How to Find Local Businesses without a Website

Web designers, marketing freelancers and small agencies look for them, because a business with no website has a gap you can name. The same list suits anyone who sells listings, booking tools or online ordering to local businesses.

Each business in the list is one row, with what its Maps listing shows:

• Business Name and Category
• Rating and Review Count
• Address and Operating Hours
• Phone
• Website, which is empty when the listing names none
• Map URL, the link to the listing itself

Businesses with a website also get Emails, Website phones and social links from it. A business with no website gets none of those, so its phone and address are how you reach it.

Ask chat for the trade and the town, with the number of businesses you want. With a number in the request, chat starts at once instead of asking how many first.

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   Step 1: Open chat in the side panel

   Open the extension's side panel in Chrome and choose the Chat tab. It works from any tab you're on.

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   Step 2: Type the trade, the town and a number

   Name one trade and one town. A single trade keeps the list comparable, and a single town keeps your calls local.

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   • Find 200 landscapers in Mesa, AZ
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   Step 3: Leave one setting off

   In Settings → Results, Skip businesses you can't reach is off by default. When it's on, businesses with no phone, email or website are left out as the list is saved, and some of those are the ones you want to visit.

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   Step 4: Read the line under the result

   When the run ends, chat says how many businesses it collected and saved to History. With contact details on, a short line under it says how many came back without a website.

One Maps search lists about 120 businesses. Ask for more and chat searches the area around the town as well, up to 1,000 in one request; the guide to listing every business in a city covers bigger places.

For many towns at once, run each search on Maps, copy the links and paste them into Bulk, which collects them all in one run.

Open the list on the results page and tell chat which rows to keep. The search itself can't leave out businesses that have a website, so this is always the second step.

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   Step 1: Open the list

   When the run ends, open the list on the results page, or find it later in History and click View results. The results page opens in a tab of its own.

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   Step 2: Ask for the empty Website cells

   Type "Only rows where Website is empty" in chat. The page hides every row with a website and shows the filter above the table, with Clear filters to undo it.

   • "How many rows have Website?" answers in the form "N of M rows have Website."
   • The rows you hide aren't deleted. They come back when you clear the filter.
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   Step 3: Download what's shown

   Ask chat to "download this as Excel", or click Export as. The file holds only the rows the page shows, so it's your no-website list.

Filters stack, and a row has to match all of them. To start again, click Clear filters or the Reset the view card chat offers. The results page and its downloads are covered in more detail on their own page.

Some listings give a Facebook page, a directory listing or a WhatsApp link as their website. Those businesses have no site of their own either, but their Website cell isn't empty, so the first filter misses them.

Watch out: For a business whose website is a Facebook page, use the link in its Website cell. Websites on the same site are read once per run, so the Facebook column on those rows can show another business's page.

Ask for each one in turn, because one filter can't match one value or another. Or download the whole list and sort its Website column in your spreadsheet, so the social pages and listings sit together.

The share depends on the trade and the place, so measure your own list before you plan a week of calls. Chat's line after the run gives the number without a website, and "How many rows have Website?" on the results page gives the rest.

Ask the same question after a second search, for another trade or a nearby town, and compare the two. If almost every business in a search has a website, try another trade or town before you widen the area.

The "have Website" count includes the rows whose website is a social page or a listing. Count those with the filters above and add them to the empty ones for the full number without a site of their own.

An empty Website cell means the Maps listing names no website, not that the business has none. Some have a site the owner never added to the listing, and a call that offers to build one then lands badly.

Each check takes a minute:

• Search the business's name and town on the web, and look past the directories for a site of its own.
• Open the Map URL from its row to see the listing as a customer sees it.
• Look at its Facebook page, if the Website cell links one, for a website the page names.
• If you find a site, note it in your spreadsheet: the pitch changes from building a website to adding it to the listing.

Either way, you have something true to open with: a business without a website, or a listing that doesn't point to the one it has.

Put the established businesses first. Ask chat to "sort by Review Count, highest first": a business with many reviews has steady customers and no website to send them to. Rows with no reviews go to the bottom.

Keep the columns a call needs, such as "Only Business Name, Category, Phone, Address and Review Count", then download the list as Excel. The results page can't add columns, so add Called on and Notes columns in your spreadsheet.

Open each call with what the row shows: the listing, its reviews and the missing website. Getting your first client covers what to say next, how to keep track and when to follow up.

The same list suits other offers. The businesses with few reviews might want help with local SEO, and selling to the businesses near you shows other ways to work a call list.

Most problems come from the search, a setting or a filter. This is what to change for each.