We checked 13,530 small business websites. One in four is broken.

Of the 13,530 sites, 3,332 (24.6%) were broken in one of three ways: the site does not load at all, it has not been touched in years, or it is a single page with a phone number on it. That is one in four.

• 1,565 (11.6%) do not load. The domain has lapsed, the hosting is gone, or the address on the listing points nowhere. One in nine businesses is paying for a listing that sends customers to an error page.
• 1,164 (8.6%) are unmaintained. Several signs at once: a copyright year from years ago, dead links, a news page that stopped, prices that no longer match the Google listing.
• 603 (4.5%) are a single page. A name, a number, sometimes a photo. Nothing for Google to rank and nothing for a customer to read.

On top of those, 185 sites do not resize on a phone at all, 165 still load without HTTPS so browsers warn visitors before they see the page, and 139 load a page with no words on it. We did not count those in the one in four. If we had, it would be closer to one in three.

By trade

Salons are worst, professionals are best, tradies are in the middle

Cafes and restaurants have the most dead sites in raw numbers, which fits: they open, they close, and the website outlives the business. Salons have the highest share of broken sites, mostly single pages that were set up once and never opened again. Accountants and lawyers do best, and tradies sit at one in five, which is still a lot of plumbers whose website is working against them.

By state

Victoria has the most broken sites, the ACT the fewest

The Northern Territory row is 75 sites, so treat its number as a hint, not a finding.

Why it matters

A broken website is worse than no website

A business with no website shows up on Google with a phone number and people ring it. A business with a dead website shows up with a link, people tap it, get an error, and assume the business has closed. The unmaintained site does the same thing more slowly: the 2019 copyright line and the dead menu link tell the customer nobody is home.

The fix is smaller than most owners think. A dead domain is usually a lapsed renewal. A single page becomes a proper site in a day or two. An unmaintained site mostly needs its prices, hours and photos brought up to date and the dead links cut.

Check yours

Three things to test on your phone right now

Or type your address into the free two-minute check and let it do the looking.

1. Search your business name on Google and tap the website link. Does it load, and does it load with a padlock?
2. Look for a year anywhere on the page. If it is more than two years old, so is everything else on there.
3. Tap the phone number, the menu, the booking button. Do they do anything?

If yours failed any of those, that is the A$250 fix: we sort the one thing that is broken and leave the rest alone.

Method

How we counted

The bot collected small businesses in four categories (trades, food, beauty and professional services) from public listings across Australia between 12 August and 16 September 2026, then loaded every website address it had. This page counts only the 13,530 sites it could reach a verdict on. "Does not load" means the domain did not resolve or the server did not answer. "Unmaintained" means the checker found several independent signs of neglect, not one. "Single page" means one page and no links off it. Sites that blocked the bot (403) or that build their content in the browser were left out rather than guessed at. It is a large sample of businesses that chose to list themselves publicly, not a census of every Australian business, and no individual business is named.