Original research · September 2026
1.6 million US businesses still have no website
We counted across 7,704,724 independent American businesses. 1,608,756 of them, 20.9%, have no website at all. Not a thin one, not an out-of-date one. None. Here is where they are and what they do.
This is not a survey and it is not an estimate. It is a count of every record in our business dataset, the same one behind CheckThisBiz, checked for whether a business has a working web address of any kind. No public dataset publishes this figure, which is why we ran it ourselves.
Mississippi is twice Colorado
The national figure hides an enormous spread. In Mississippi, 31.3% of businesses have no website. In Colorado it is 15.6%. That is a two-to-one gap between American states, and it tracks a familiar map: the highest rates are concentrated in the South and the lower Mississippi Valley, the lowest in the Mountain West, the Pacific Northwest and New England.
| # | State | No website | Businesses counted | Share with none |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | 19,197 | 61,266 | 31.3% |
| 2 | West Virginia | 10,289 | 34,105 | 30.2% |
| 3 | Arkansas | 19,945 | 69,268 | 28.8% |
| 4 | Alabama | 29,294 | 106,293 | 27.6% |
| 5 | Oklahoma | 26,774 | 97,696 | 27.4% |
| 6 | Kentucky | 26,003 | 96,705 | 26.9% |
| 7 | Louisiana | 28,006 | 107,742 | 26% |
| 8 | Texas | 170,906 | 670,241 | 25.5% |
| 9 | Tennessee | 38,650 | 159,852 | 24.2% |
| 10 | South Dakota | 5,815 | 24,714 | 23.5% |
| 11 | New Mexico | 10,206 | 43,979 | 23.2% |
| 12 | North Dakota | 4,960 | 21,412 | 23.2% |
| 13 | South Carolina | 27,735 | 120,112 | 23.1% |
| 14 | Kansas | 16,187 | 70,442 | 23% |
| 15 | Nebraska | 11,040 | 48,476 | 22.8% |
| 16 | Indiana | 33,090 | 145,865 | 22.7% |
| 17 | Missouri | 31,947 | 141,720 | 22.5% |
| 18 | Iowa | 18,405 | 81,725 | 22.5% |
| 19 | Georgia | 53,507 | 242,971 | 22% |
| 20 | North Carolina | 53,708 | 245,902 | 21.8% |
| 21 | New York | 99,863 | 465,701 | 21.4% |
| 22 | Ohio | 53,575 | 253,081 | 21.2% |
| 23 | Maine | 9,472 | 44,811 | 21.1% |
| 24 | Montana | 7,401 | 35,810 | 20.7% |
| 25 | Delaware | 4,637 | 22,744 | 20.4% |
| 26 | Pennsylvania | 61,607 | 302,531 | 20.4% |
| 27 | Wisconsin | 31,144 | 153,784 | 20.3% |
| 28 | Michigan | 45,690 | 227,231 | 20.1% |
| 29 | Florida | 116,809 | 583,685 | 20% |
| 30 | Idaho | 9,760 | 48,918 | 20% |
| 31 | New Jersey | 41,093 | 209,454 | 19.6% |
| 32 | Oregon | 21,857 | 112,545 | 19.4% |
| 33 | Illinois | 55,594 | 292,293 | 19% |
| 34 | Virginia | 33,521 | 178,178 | 18.8% |
| 35 | Rhode Island | 5,305 | 28,248 | 18.8% |
| 36 | Vermont | 4,090 | 21,894 | 18.7% |
| 37 | Arizona | 27,654 | 148,505 | 18.6% |
| 38 | Alaska | 3,722 | 20,303 | 18.3% |
| 39 | Connecticut | 16,437 | 91,471 | 18% |
| 40 | Maryland | 22,646 | 126,175 | 17.9% |
| 41 | New Hampshire | 7,176 | 40,317 | 17.8% |
| 42 | California | 153,183 | 862,842 | 17.8% |
| 43 | Nevada | 12,067 | 68,150 | 17.7% |
| 44 | Hawaii | 6,233 | 35,383 | 17.6% |
| 45 | Minnesota | 22,838 | 130,952 | 17.4% |
| 46 | Washington | 29,124 | 172,715 | 16.9% |
| 47 | Utah | 12,056 | 72,782 | 16.6% |
| 48 | Massachusetts | 27,987 | 172,588 | 16.2% |
| 49 | Colorado | 23,978 | 153,545 | 15.6% |
States with fewer than 20,000 businesses in the dataset are excluded, so a small sample cannot produce a headline number.
Where they are, by industry
The industry split is sharper than the state split, and it points at exactly the businesses you would expect: the ones whose customers arrive in person.
| Industry | No website | Businesses counted | Share with none |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travel And Transportation | 122,797 | 408,731 | 30% |
| Food And Drink | 273,084 | 953,862 | 28.6% |
| Lifestyle Services | 191,413 | 672,246 | 28.5% |
| Lodging | 53,303 | 194,404 | 27.4% |
| Shopping | 353,609 | 1,319,822 | 26.8% |
| Arts And Entertainment | 44,146 | 205,080 | 21.5% |
| Sports And Recreation | 58,105 | 311,983 | 18.6% |
| Services And Business | 376,954 | 2,492,249 | 15.1% |
| Education | 43,098 | 327,576 | 13.2% |
| Health Care | 92,247 | 818,771 | 11.3% |
The two numbers worth sitting with: 273,084 restaurants, cafes and bars have no website, and neither do 353,609 retail businesses. Those are the two categories where a customer most often checks online before deciding whether to turn up, and between them they account for more than 626,000 businesses that cannot be checked.
What it actually means
- A missing website is not the same as a missing business. Most of these are working companies with customers. Many rely entirely on a Google Business Profile, a Facebook page or word of mouth, all of which work until the platform changes its rules.
- It is a lending problem as much as a marketing one. Underwriters and suppliers check whether a business exists and looks real. No website makes an ordinary company harder to verify, and harder to verify means slower and more expensive credit.
- The state gap is an economic gap. The spread between the top and bottom of that table is not about taste. It follows the same lines as broadband, banking access and median revenue.
Use this
These figures are free to reproduce with a link to this page. If you are a journalist or researcher who wants a cut we have not published, a single state, a metro, a narrower industry, ask and we will run it.
Method: every business record in the CheckThisBiz dataset was checked for the presence of a website address of any kind. A business counts as having none only when no web address is recorded from any source. Records are aggregated from public business listings and may lag a very recently launched site. States under 20,000 records and industries under 30,000 are excluded. Counted 24 September 2026 across 7,704,724 businesses. Licensed CC BY 4.0.