Read more: the full study.
What we found. Across 8 metros: Richmond VA 22.2% broken, Tucson AZ 20.9%, Charlotte NC 20.7%, Des Moines IA 20.5%, Chattanooga TN 19.9%.
The city rankings
We checked every business with a listed website across eight US metros. The percentage of broken sites, by metro:
Two metros in the study are not shown here because the sample size is too small to rank with confidence.
| Metro | Sites checked | Broken % |
|---|---|---|
| Richmond VA | 3,782 | 22.2% |
| Tucson AZ | 4,709 | 20.9% |
| Charlotte NC | 8,368 | 20.7% |
| Des Moines IA | 2,114 | 20.5% |
| Chattanooga TN | 2,588 | 19.9% |
| Raleigh NC | 7,449 | 18.0% |
| Tampa FL | — | — |
| Albuquerque NM | — | — |
What the rankings mean
The difference between the top and the bottom of the list is 4 points. The pattern across all eight metros is the same: about one in five listed business websites is broken in some way.
If you are a local business in one of these cities, that is actually an opportunity. Most of your competitors' sites are broken, which means a working site is a real differentiator.
Questions we get about this
Why is Richmond at the top?
We do not have a clean answer for that. The pattern looks like a population of small businesses whose websites were built once and never maintained.
Is my city in the study?
Eight metros are in the study. If your city is not in the list, the data is not reliable for that area.
How do you define "broken"?
A site is broken if it returns a hard error, has an expired domain, is blocked by the browser, or fails to respond within the check timeout.
Ready to which us cities have the most broken local business sites?
Email shoaib@localsiteshop.com and tell us about the site. We will reply same day with a fixed quote and a date.
Email usOr first, run your site through the free checker and see the verdict in 10 seconds.