{
  "id": 19618225,
  "title": "A third of UK businesses on Google Maps have no working website — and many of those that do are struggling to keep them up to date",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/a-third-of-uk-businesses-on-google-maps-have-no-working-website-and",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-12T07:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "TechRadar",
    "slug": "techradar",
    "url": "https://www.techradar.com/pro/a-third-of-businesses-on-google-maps-have-no-working-website-and-many-of-those-that-do-are-struggling-to-keep-them-up-to-date"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A study by Digital Royalty reveals that one-third of UK businesses claiming a Google listing do not have a functional website. This issue is most prevalent in the health and beauty sector, where 53% of businesses lack a working site. Large cities also tend to have poorer results, with a 37% rate compared to 25% in smaller towns. Many websites that do exist are outdated, with 18.9% displaying a 2024 or earlier copyright year. Additionally, 5.3% of functioning sites fail to load over HTTPS, and 3.3% lack a mobile viewport tag. These findings suggest that the primary problem is the absence of a site rather than its poor quality. If the 33% rate applies to all UK businesses, approximately 490,000 businesses have listings that lead to no site they control.",
  "summary": "Many UK businesses admit their Google listings still send customers to a dead end, with salons the worst offenders.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Android Police",
        "title": "I thought I'd lost my Google Keep notes until I found how to recover them",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/i-thought-id-lost-my-google-keep-notes-until-i-found-how-to-recover",
        "published": "2026-11-12T00:00:10.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "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."
}