Most UK Trade Businesses Don't Have a Website
We researched 73,676 UK trade businesses on the Companies House register. Only about a third have a dedicated website of their own.
The businesses that show up online are not usually the biggest or the best. They are simply the ones that market themselves. And in the UK trades, that is still a minority.
We manage marketing for local trades, so we already suspected most of them are hard to find online. To put a number on it, we worked through the Companies House register across 21 trade categories and checked each business for a dedicated website. The gap was even wider than we expected, and it is the whole reason a small, marketing-active minority wins most of the online work.
Source. The UK Companies House register, filtered by SIC code. We checked a sample of 73,676 registered businesses across the 21 categories below.
What counts as a website. A dedicated site the business controls. A Checkatrade or Yell listing, or a Facebook page on its own, does not count, because those are directories, not the business's own presence.
How we verified each one. We searched every business by its registered name and location and recorded a website only after confirming the site belonged to that exact business. The check was done by hand and is repeatable, so the figures are a like-for-like count across every trade, not an automated estimate.
Caveats. Researched in 2026. The register includes some dormant and non-trading companies. Figures are our own research from the public Companies House register, not an official statistic.
The full breakdown, by trade
Ranked from the most online to the least. Even the best-performing trade had barely more than half with a website of their own, and most sat below the 33% average.
| Trade | SIC | Checked | Website found | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pest control | 81291 | 1,167 | 667 | 57% |
| Glaziers | 43342 | 3,000 | 1,523 | 51% |
| Tree and forestry services | 02400 | 2,269 | 1,051 | 46% |
| Waste collection | 38110 | 3,000 | 1,348 | 45% |
| Roofers | 43910 | 2,900 | 1,250 | 43% |
| Landscapers and gardeners | 81300 | 5,500 | 2,292 | 42% |
| Window cleaners | 81221 | 2,385 | 928 | 39% |
| Flooring and tiling | 43330 | 3,899 | 1,481 | 38% |
| Appliance repair | 95220 | 1,803 | 622 | 35% |
| Removals firms | 49420 | 3,499 | 1,186 | 34% |
| Plumbers and heating engineers | 43220 | 3,997 | 1,332 | 33% |
| Electricians | 43210 | 4,500 | 1,412 | 31% |
| Specialised cleaners | 81222 | 4,198 | 1,300 | 31% |
| Testing and inspection | 71200 | 3,997 | 1,231 | 31% |
| Joiners and carpenters | 43320 | 4,496 | 1,243 | 28% |
| Specialist construction | 43999 | 2,700 | 751 | 28% |
| Commercial cleaners | 81210 | 4,800 | 1,290 | 27% |
| Other cleaning services | 81299 | 5,000 | 1,232 | 25% |
| Groundworks and site prep | 43120 | 3,576 | 876 | 24% |
| Building finishing | 43390 | 4,990 | 1,163 | 23% |
| Commercial builders | 41201 | 2,000 | 427 | 21% |
Share = businesses with a dedicated website of their own, as a percentage of those we checked in that category.
What this actually means for a trade business
The headline is not that trades are behind. It is that the ones who show up online are competing against far fewer rivals than they think.
If two thirds of the plumbers in your area have no website, then the search for a plumber in your town is not a fight between hundreds of businesses. It is a fight between the handful who bothered to show up online. That is a much smaller room than most owners assume, and it is winnable.
It also reframes what a website is for. For a trade, a site is rarely about looking impressive. It is the thing that lets Google understand what you do and where, that a customer checks before they call, and that a review or a Google Business Profile points back to. Without it, you are relying on someone else's directory listing to represent you, and paying that directory for the privilege.
The trades with the highest web presence in our data, pest control and glaziers, are also the ones where customers most often compare online before booking. The pattern is not that some trades are more capable. It is that some trades have learned their customers now start on Google, and acted on it. For how that plays out in the map pack, see our guide on how to rank in local search.
If you are in the two thirds
Being invisible online is not a permanent state, and fixing it is cheaper than most trades expect.
The order that works is simple: a real website that says what you do and where, a Google Business Profile pointed at it, and a steady flow of reviews. That combination alone puts you ahead of most of your local competition, because most of them still have not done it. It is the whole basis of our local SEO service, and there are dedicated approaches for plumbers, heating and HVAC firms and other trades.
What we are doing next
This is the broad picture. The detail is where it gets useful.
We are extending this research two ways: down to individual trades, with a fuller sample and a clean split between businesses that have their own site, those relying on a directory, and those with nothing at all, and then down to individual cities, so a plumber in Leeds or an electrician in Bristol can see how visible their local competition really is. If you would like your own trade or town looked at first, tell us.
Use this research
The infographic above is free to share and republish, with a link back to this page. Save the image, or drop the embed code below into your site.
Are your competitors findable, and you are not?
Get in touch and we'll check how visible your business is against the others in your trade and town, and tell you the quickest way to get ahead of them. No pressure, no jargon.