One in three small business websites is broken or missing, finds a study of 2,629 local businesses

Montreal, Canada, October 20, 2026. Looops, an AI website builder for small businesses, today published "The State of the Small Business Web 2026", an original study of 2,629 established local businesses in eight cities across four countries. Every website was loaded in a real browser at phone size and inspected for errors, dead links, broken images and mobile problems. The full report, with data by city and industry, is at https://looops.ai/research/small-business-websites-2026/

Key findings:

- 1 in 3 businesses has no functional, healthy web presence.
- Montreal has the highest share of businesses with no website at all: 12.5%. Los Angeles follows at 9.2% and New York at 8.5%.
- London has almost no missing websites (1.9%) but the highest defect rate measured: 39.7% of sites show at least one visible problem.
- Los Angeles has the worst overall result: 42.4% of businesses have a bad or missing web presence. Chicago has the best: 31.9%.
- The most common defects are JavaScript errors on load (16.3% of sites), out-of-date copyright years (6.5%), decade-old jQuery-era technology (4.5%), broken images (3.7%) and pages that are not mobile-responsive (3.6%).
- By industry, photographers (30.9%) and hair salons (30.2%) have the highest share of bad or missing sites among the six industries studied.

"Presence and upkeep are two different problems," said Sam Codes, founder of Looops. "Montreal's businesses are missing from the web. London's are on the web but their sites are falling apart. Both lose customers who looked them up on a phone and gave up."

How the study was done

The sample is 2,629 established local businesses in six industries across Montreal, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, London and Sydney, collected in August 2026. Each listed website was rendered in a real browser at phone size, and the rendered page was inspected for script errors, dead navigation links, broken images, missing mobile settings and other visible defects. A business counts as having a "bad or missing" web presence if it has no website, a site that does not load, or a site with at least one serious visible defect. The aggregate dataset is published with the report. A plain-language summary of the numbers is at https://looops.ai/blog/small-business-website-statistics/

Why it matters

Most customers now look a business up on a phone before calling or visiting. A missing or broken site is a lost customer, and the study suggests one business in three is losing them. Looops, https://looops.ai, builds small business websites from a plain-language description, so owners without time or technical skills can fix the problem in an afternoon.

Looops (9487-5606 Québec inc.)
Contact: Sam Codes, founder
Email: info@looops.ai
Website: https://looops.ai
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Postal address: 3475 rue de la Montagne, Montreal, Quebec H3G 2A4, Canada

Looops (https://looops.ai) is an AI website builder for small businesses and portfolios. Owners describe their business in plain language and an AI agent designs, builds and publishes a complete website: contact forms, bookings, galleries, and content they edit by chatting. Looops is based in Montreal, Canada, and is free to start.

This release was published on openPR.