We checked 325 South West small business websites.
From the outside, the way a customer or a search engine meets them. Most had the same handful of problems, and most of those are an afternoon's work to fix. Is yours one of them?
Three things that came up most often
325 sites, checked on 26 September 2026. Each figure shows how many sites it was measured on.
82%failed Google's mobile loading test
246 of 300 sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone.
Google counts two and a half seconds as good. Past four, a visitor on a phone has often gone back to the results and tapped someone else.
Test your page on a phone50%had no DMARC record
164 of 325 sites. Only 54 told inboxes to quarantine or reject fake email sent in their name.
Without DMARC anyone can send email that looks like it came from the business, and its own quotes and invoices are easier for inboxes to distrust.
Check your DMARC record35%were missing page titles or descriptions
100 of 285 sites had no title or description on more than 30% of the pages we sampled.
Google then writes the search listing itself, often from whatever text it finds first, such as a cookie notice.
Check your titles and descriptions
How your sector compares
Each page shows what came up most for that kind of business, and what to fix first. A sector is only quoted on its own when at least 30 of its sites could be measured.
- 36 sitesDentists80% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (28 of 35).
- 36 sitesPlumbers68% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (23 of 34).
- 36 sitesSolicitors86% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (31 of 36). Only 1 loaded in the time Google counts as good.
- 36 sitesAccountants75% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (24 of 32). Only 5 loaded in the time Google counts as good.
- 112 sitesTrades73% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (75 of 103). Only 7 loaded in the time Google counts as good.
- 69 sitesHospitality95% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (56 of 59). Only 1 loaded in the time Google counts as good.
- 82 sitesProfessional services83% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (65 of 78). Only 6 loaded in the time Google counts as good.
- 55 sitesHealth and beauty81% of sites took more than four seconds to show their main content on a phone (44 of 54). Only 3 loaded in the time Google counts as good.
About this research
- 325 independent small business websites across twelve South West towns, checked from the outside on 26 September 2026 with the same checks our free scan runs. No site is named.
- Mobile loading test: how long the main content takes to appear on a simulated mid-range phone, measured with Google PageSpeed Insights. Over four seconds is a fail.
- DMARC: the DNS record that tells inboxes what to do with email that fails the sender checks for a domain. A site fails when it has no record at all. A record in monitoring mode is counted separately, not as a fail.
- Titles and descriptions: the homepage plus up to six further pages per site. A site fails when more than 30% of those pages are missing a title or a description.
- Some checks could not be measured on every site, for example when a page would not load. Those sites are left out of that figure, not counted as failures, so each figure says how many sites it is based on.
Is yours one of them? Get early access
AuditCrow runs these checks across your whole site, tells you what to fix first in plain English, and checks the fix went live. The beta is free to join.
Two things you can check today, free and with no signup: the mobile test and the DMARC checker.
Get early access
Leave your email and we will send your invite to the beta.