{
  "id": 15421288,
  "title": "I Checked 213 Local Business Websites. Here's What Was Quietly Broken.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/18/i-checked-213-local-business-websites-heres-what-was-quietly-broken",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-18T14:00:02.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/scott_steinmetz/i-checked-213-local-business-websites-heres-what-was-quietly-broken-4hik"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Business owners often overlook the health of their own websites, assuming they function correctly. They rarely receive complaints from customers about broken websites, as the issue goes unnoticed. To assess the prevalence of this problem, I developed a tool to analyze 1,683 local businesses scattered across 17 counties. Of the checked sites, 213 were accessible via the internet. The tool evaluated each homepage, followed the main links, and noted issues like missing images, dead pages, and error screens. What the tool uncovered revealed several common problems. Firstly, pictures often only displayed correctly on the designer's computer, appearing as blank boxes for customers. Secondly, online store links occasionally led to error pages, indicating a potential loss of customer interest. Thirdly, old product pages frequently turned up as 404 errors, leading visitors to a 'page not found' notice. Lastly, one local club's website had been hacked, displaying foreign gambling advertisements without the business owners' knowledge. To address these issues, I adjusted the tool's settings to minimize false positives, resulting in 1 website in excellent condition, 15 in good condition, and the remaining 197 requiring further investigation. A critical step in rectifying these problems is to contact businesses with serious issues directly, starting with those affected by hacking.",
  "summary": "Most business owners never look at their own website. They had it built a few years ago, it went live, and as far as they know, it still works. Customers rarely call to say \"your website is broken.\" They just leave and call the competitor. I wanted to know how common that was in my own backyard. So I built a tool that walked through every business I could find from Mt. Vernon down to the Illinois…",
  "key_points": [
    "213 local business websites were analyzed across 17 counties.",
    "Missing images appeared as blank boxes on customer computers.",
    "Hacked website displayed foreign gambling ads without owner's knowledge."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}