2026 · Original research
The state of small business
websites in the GTA.
We surveyed 49,994 businesses listed on Google Maps across the Greater Toronto Area and opened 34,180 of their websites to see what was actually there. Nobody paid for this and nothing here is estimated — every number below comes from a page we loaded ourselves.
Put plainly: of the 34,180 websites we opened, 8% were either broken or unusable on a phone.
By city
Where the gaps are.
26 places in the GTA where we found enough businesses to say something. Where we have published a page for that city, the name links to it.
| City | Businesses | No site | Broken | No mobile | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mississauga | 3,173 | 312 | 157 | 31 | 81 |
| North York | 2,745 | 412 | 124 | 37 | 48 |
| Toronto | 2,700 | 69 | 84 | 23 | 120 |
| Scarborough | 2,685 | 445 | 152 | 49 | 53 |
| Etobicoke | 2,470 | 358 | 105 | 46 | 43 |
| Brampton | 2,461 | 444 | 145 | 37 | 78 |
| Oakville | 2,125 | 175 | 89 | 25 | 43 |
| Burlington | 1,958 | 167 | 77 | 30 | 38 |
| Richmond Hill | 1,940 | 261 | 114 | 28 | 39 |
| Markham | 1,878 | 221 | 81 | 38 | 45 |
| Oshawa | 1,680 | 254 | 87 | 32 | 34 |
| Milton | 1,666 | 244 | 92 | 16 | 34 |
| Whitby | 1,544 | 196 | 67 | 31 | 32 |
| Newmarket | 1,477 | 188 | 75 | 25 | 31 |
| Pickering | 1,362 | 251 | 58 | 14 | 27 |
| Ajax | 1,271 | 230 | 83 | 15 | 31 |
| Aurora | 1,061 | 148 | 60 | 15 | 21 |
| Vaughan | 997 | 90 | 48 | 14 | 42 |
| Bolton | 840 | 161 | 64 | 26 | 14 |
| Georgetown | 823 | 140 | 38 | 21 | 19 |
| Woodbridge | 775 | 103 | 28 | 13 | 52 |
| Concord | 757 | 99 | 44 | 17 | 27 |
| York | 347 | 46 | 13 | 5 | 57 |
| Maple | 264 | 23 | 19 | 1 | 56 |
| Thornhill | 262 | 30 | 8 | 4 | 57 |
| Caledon | 157 | 35 | 10 | 6 | 28 |
By trade
Reviews are not
comparable between trades.
A veterinary clinic with 200 reviews is average. An accountant with 200 is exceptional. Any ranking that compares them on the same scale is measuring the wrong thing — which is why every number on this site is reported inside its own field.
By platform
What the GTA
is running on.
Detected from the pages themselves. 34% of the sites we could identify are WordPress; 1,477 are on a free or entry-level builder, and 69 are still served by software that has been discontinued for years.
| Platform | Sites | Share of sites checked |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 11,606 | 34% |
| Wix | 2,661 | 8% |
| Squarespace | 1,439 | 4% |
| GoDaddy Builder | 1,103 | 3% |
| Shopify | 854 | 2% |
| Drupal | 404 | 1% |
| Webflow | 321 | 1% |
| Google Sites | 165 | 0% |
Method.
Listings were collected from the Google Places API and OpenStreetMap across the Greater Toronto Area in August 2026. Every website was requested directly and checked for a mobile layout, HTTPS, page age and platform. Sites that returned a bot challenge were recorded as unverified and excluded from every count above — we do not report on pages we could not see. Figures may be reproduced with attribution to Formory Group.
Questions
What people ask us.
How was this data collected?
Business listings were pulled from the Google Places API and OpenStreetMap across the GTA in August 2026, then every website was requested directly and inspected for a mobile layout, HTTPS, the platform behind it and the age of the page. Sites protected by bot challenges were excluded rather than guessed at.
Can I cite these numbers?
Yes. Please attribute them to Formory Group and link to this page.
How current is it?
The survey ran in August 2026 and the per-trade and per-city pages are rebuilt from the same dataset. Individual sites change; the aggregate picture moves slowly.
Now check your own
You have read the numbers.
Where does your site stand?
Type your address and we will open your site the way a visitor would, then tell you plainly what is wrong with it — including when the answer is nothing. Ten seconds, no email, nothing stored.
Think yours needs
rebuilding?
Send us the address and what you do. We will look at what is there and tell you whether a rebuild is worth the money, or whether the problem is somewhere else entirely.