How good are the websites we build?

On October 23, 2026 we rebuilt the homepages of 200 real local-business websites, from saved copies read offline, and scored the old and new homepages by the same rules as our free website check: search, local details, getting calls, phones, trust and accessibility.

95%: of the 169 rebuilt homepages scored higher than the business's own; 160 higher, 5 the same, 4 lower. Average 91 before, 97 after, out of 100.
43 of 43: phone numbers read correctly; The 43 sites, of 58 with an answer file, that list a phone number.
56 of 58: business names read correctly; Every site with an answer file (58).

Towns: 37 of 40 read correctly.
Opening hours: 24 of 24 read correctly.
Services: 70% of the services we read were on the answer file, and we found 86% of the services it lists. This is our weakest number, which is why services we read are shown for the owner to check before anything goes online.

How to read these numbers: this is our own testing, not an independent review. We chose the websites, we wrote the scoring rules and the answer files, and our pages are built to meet those rules, so a higher score means the page covers the basics, not that an outside reviewer preferred it. We did not measure how customers responded to the new pages.

How we measured

Which websites: 200 public websites of US local businesses, chosen by us as typical small-business sites. It is not a random sample, so the results may not hold for every website.
How they were read: Our reader opened each site once on the live web, following its robots.txt, and kept a copy of what it read. On October 23, 2026 every copy was rebuilt offline with that day’s code, so the same pages can be measured again after each change.
What was left out: 31 sites could not be rebuilt: 13 turned our reader away with their security settings, 9 asked readers to wait between pages, which we respect, 6 were outside the US, 3 did not answer. Every share above is of the 169 that could.
How a homepage is scored: Old and new homepages get a score out of 100 from the rules of our free website check: search titles and descriptions, local details, a clear way to call or ask, how it works on phones, trust details and accessibility. Speed is left out because it needs more than one page. The new homepage is scored as it would be published: on a secure address, with the contact form every paid website has.
How accuracy is checked: For 58 of the sites we wrote an answer file by reading the site ourselves: the business name, phone, town, hours and services. What the reader found is compared with it field by field. A field counts only where the answer file has it, which is why each result has its own total.

Scoring rules

Each homepage gets six area scores. Every area starts at 100, and each problem found takes off 22 points (serious), 10 (moderate) or 4 (minor), never going below 5. The overall score is the average of the six, weighted: Search ×1.2, Local details ×1, Getting calls and messages ×1.3, Phones ×1.1, Trust ×0.9, Accessibility ×0.8.

Every check (34) and the points it takes off

Search

Pages without a title: 22
Titles cut off in Google: 4
Several pages share the same title: 10
Missing search descriptions: 10 on the home page, 4 elsewhere
No main heading: 22 on the home page, 10 elsewhere
More than one main heading: 4
Very little text: 10 on the home page, 4 elsewhere
The home page tells Google not to list it: 22
robots.txt blocks the whole site: 22
No sitemap found: 4
No share picture: 4

Local details

Google is not told the business details: 10
Broken structured data: 10
No phone number on the site: 22, or 10 when the site has a form or email link and no town was given
No address or map: 10
Opening hours not shown: 4
The town is not in the home page title or heading: 10

Getting calls and messages

No clear next step at the top: 22
Phone number cannot be tapped: 22
No way to send a message: 10
No reviews or testimonials: 10

Phones

Not set up for phones: 22
Page jumps while loading: 4
Content jumps around while loading: 10

Trust

No links to your social pages or reviews: 4
No padlock (not secure): 22
Insecure files on a secure page: 10
Footer still says © an old year: 4
Form without a privacy note: 4
Broken pages: 10

Accessibility

Page language not set: 4
Images without a description: 10 for more than five images, 4 otherwise
Form boxes without labels: 10
Headings skip levels: 4

Check it yourself

Every row of the benchmark is in one file, with both scores, the six area scores behind each and up to 12 problems found on each page. No business is named: each website has a code instead. Three rows, picked by rule from that file:

Biggest gain: website 22696a65

66 → 94

Problems on its own homepage

Pages without a title
No main heading
No phone number on the site
No clear next step at the top
Not set up for phones
Missing search descriptions
Very little text
Google is not told the business details
No address or map
No way to send a message
No reviews or testimonials
No share picture

Problems on our rebuild

No phone number on the site
No address or map
No reviews or testimonials
Opening hours not shown
No links to your social pages or reviews

No change: website 1153b2d3

96 → 96

Problems on its own homepage

The town is not in the home page title or heading
Form boxes without labels
Footer still says © 2022
Headings skip levels

Problems on our rebuild

The town is not in the home page title or heading
No reviews or testimonials

Biggest loss: website 25d26016

96 → 94

Problems on its own homepage

No phone number on the site
Opening hours not shown
No links to your social pages or reviews
Form without a privacy note
Headings skip levels

Problems on our rebuild

No phone number on the site
No address or map
No reviews or testimonials
Opening hours not shown
No links to your social pages or reviews

Download every row (JSON, 200 websites)

How fast this website is

Lab test on October 19, 2026: Lighthouse 12.8.2, mobile (simulated slow 4G, 4× slower processor), median of 3 runs, of simpleasite.com as it was live that day. Google’s targets for a good page are the main content shown within 2.5 seconds, a quick response to taps (in the lab, under 200 ms of blocking time) and almost no layout shift (under 0.1).

Page	Main content	Blocking time
/	2.9 s (over target)	106 ms
/build	2.3 s	264 ms (over target)
/switch	3.2 s (over target)	307 ms (over target)
/pricing	2.6 s (over target)	83 ms
/examples/plumber	3.0 s (over target)	56 ms

4 of 5 pages missed the 2.5-second target in this test, mostly because our server’s first response sometimes took over a second. Real-visitor speed data from Chrome is not available for this site yet; we will show it here when it is.

Checked on every release

Every design is checked on a phone and a computer, with and without a photo: text contrast meets WCAG AA, nothing scrolls sideways, and every button is at least 44 pixels tall.
On every design, the first phone screen shows the business name, what it does, the town, a call link and the main button.
Every published page has a share picture, so a link sent in a text or on Facebook shows a photo.
A published page on a lab phone shows its main content in 2.5 seconds or less, with no layout jumping.
Facts read from a business's own pages are each checked against the words they came from. Anything the owner has not told us, such as a suggested service, is labeled as a suggestion beside it and cannot go online until they confirm or change it.

Score your website free