What 10,862 London businesses reveal about small business websites
One in five London trade businesses has no usable web presence. Not because they never built a site. In this sample of 10,862 businesses, twice as many have a broken website as have no website at all.
Solid Starr checked the web presence of 10,862 London businesses across 17 trades and 66 areas. Every site was fetched once and sorted into one of a few states: working, broken, a parked domain, insecure, social media only, or nothing at all. The results are below in full, along with the method and what the numbers cannot tell you.
The broken ones outnumber the missing ones
The assumption behind most sales pitches to small businesses is that the problem is absence: the plumber who never got round to building a site. That group exists, but it is the smallest of the failure states at 3.8%.
The larger group, at 7.7%, built something and then it stopped working. A further 7.5% are renewing a domain every year that resolves to a holding page with nothing on it. Both are paying, in money or in lost enquiries, for the appearance of having sorted this out.
That matters more than the raw numbers suggest, because the two states read differently to a customer. Someone with no website gets judged on their Google listing, their reviews and their photos, which for a good trade is often enough. Someone with a broken link looks closed.
Every state, in full
| Website status | Businesses | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Working site | 7,876 | 72.5% |
| Broken | 834 | 7.7% |
| Parked domain | 818 | 7.5% |
| Insecure, no HTTPS | 442 | 4.1% |
| No site at all | 418 | 3.8% |
| Blocked to automated checks | 312 | 2.9% |
| Social media only | 139 | 1.3% |
| Not checked | 23 | 0.2% |
"Blocked to automated checks" is reported separately and left out of the headline figure. Those sites refused an automated request, which is not the same as being broken, and counting them as failures would have inflated the result.
Some trades are much worse than others
Building trades come out worst. Just over 30% of finishing trades, the plasterers, decorators and tilers, have no usable web presence, and 12.3% of them have a site that is actively broken, the highest of any trade measured.
| Trade | Sample | No usable presence | Broken | No site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Building, finishing | 292 | 30.1% | 12.3% | 5.8% |
| Building, structural | 268 | 26.9% | 7.5% | 6.0% |
| Cleaning | 352 | 25.0% | 9.7% | 4.5% |
| Electrical | 3,061 | 23.9% | 9.7% | 6.6% |
| Plumbing and heating | 561 | 21.9% | 7.1% | 7.3% |
| Waste and clearance | 498 | 21.3% | 7.2% | 1.2% |
| Security and locks | 201 | 20.9% | 10.0% | 5.0% |
| Professional services | 349 | 20.6% | 7.2% | 2.6% |
| Florists | 188 | 20.2% | 1.6% | 9.0% |
| Driving instruction | 2,139 | 19.0% | 7.9% | 1.4% |
| Specialist and compliance | 145 | 17.9% | 8.3% | 0.0% |
| Landscaping | 341 | 17.6% | 7.3% | 3.5% |
| Roofing | 232 | 17.2% | 7.3% | 1.3% |
| Property | 168 | 14.9% | 3.0% | 3.0% |
| Legal | 1,956 | 14.6% | 4.8% | 1.7% |
| Motor and tyres | 109 | 5.5% | 2.8% | 0.9% |
Florists are the interesting exception. They have the second highest rate of having no website at all, at 9%, but nearly the lowest rate of broken sites, at 1.6%. They are not letting sites rot. They are running on Instagram and walk-in trade and never started one.
At the other end, motor and tyre businesses are the strongest at 5.5%. That fits a trade where customers check opening hours and prices before driving over, so a working site earns its keep every week and gets noticed the moment it breaks.
And some areas are worse than others
| Area | Sample | No usable presence |
|---|---|---|
| Stoke Newington | 150 | 27.3% |
| Hounslow | 192 | 27.1% |
| Harrow | 227 | 25.6% |
| Hackney | 315 | 25.1% |
| Woolwich | 118 | 24.6% |
| Southall | 195 | 24.6% |
| Islington | 603 | 23.7% |
| Barking | 387 | 23.0% |
What this means if you run one of these businesses
Three practical things follow from the data.
Check your own link, today. A meaningful share of the businesses in the broken group do not know. Sites break quietly when a host lapses, a certificate expires or a plugin update fails, and nobody tells the owner because the people who hit it just leave.
A parked domain is worse than no domain. If you are paying to renew something that shows a holding page, either point it at a real page or stop paying. It is currently costing you money to look abandoned.
Your Google listing carries more weight than your website. For most of these trades more people arrive through Google Maps than through any website. If you only fix one thing this month, make it the listing.
Method
Businesses were found through public Google Maps listings for named trades across London postcodes. Each website was fetched once and classified as working, broken, parked, insecure, social media only, or absent. Records were de-duplicated on company number where present and on phone number otherwise. Trade and area breakdowns are shown only where the sample reaches 100 businesses, because a percentage drawn from a handful of businesses is noise rather than a finding.
The figures are aggregate counts. No business is named anywhere in this study, and no contact details form part of it.
What this cannot tell you
- A site can break, or be fixed, after the check. This is a snapshot, not a trend.
- Businesses with no Google Maps listing are not represented at all, and they are plausibly worse off than the ones measured here.
- The trade mix reflects which sectors Solid Starr researches, so it is not a census of London business.
- A working site is not necessarily a good one. This measures whether a site loads, not whether it wins anybody any work.
Using these figures
You are welcome to quote any number on this page, in print or online, including commercially. All that is asked is a link back to this page so readers can check the method.
Suggested citation: Solid Starr Solutions (2026), London Trade Websites Study,
https://solidstarr.co.uk/london-trade-websites-study.html
Press or research enquiries: hello@solidstarr.co.uk
Questions about this study
How many London businesses have no website?
In this sample of 10,862 London businesses, 3.8% had no website at all. That figure understates the problem: once broken sites, parked domains and social-only pages are included, 20.3% had no usable web presence, meaning a customer looking them up finds nothing they can actually read.
Is a broken website worse than no website?
In practice yes, for two reasons. It costs money every year in domain and hosting renewals while returning nothing, and a customer who clicks a broken link usually assumes the business has closed. Someone with no website at all at least gets judged on their Google listing and reviews instead.
Which London trades are least likely to have a working website?
Building and finishing trades came out worst at 30.1% with no usable presence, followed by structural building at 26.9% and cleaning at 25%. Motor and tyre businesses were the strongest at 5.5%, which fits a trade where customers routinely search for opening hours and prices before driving over.
How was this data collected?
Businesses were found through public Google Maps listings for named trades across London postcodes. Each website was fetched once and classified as working, broken, parked, insecure, social only or absent. Records were de-duplicated, and only trades and areas with at least 100 businesses are quoted.
Is your site one of the broken ones?
Send me the link and I will tell you straight what a visitor actually sees. No charge and no pitch if it is fine.