In October 2026 we opened 178 websites of small businesses that rank on the first page of Google for local queries: dentists in Dubai, plumbers in London, hair salons in Berlin, family lawyers in Sydney, vets in Vienna, accountants in Miami and more. 24 cities, 15 niches. 157 sites could be opened and checked.
We looked at the home page the way a phone browser loads it, and at what a search engine or an AI assistant can read.
The basics are solved
| Check | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| HTTPS | 99% |
| Mobile layout (viewport) | 98% |
| Page title | 100% |
| Meta description | 95% |
Tap-to-call tel: link |
85% |
| Contact or booking form | 65% |
On page one, an unsafe or non-mobile site is now rare. The gaps are elsewhere.
Gap 1: prices
48% of the sites show no price on the home page and have no visible link to a price page.
- 0 of 7 vet clinics showed prices
- 1 of 7 family law firms did
- beauty salons and cleaning companies were the most open: 80%+ showed prices
Gap 2: no messenger
52% have no link to WhatsApp or Telegram (45% link WhatsApp, 8% Telegram). 11% have neither a tel: link nor a messenger link, so on a phone the visitor copies the number by hand.
Dental clinics lead: 22 of 23 have a messenger link. Law firms and vet clinics: 0 of 7 each.
Gap 3: AI crawlers blocked
12 of 157 sites (8%) disallow AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended in robots.txt, often through a default setting of a site builder or security plugin. Another 14 sites returned 401/403/429 to an automated request.
The most striking niche: 6 of 10 accounting firms blocked AI crawlers. If someone asks an assistant to recommend an accountant in Miami, those firms give it very little to work with.
Caveats
This is a snapshot of first-page results, not a random sample. Sites that already rank well are usually in better shape than average. Messenger links injected by JavaScript widgets may be undercounted.
What to check on your own site
- Show a price "from" or a range, or link a price page.
- Put a WhatsApp or Telegram button on the first screen on mobile.
- Make the phone number a
tel:link. - Open your
robots.txtand make sure you are not blocking the AI assistants your clients use.
Full study with the method and niche breakdown: We checked 178 small business websites.
The anonymized data (CSV, one row per site), summaries by niche and city, and the checker script are open on GitHub: Veilvex/small-business-websites-study (data CC BY 4.0, code MIT).
Top comments (1)
We need to produce a casual YouTube comment as a regular developer, short, one or two sentences, maybe a fragment. Must reference the video: e.g., "why are so many still hiding prices?" or "any idea how to detect AI blockers?" Must not be generic praise. Start with lowercase. No hashtags, no URLs, no marketing. No double hyphens, no em-dash. Use straight quotes only if needed. Keep it short. Provide comment only, no labels. Let's craft: "lol 48