Which U.S. Cities Have the Largest Local Business Website Gap?

6 October 2026

By ProspectGrid

The share of local businesses with no website listed can vary substantially from one market to another — even within the same industry.

ProspectGrid compared five U.S. cities across the same five local-service categories: auto repair shops, electricians, HVAC contractors, plumbers, and roofing contractors. To make the cities comparable, we calculated each city’s website-gap figure as the unweighted average of its five category-level percentages.

Quick answer: among the five cities studied, Philadelphia had the largest average website gap at 39.5%, followed by Chicago at 34.5%, Houston at 31.7%, Charlotte at 28.6%, and Phoenix at 28.1%. These figures describe the five categories in this study — not all businesses in each city.

City comparison

Five-category average share of businesses with no website listed:

Philadelphia39.5%
Chicago34.5%
Houston31.7%
Charlotte28.6%
Phoenix28.1%

By category:

City	Auto repair	Electricians	HVAC	Plumbers	Roofing	5-category average
Philadelphia	55.8%	35.9%	34.1%	38.5%	33.2%	39.5%
Chicago	46.9%	30.9%	37.7%	29.5%	27.6%	34.5%
Houston	50.9%	31.6%	29.0%	26.0%	20.9%	31.7%
Charlotte	34.7%	31.6%	28.1%	25.9%	22.4%	28.6%
Phoenix	39.4%	34.3%	26.1%	19.3%	21.5%	28.1%

Important: “no website listed” means the Website field in the collected Google Places data was empty. It does not prove that the business has no website anywhere on the web.

Key findings

Philadelphia had the largest five-category average website gap among the five cities studied: 39.5%.
Philadelphia also had the highest measured gap of the five cities in four of the five categories: auto repair, electricians, plumbers, and roofing.
Chicago had the highest HVAC website gap in this five-city comparison at 37.7%.
Houston combined a high auto-repair gap with much lower roofing and plumbing gaps, showing why a city-wide average can hide major category differences.
Charlotte and Phoenix had similar city averages, but their category profiles were different.

Philadelphia: the largest average gap in the study

Philadelphia had the highest five-category average among the five cities studied at 39.5%. It also produced the highest website-gap percentage of the five cities in four of the five categories studied.

Auto repair was especially notable: 2,009 of 3,602 records had no website listed, or 55.8%. Philadelphia also recorded 38.5% for plumbers, 35.9% for electricians, and 33.2% for roofing contractors.

HVAC was the only category where Philadelphia did not lead the five-city comparison. Its HVAC figure was 34.1%, below Chicago’s 37.7%.

For prospecting, the important point is not that every Philadelphia market is unusually underserved online. It is that, within these five categories, missing website listings were consistently common.

Chicago: a broad gap, with HVAC standing out

Chicago ranked second among the five cities studied on the five-category average at 34.5%.

Auto repair again had the largest category-level gap: 2,166 of 4,621 records, or 46.9%. But the most distinctive Chicago result was HVAC. 244 of 648 HVAC records had no website listed, producing a 37.7% gap — the highest HVAC rate among the five cities.

Electricians, plumbers, and roofing were lower at 30.9%, 29.5%, and 27.6% respectively.

Houston: a large auto-repair gap but a mixed category profile

Houston’s five-category average was 31.7%, placing it in the middle of the five-city comparison.

The city had by far the largest number of auto-repair records in the dataset: 14,301. Of those, 7,278 had no website listed, a rate of 50.9%.

Other categories were much lower: electricians 31.6%, HVAC 29.0%, plumbers 26.0%, and roofing 20.9%.

Houston illustrates why pooled totals can be misleading for this comparison. Auto repair is much larger in the dataset than the other Houston categories. If all records were simply pooled, auto repair would dominate the city figure. The city ranking in this article therefore gives each of the five categories equal weight.

Charlotte: relatively consistent across categories

Charlotte’s five-category average was 28.6%.

Auto repair had the highest category gap at 34.7%, followed by electricians at 31.6%, HVAC at 28.1%, plumbers at 25.9%, and roofing at 22.4%.

Compared with cities such as Philadelphia or Houston, Charlotte showed a narrower spread between its highest and lowest category percentages.

Phoenix: similar overall average, different category mix

Phoenix had the lowest five-category average in the study at 28.1%, only slightly below Charlotte.

But the similarity in the averages hides a different pattern. Phoenix had a 39.4% auto-repair gap and a relatively high 34.3% electrician gap, while plumbers were much lower at 19.3%. HVAC was 26.1% and roofing was 21.5%.

This is a useful reminder that a single city-level number should not be used as a substitute for category-level research.

Why we used an average of category percentages

The five categories were not equally represented in the dataset. Auto repair produced far more records than categories such as plumbing or electrical work.

For example, Houston contained 14,301 auto-repair records but 1,030 plumbing records. A pooled “no website listed” percentage would therefore describe the mix of records in the dataset as much as it described the city.

To make the city comparison easier to interpret, we calculated the website-gap percentage separately for each category and then took the unweighted average of those five percentages.

That means each category contributes equally to the city-level figure.

Do not interpret the city average as “the percentage of all businesses in the city without websites.” It is the average website-gap rate across the five specific local-service categories included in this study.

City matters — but category often matters just as much

The data shows meaningful geographic differences, but it also shows that industry and city interact.

Philadelphia’s plumbing gap was 38.5%, while Phoenix’s was 19.3%. At the same time, Phoenix electricians had a 34.3% gap, only slightly below Philadelphia electricians at 35.9%.

A prospecting strategy based only on “best city” can therefore miss the more useful combination: business category + geography.

This is also why a niche-selection workflow should test specific markets instead of assuming one industry performs the same way everywhere.

See our guide to choosing local business niches for lead generation →

What this means for local lead generation

Website-gap data can help decide where to start looking, but it should not be treated as a complete measure of sales opportunity.

A useful workflow is:

choose a service category;
compare several local markets;
look for businesses that match your chosen prospecting signals;
verify website and contact information;
qualify the strongest prospects before outreach.

A city with a larger website gap may offer more candidates for some services. But review activity, business quality, customer economics, local competition, and fit with your offer still matter.

Learn how to qualify local business leads from Google Maps →

Methodology

ProspectGrid collected Google Places data on October 2–3, 2026 for five U.S. cities:

Charlotte
Chicago
Houston
Philadelphia
Phoenix

The study covered five categories:

auto repair shops;
electricians;
HVAC contractors;
plumbers;
roofing contractors.

Businesses were deduplicated by Google CID within each city-category dataset. Across the full research collection, the study contained 43,914 category-level records and 42,985 unique businesses after global CID deduplication.

A record was classified as “no website listed” when its Google Places Website field was empty.

For the city comparison in this article, we calculated the no-website-listed percentage for each of the five categories within a city, then used the unweighted average of those five percentages. We did not pool all category records together to create the city ranking.

Limitations

This study does not estimate the website status of every local business in Charlotte, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, or Phoenix.

It covers five specific local-service categories and reflects the Google Places records collected during the study period. A business with no website listed in Google Places may still have an independent website that was not connected to its listing.

The results are best used as a comparison of website-listing patterns across the categories and cities studied, not as a census of all local businesses.

FAQ

Which city had the largest local business website gap?

Among the five cities and five categories in this study, Philadelphia had the highest average website-gap rate at 39.5%.

Which city had the smallest average gap?

Phoenix had the lowest five-category average among the five cities studied at 28.1%, slightly below Charlotte at 28.6%.

Does 39.5% mean 39.5% of all Philadelphia businesses have no website?

No. The 39.5% figure is the unweighted average of the five category-level website-gap percentages included in this study. It should not be generalized to every business in Philadelphia.

Which category varied the most between cities?

The data shows substantial variation in several categories. Auto repair ranged from 34.7% in Charlotte to 55.8% in Philadelphia, while plumbing ranged from 19.3% in Phoenix to 38.5% in Philadelphia.

Does “no website listed” mean the business has no website?

No. It means the Website field in the collected Google Places record was empty. The business may still have a website elsewhere, so the result should be verified before outreach.

Conclusion

The website gap was not evenly distributed across the five markets ProspectGrid studied.

Philadelphia had the largest five-category average at 39.5%, followed by Chicago, Houston, Charlotte, and Phoenix. But the category-level results show why the city ranking is only a starting point: the same city can have a high gap in one industry and a much lower gap in another.

For lead generation, the more useful question is not simply “Which city has the largest gap?” It is which category-and-city combination produces the strongest pool of qualified prospects for your offer.

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