The Local Trade Business Digital Presence Index (2026)
Across 44,493 U.S. HVAC and plumbing businesses, 22.9% operate with no website at all — and 93% of those are reachable by phone today. A first-party data study.
Most "small businesses are going digital" claims are vibes, not numbers. So we counted.
Across 44,493 U.S. local trade businesses, 22.9% — nearly one in four — operate with no website at all. Not a thin website, not an outdated one. None. And 93% of them publish a phone number, which means they are reachable today by anyone who bothers to look.
This is the first edition of the Local Trade Business Digital Presence Index: a first-party snapshot of how present — or absent — local service businesses actually are online.
What we measured
We analyzed 44,493 enriched local-business listings across 697 U.S. cities, drawn from public business listings and scored on public-web signals. The sample is concentrated in the two highest-volume home-service trades:
- HVAC — 21,918 businesses
- Plumbing — 21,457 businesses
- Electrical, roofing, pest control, and pool service appear in smaller numbers (164–432 each) and are reported below as directional only.
Because ~97.5% of the sample is HVAC and plumbing, every headline figure should be read as "U.S. HVAC and plumbing businesses," not all small businesses everywhere. Snapshot taken May 2026.
Finding 1 — Nearly a quarter have no website
| Trade | Businesses | No website | Avg. rating | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All (HVAC + plumbing-weighted) | 44,493 | 22.9% | 4.72★ | 43 |
| HVAC | 21,918 | 20.2% | 4.77★ | 55 |
| Plumbing | 21,457 | 26.0% | 4.68★ | 35 |
| Electrical (directional, n=432) | 432 | 28.2% | 4.67★ | 17 |
| Roofing (directional, n=319) | 319 | 12.2% | 4.87★ | 39 |
| Pool service (directional, n=164) | 164 | 12.8% | 4.43★ | 37 |
| Pest control (directional, n=203) | 203 | 5.9% | 4.77★ | 106 |
Plumbing runs notably more website-absent than HVAC (26.0% vs 20.2%) — roughly one in four plumbers in the sample has no website.
Finding 2 — These aren't failing businesses. They're invisible ones.
The instinct is that a business without a website must be struggling. The data says the opposite:
- Average rating across the full sample: 4.72 stars. Only 5.8% sit below 4.0 stars.
- Median review count: 43. These are businesses with real, sustained customer demand.
- Of the 10,182 no-website businesses, 2,531 have 20 or more reviews — proven, busy operators with zero web presence.
In other words, the typical no-website trade business is well-reviewed and busy. It just can't be found by anyone searching online.
Finding 3 — 93% are reachable by phone right now
A backlink or a listing is nice. A phone number is actionable. Of the 10,182 no-website businesses in the sample, 9,479 (93%) publish a public phone number. The barrier to reaching these owners isn't access — it's knowing which ones are worth a call.
Finding 4 — Where the gap is widest
Among states with at least 300 businesses sampled, the share operating without a website varied by more than 8 points:
| State | Businesses | No website |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | 667 | 31.0% |
| Connecticut | 689 | 30.0% |
| Louisiana | 306 | 28.4% |
| California | 9,221 | 27.7% |
| Iowa | 595 | 25.7% |
| Nebraska | 524 | 25.6% |
| Montana | 312 | 25.0% |
| Oklahoma | 428 | 25.0% |
| Massachusetts | 1,161 | 24.5% |
| Minnesota | 967 | 23.8% |
California is the standout: with the largest state sample (9,221 businesses), more than one in four still has no website — that's roughly 2,550 well-reviewed trade businesses in a single state, invisible on the web.
Why this matters
For a marketing agency, "no website" is the cleanest buying signal there is. It is a concrete, unambiguous gap the agency can close, attached to a business that already has customers and a published phone number. The hard part was never finding businesses — it's separating the 23% with a real gap from the 77% that are already handled. That separation is exactly what agency prospecting intelligence — software that finds local businesses and scores which are worth calling — exists to do.
If you want to see the no-website businesses in your own market, start with the no-website playbook, or look at which U.S. cities have the most businesses without websites.
Cite this study
This is first-party data. You're welcome to reference or reproduce these figures with attribution:
Source: LocalVein — Local Trade Business Digital Presence Index, 2026 (localvein.com). Based on 44,493 U.S. HVAC and plumbing business listings across 697 cities, May 2026.
Methodology questions or a custom cut of the data (a specific state, metro, or trade)? Reach the data team at press@localvein.com.