: 131 of 325 in Chattanooga list no website. Another 38 list a booking page and 25 list Facebook, Instagram or Linktree instead of their own site.
Is this a national survey?
No. Each number is one Local Lead Finder search in one city. It shows what’s listed on Google for that industry in that place, and your city could look different.
Does an empty Website field mean a business has no website?
No. It means the business didn’t list one on its Google profile. Search the name before you quote the number or pitch them.
How can I find the number for my own city?
Run Find Areas on your city, search one business type, and count the rows with an empty Website cell using COUNTIFS. The step by step above walks through it.
How much does a search like this cost?
You use your own Google Places API (New) key, and Google gives up to 1,000 searches a month free. Each area is one request per results page, so the 73-area salon search was 73 requests. The sheet shows the most a search could cost before it runs.
Is Local Lead Finder a scraper?
No. It uses Google’s official Places API with your own key. The first time you run it, Google asks you to authorize the script.
Get the sheet
Local Lead Finder is $10, and free for Better Sheets lifetime members. Pick a region, type a keyword, and every result lands in its own tab with a phone number, a website column and a one-click WhatsApp link.
