The Listing Report
How many Bay Area businesses have no real website.
We run a scraper across Google Business listings in Northern California and record one thing: does this business have a working website, or does the link go nowhere, to a social page, or to a free Google page?
We publish what we find. Every number on this page carries its sample size and the date it was checked. If a number is not checkable, it is not on this page.
September 2026
Last full check: 18,281 businesses, 20 Bay Area cities. Current active shortlist: 1,167 businesses with no real web presence, refreshed 22 September 2026.
The headline number
28%
of the businesses we checked have no real website.
Not an outdated site. Not a slow site. Nothing a customer can open.
Find your corner
Pick a city, a trade, or both. The charts below highlight your pick.
28%
of the businesses we checked have no real website.
18,281 listings across 20 cities.
By category
Auto is the worst-served trade we found. Plumbers and locksmiths, who live on emergency search traffic, are far ahead of it.
- Car washes 47% n = 526
- Auto repair 40% n = 4,308
- Tire shops 40% n = 505
- Electricians 34% n = 537
- Painters 25% n = 371
- Roofers 25% n = 642
- Auto parts 25% n = 378
- General contractors 23% n = 4,202
- Plumbers 13% n = 587
- Locksmiths 6% n = 285
Categories with at least 150 businesses in the sample. Category is the primary type Google assigns to the listing. Sample size shown per row.
By city
The pattern is not about money. The cities at the top are not the poorest; they are the ones where fewer owners have been shown what their listing looks like from the customer's side.
- Stockton 41% n = 1,218
- Vallejo 40% n = 671
- Modesto 37% n = 1,131
- Hayward 36% n = 860
- Oakland 34% n = 1,304
- Richmond 32% n = 718
- Daly City 32% n = 451
- Sunnyvale 28% n = 534
- San Jose 26% n = 1,735
- Santa Clara 26% n = 721
- Palo Alto 25% n = 706
- San Mateo 25% n = 700
- San Francisco 24% n = 1,594
- Fremont 24% n = 1,085
- Livermore 23% n = 802
- Berkeley 22% n = 545
- Concord 22% n = 1,061
- Santa Rosa 21% n = 1,136
- Walnut Creek 20% n = 449
- San Rafael 20% n = 860
Cities with at least 440 businesses in the sample. Each listing is counted in the search area that found it.
By review count
The more reviews a business has, the more likely it has a site. Owners who have figured out reviews have usually figured out the website too. The businesses losing on Google are the ones without either.
- No reviews 53% n = 1,656
- 1 to 19 34% n = 7,763
- 20 to 99 23% n = 5,579
- 100 to 499 12% n = 2,713
- 500+ 4% n = 570
Correlation, not cause. A website does not create reviews; the same habits tend to produce both.
What the shortlist looks like right now
Of the 1,167 businesses currently on our active list (checked 22 September 2026):
| What the listing links to | Businesses |
|---|---|
| Nothing at all | 1,112 |
| A social media page only | 42 |
| A free Google page or a dead link | 11 |
| A directory listing only | 2 |
Where they are: San Jose 116, Stockton 106, Modesto 102, Oakland 98, San Francisco 83.
The number that should worry an owner
145,658
Google reviews are sitting on listings with nowhere to send the customer.
That is earned trust with no destination. Someone reads the reviews, taps the website button, and lands on nothing.
The counter-number
9%
Among businesses with 100 or more reviews at 4.5 stars or better, only 9% have no website.
The best-reviewed businesses have already solved this. That is the whole argument.
Method
We read public Google Business listings. For each one we follow the website link and record whether it resolves to a working site the business controls, a social profile, a free auto-generated page, a directory entry, or nothing. We do not contact anyone to collect this data and we do not publish individual business names.
Sample sizes and check dates are listed with every figure. Numbers are refreshed when the scraper reruns, roughly monthly, and older figures stay on the page with their original dates.
Want to know how your own listing scores?
Send us the business name and city and we will check it and send back the fixes, including the ones you can do yourself in two minutes for free.
Or email info@trichomedigital.com