What we keep finding on small business websites

Every figure here is a count from our own scanner over the last 30 days: 3,044 free four-page scans that loaded at least one page. Each finding links to what it means and how to fix it.

Structure

Finding	Share of scans	Scans	Sites	Severity
H1 missing or duplicated	57.6%	1,754	1,748	Warning
Meta description missing or the wrong length	51.5%	1,567	1,553	Warning
Thin heading structure	46.7%	1,421	1,409	Warning
Shared links preview badly	41%	1,248	1,240	Warning
No canonical URL declared	37.2%	1,131	1,123	Warning
Title length is off	29%	883	877	Warning
No favicon	23.6%	717	717	Low
No XML sitemap found	18.1%	550	542	Warning
This page is missing from its own sitemap	11.6%	354	348	Warning
No language attribute declared	10.7%	327	327	Serious
Page title is missing	7.4%	225	225	Critical
No robots.txt	5.8%	178	170	Low
The server sends a noindex header	4.8%	145	145	Serious
A linked page did not load	3%	90	90	Critical
The canonical URL points somewhere unexpected	1.7%	53	51	Warning

AI and answer engines

Finding	Share of scans	Scans	Sites	Severity
No article or breadcrumb markup	77.6%	2,362	2,340	Low
Page content only appears after scripts run	76.1%	2,316	2,300	Serious
Page regions are not marked semantically	53%	1,614	1,606	Warning
No business entity in structured data	44%	1,338	1,330	Warning
No structured data	40.9%	1,244	1,236	Serious
No plain summary for machines to lift	29.3%	891	881	Warning
Home page is thin on content	19.4%	591	588	Warning
Structured data missing a required property	9.4%	285	279	Warning
Structured data that no longer earns a rich result	2.7%	81	76	Low
Structured data that does not parse	1.1%	33	33	Serious
AI crawlers are blocked in robots.txt	1%	31	31	Warning

Trust and privacy

Finding	Share of scans	Scans	Sites	Severity
No terms linked	75%	2,282	2,268	Low
No privacy policy linked	69.6%	2,119	2,105	Serious
No social proof above the fold	55.2%	1,680	1,669	Warning
No HSTS header	47.8%	1,454	1,451	Low
No security headers	45.6%	1,388	1,380	Warning
No obvious next step	42.9%	1,307	1,297	Serious
Tracking runs with no consent notice	41.4%	1,261	1,254	Critical
No visible way to reach the site	31.1%	946	938	Serious
Insecure resources on a secure page	30.6%	931	920	Serious
Plain http does not redirect	7.2%	219	209	Serious

Accessibility

Finding	Share of scans	Scans	Sites	Severity
No skip-to-content link	87.6%	2,668	2,652	Low
No main landmark	63.7%	1,940	1,932	Warning
Embedded frames have no title	24.4%	743	743	Low
Images missing alt text	18.7%	569	568	Warning
Form fields without labels	17.6%	536	536	Serious
Pinch-zoom is disabled	11.4%	347	347	Serious
Screen readers cannot tell the language	10.7%	327	327	Warning
No mobile viewport tag	9.7%	296	296	Critical

Speed

Finding	Share of scans	Scans	Sites	Severity
Render-blocking scripts	47.7%	1,451	1,445	Warning
Heavy HTML document	43%	1,308	1,303	Warning
Images all load at once	38.2%	1,164	1,157	Warning
Many separate stylesheet requests	36.7%	1,118	1,112	Warning
Images shift the layout as they load	32.1%	976	969	Warning
Slow server response	22.8%	694	694	Serious
Compression not confirmed	9.1%	278	269	Low

How to read these numbers

A share is the fraction of considered scans that raised the finding, over 3,044 scans. Each finding page carries the sample size and a 95% interval alongside the share, because a percentage without a denominator is not a measurement. Figures were computed on 2026-09-08. No site we scanned is named anywhere on these pages.

The same data cut by trade is on the benchmarks pages.