A recent census of Google Business Profile listings conducted by Digital Royalty has revealed that roughly a third of UK businesses with claimed listings fail to provide a working website to potential customers. Out of 6,266 owner-claimed listings checked across 12 UK towns and cities, 2,095 listings lacked a functional site, accounting for 33 percent of the sample. When factoring in unclaimed listings, that figure climbs to 44 percent.
Key takeaways
- 33% of 6,266 owner-claimed Google listings across 12 UK towns and cities had no working website.
- Health and beauty businesses recorded the highest rate of missing websites at 53%.
- Large cities performed worse than small towns, posting a 37% inactive rate compared to 25%.
- Nearly 19% of working sites with a readable footer displayed a copyright year of 2024 or earlier.
Sector breakdowns and regional variations
The study covered 12 everyday business types, ranging from electricians and plumbers to hair salons and accountants. Health and beauty businesses fared the worst by a wide margin, with 53 percent of their 1,074 claimed listings lacking a working site. Hair salons and beauty salons led this group at 54 percent and 53 percent respectively. Many of these businesses bypassed traditional websites entirely in favor of social media profiles and booking apps, with 12 percent of health and beauty listings pointing exclusively to a social or booking page compared to just 1 to 5 percent for other groups.
Trades followed closely behind at 35 percent, with plumbers at 41 percent and electricians at 38 percent showing up as the worst offenders in that category. Hospitality came in at 29 percent, retail at 26 percent, and professional services at 19 percent, where real estate agencies at 17 percent and accountants at 21 percent were the most likely to maintain a working site. Somewhat unexpectedly, larger geographic areas performed worse than smaller ones, with large cities posting a 37 percent rate of missing websites compared to 25 percent in small towns. Birmingham recorded the highest rate among the 12 locations at 42 percent, though researchers cautioned against reading the results as a definitive regional ranking due to overlapping variables.
Stale links and parked domains
For businesses that did feature a website link, many links led to dead ends or outdated content. Out of 5,533 listings showing a website link, 495 links led to a dead or parked site, while 353 pointed only to a social or third-party platform. Furthermore, follow-up data analyzing homepages for a readable copyright year found that of the 1,944 sites displaying one, 18.9 percent showed a year of 2024 or earlier, including 5.9 percent displaying 2019 or earlier.
Abandoned and lapsed domains pose risks beyond simple lost customer traffic. Infoblox Threat Intel noted that expired domains are frequently re-registered to inherit existing traffic and trust, with approximately 65,000 expired domains re-registered daily in the first half of 2026. For business owners, maintaining a basic web presence and ensuring domain renewals remain active on Google Business Profile remains a vital step in directing customers to controlled platforms.
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