ByAhsan NadeemLead Full-Stack Engineer
In our tests, the busiest local businesses had the slowest websites. When we tested 1,751 local business websites with Google's PageSpeed Insights in October 2026, 47% of businesses with 500 or more Google reviews scored under 50 on mobile, Google's "poor" band. For businesses with fewer than 20 reviews, it was 20%.
That isn't what you'd expect. Busy firms have the most customers and usually the biggest marketing budgets, yet on local business website speed they come last.
Below is what we found, why we think it happens and how to check your own site in 15 minutes. Our business website service builds for speed from the start, with server-rendered pages, optimised images and a JavaScript budget for every page.
Where the data comes from
The sites belong to the trade and service businesses from our October 2026 audit of Google Maps listings: solar installers, plumbers, heating and air-conditioning firms, cleaners, painters, handymen, pest control, car rental and more, across the US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and five Gulf countries.
We used two layers of data:
- 1,751 mobile PageSpeed scores. Every site we could reach and score, grouped by how many Google reviews the business had: a rough but public measure of how busy it is.
- 362 detailed lab reports. For sites we checked by hand, we also kept page weight, Largest Contentful Paint and Total Blocking Time. These were mostly sites that already looked weak, so their numbers are worse than average. We use them to explain the pattern, not to size it.
Two caveats. A PageSpeed score is a lab test on a simulated mid-range phone, and the same page can score a few points differently between runs. And review count isn't revenue. With 1,751 sites, though, the trend is hard to miss.
Finding 1: the more reviews, the slower the site
Google reviews | Sites tested | Median mobile score | Scored under 50 |
|---|---|---|---|
0 to 19 | 725 | 64 | 20% |
20 to 99 | 577 | 60 | 26% |
100 to 499 | 355 | 55 | 38% |
500 or more | 94 | 51 | 47% |
Across all 1,751 sites, the median score was 60, 27% scored under 50 and only 8% reached the "good" band of 90 or more.
Could something else explain it? It isn't just the trade: leave out solar installers, our largest group, and the median still falls from 66 to 54. And it isn't just the website builder: among WordPress sites alone, the median drops from 61 for the least-reviewed businesses to 49 for the most-reviewed, and 53% of the busiest WordPress sites score under 50.
Finding 2: busy businesses' pages are heavier and busier
The detailed reports show where the time goes. As review counts rise, pages get heavier and the phone spends longer stuck running code.
Google reviews | Median page weight | Median Total Blocking Time |
|---|---|---|
0 to 19 | 2.6 MB | 242 ms |
20 to 99 | 3.7 MB | 288 ms |
100 to 499 | 4.3 MB | 543 ms |
500 or more | 5.0 MB | 646 ms |
The median mobile home page on the web weighed 2.6 MB in July 2025, according to the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac. The busiest businesses in our hand-checked sample serve nearly twice that, although that sample leans towards weaker sites.
Total Blocking Time is the number to watch. It measures how long the page is too busy running JavaScript to respond to a tap, and it carries 30% of the weight in the Lighthouse performance score, more than any other metric. When it more than doubles, the score falls with it, and visitors feel it as buttons that don't respond.
Why successful businesses end up with slow sites
This part is interpretation, not measurement: we didn't count scripts site by site. But anyone who has worked on small business websites will recognise the pattern.
A new business launches a simple site. Then it grows, and each step adds something to the page:
- A review widget to show off all those five-star reviews.
- A live chat or call-tracking script once the phone starts ringing.
- A booking or quote tool embedded from another service.
- Tracking tags for every ad platform the business has tried.
- Sliders, video backgrounds and big photos after a redesign "to look more established".
Each one looks harmless on its own. Together they make the page heavier and the phone busier. Nobody removes the old ones, because nobody owns the website full-time. (If nobody is sure who controls the site any more, start with who really owns your website's domain.)
So the widget showing off 800 happy customers may be one of the things making new customers wait.
Busy firms don't neglect everything, though. When we checked the email security of the same businesses, the busiest were the best protected.
Finding 3: the website builder matters less than you'd think
Should you move from WordPress to Wix or Squarespace "because it's faster"? Here's how the builders compared across our 1,751 sites:
Builder | Sites | Median mobile score | Under 50 | 90 or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|
WordPress | 765 | 58 | 31% | 8% |
Not identified (mostly custom or less common platforms) | 608 | 64 | 25% | 12% |
Wix | 120 | 67 | 18% | 1% |
Squarespace | 82 | 54 | 29% | 2% |
GoDaddy builder | 76 | 66 | 12% | 12% |
Duda | 48 | 67 | 13% | 4% |
Webflow | 37 | 53 | 43% | 0% |
Weebly | 15 | 44 | 60% | 7% |
Groups under about 50 sites are too small for firm conclusions.
Hosted builders such as Wix and Duda score under 50 less often, probably because the platform controls the code. They also rarely score well: only 1% of Wix sites reached 90. WordPress sites were spread widely: 31% scored under 50, yet 8% reached 90 or more.
That matches our experience. On WordPress, speed depends on the theme, plugins and hosting someone chose. On a hosted builder, it depends mostly on the platform. Switching builders rarely fixes a slow site. Removing what's weighing it down usually does.
Why website speed matters for a local business
A 2020 study by Deloitte for Google tracked 37 European and American brand sites in retail, luxury, travel and lead generation. For retail sites, a 0.1-second improvement in mobile speed went with an 8.4% increase in conversions. Trades aren't retail, so treat that number as a direction, not a promise.
The local version is simpler. Someone with a burst pipe searches on their phone, taps the first two plumbers on the map and calls whichever site shows a phone number first. Your competitor's slow site is your opportunity, and the other way round.
How to check your website speed in 15 minutes
- Run PageSpeed Insights on your home page and main service page, on the Mobile tab. Note the score and the Total Blocking Time.
- List everything third-party on the page. Chat, reviews, booking, maps, video, tracking. Ask of each one: does it bring in work?
- Look at your biggest images. Anything over 300 KB on a phone is too big. Your developer or your builder's image settings can fix that in an afternoon.
- Check what loads before the phone number. If a slider or video loads first, your phone number waits.
- Re-test after each change, two or three times, and watch the trend rather than one score.
For deeper fixes, our guide to improving Core Web Vitals takes LCP, INP and CLS one at a time.
What to fix first
- Delay or remove third-party scripts. Many chat and review tools can load after the page is interactive, or only when someone taps a button. It's usually the biggest win for Total Blocking Time.
- Replace sliders and video backgrounds with one strong, compressed photo and a clear call button.
- Show reviews as text, with a link to your Google profile, instead of a live widget.
- Remove tracking tags for ad platforms you no longer use.
- Upgrade cheap shared hosting if your server response time is slow. PageSpeed flags it in its "Document request latency" insight.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good PageSpeed score for a small business website?
90 or more is Google's "good" band, but only 8% of the sites in our sample reached it. A realistic first goal is to get out of the red band (under 50) and keep Total Blocking Time low. Real visitor data in Search Console's Core Web Vitals report matters more than a single lab score.
Is WordPress slower than Wix or Squarespace?
In our sample, WordPress had a lower median score (58) than Wix (67) but a higher one than Squarespace (54), and its results were spread widely. A well-built WordPress site can be very fast: it comes down to the theme, plugins and hosting.
Why does my PageSpeed score change every time I test?
PageSpeed runs a lab test, and network conditions, ads, tests and server load vary between runs. Google suggests thinking of performance as a range of scores rather than one number. Run the test three times and use the middle result.
The bottom line
Success leaves marks on a website: every widget, tag and tool added while the business grew. In our data, the busiest businesses had the slowest sites. The fix is rarely a new platform. It's a careful clear-out of whatever no longer earns its place.
Too busy to look at your own website? Book a free consultation and we'll go through your PageSpeed report with you and tell you what's worth fixing first.
Sources
- ZNova Studio, PageSpeed Insights mobile tests of 1,751 local business websites and 362 detailed lab reports (October 2026). Methodology above; the businesses come from our October 2026 audit of Google Maps listings: /insights/local-business-website-statistics
- Chrome for Developers, Lighthouse performance scoring (score bands and metric weights): https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/performance/performance-scoring
- Chrome for Developers, What's new in Lighthouse 13 (audits replaced by insights, October 2025): https://developer.chrome.com/blog/lighthouse-13-0
- HTTP Archive, Web Almanac 2025, Page Weight chapter (July 2025 data): https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/page-weight
- Deloitte for Google, Milliseconds Make Millions (2020): https://www.deloitte.com/ie/en/services/consulting/research/milliseconds-make-millions.html
- web.dev, Milliseconds make millions case study: https://web.dev/case-studies/milliseconds-make-millions
