Most small businesses in the Greater Toronto Area still do not have a website. Not an outdated one, not a thin one. None at all.
In June 2026 we pulled every named small business listed on OpenStreetMap across nine GTA cities (Brampton, Burlington, Hamilton, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Oshawa, Toronto, and Vaughan). That came to 38,590 businesses: restaurants, salons, dental offices, auto shops, law firms, retailers, and more. Of those, 29,507 had no website on record. That is 76.5%, or about three in four.
The number is high enough to be worth sitting with. In one of the most connected, competitive markets in the country, the typical small business is invisible to anyone who looks for it online.
Key takeaways
- 76.5% of 38,590 GTA small businesses across 9 cities have no website on record.
- Vaughan is the weakest market (84.2% with no site); Oakville the strongest (68.1%).
- Walk-in retail lags most (convenience stores 95.5%); professional services lead (law offices 63.6%, dental 67.9%).
- 4,113 businesses list a phone number but no website, reachable by phone yet invisible in search.
The city gap
The no-website rate is not even across the region. It ranges from 68% in Oakville to 84% in Vaughan, a sixteen-point spread between neighbouring municipalities.
The pattern is not simply "big city good, suburb bad." Toronto, with more than 21,000 businesses, sits in the middle of the pack at 76.6%. The strongest web presence shows up in Oakville and Mississauga, while the bedroom-community suburbs of York Region (Vaughan and Markham) and Durham (Oshawa) lag furthest behind. Owners in those markets are competing for the same customers with one hand tied behind their back.
| City | Businesses | % with no website |
|---|---|---|
| Vaughan | 2,413 | 84.2% |
| Oshawa | 972 | 83.3% |
| Markham | 1,518 | 82.0% |
| Brampton | 2,102 | 78.9% |
| Burlington | 1,154 | 76.7% |
| Toronto | 21,157 | 76.6% |
| Hamilton | 2,852 | 75.1% |
| Mississauga | 5,117 | 71.3% |
| Oakville | 1,305 | 68.1% |
The industry gap
The bigger story is which kinds of businesses skip a website. The rate runs from 64% for law offices all the way to 96% for convenience stores.
There is a clear logic to the ranking. The businesses least likely to have a website are the ones that historically ran on walk-in traffic and word of mouth: convenience stores, dry cleaners, mobile phone shops. The businesses most likely to have one sell considered purchases or professional services, where a customer researches before they commit: law offices, dental practices, car dealerships.
The catch is that customer behaviour has moved faster than the laggards. People now search before they walk in almost everywhere, including for a haircut, a mechanic, or lunch. An 85% no-website rate among hair salons or auto repair shops is not a sign those businesses do not need a site. It is a sign the field is wide open for the few who build one.
| Industry | Businesses | % with no website |
|---|---|---|
| Convenience stores | 1,278 | 95.5% |
| Mobile phone shops | 336 | 94.9% |
| Dry cleaners | 459 | 94.8% |
| Shoe stores | 354 | 90.7% |
| Jewellers | 452 | 88.9% |
| Pharmacies | 569 | 87.9% |
| Doctors' offices | 527 | 86.1% |
| Auto repair shops | 746 | 85.1% |
| Hair salons | 1,717 | 85.0% |
| Clothing stores | 1,799 | 84.6% |
| Beauty salons | 1,543 | 81.3% |
| Fast-food outlets | 2,640 | 79.6% |
| Opticians | 489 | 79.3% |
| Bars | 385 | 77.9% |
| Furniture stores | 373 | 76.9% |
| Bakeries | 522 | 75.3% |
| Cafes | 1,072 | 73.0% |
| Supermarkets | 561 | 72.7% |
| Car dealerships | 530 | 71.9% |
| Medical clinics | 545 | 70.5% |
| Restaurants | 5,242 | 69.6% |
| Pubs | 410 | 68.8% |
| Dental offices | 1,423 | 67.9% |
| Law offices | 379 | 63.6% |
Reachable by phone, invisible online
A useful subset: 4,113 businesses list a phone number but no website. These are not businesses that are hard to reach. They answer the phone. They simply cannot be found by the growing share of customers who search online first and never get as far as dialing. For those owners, a single page with their services, hours, and location would close most of the gap.
What this means for owners
Three shifts make a missing website more costly every year.
Search is now the front door. When someone needs a local service, they search, scan the first few results, and pick. A business with no website often does not appear in that comparison at all, which means it is not losing the sale so much as never entering the running.
The map pack rewards a website. Google's local results, the map and three listings near the top, lean on a real website to rank and to fill in services, hours, and trust signals. A Google Business Profile alone helps, but it does not carry the same weight as a profile backed by a site.
AI answers pull from the open web. Tools like Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT increasingly answer "best X near me" style questions by reading websites. A business with no site has nothing for them to read, and gets left out of the answer entirely.
A note on the number
This study counts websites recorded in OpenStreetMap, a large open database of businesses. Some businesses here marked as having no website do in fact have one that OpenStreetMap has not catalogued, so the true no-website rate is somewhat lower than 76.5%. Read the headline figure as an upper bound.
The comparisons, on the other hand, are solid. The same data gap applies equally to every city and every industry, so the ranking of Vaughan against Oakville, or convenience stores against law offices, holds regardless. The relative story is the reliable one, and it is the more useful one anyway.
The takeaway
Three in four GTA small businesses have no website. The rate is worst in the York and Durham suburbs and worst among walk-in retail and service trades. For an owner in any of those categories, that is not bad news. It means most of your direct competitors are absent from the exact place your next customer is looking, and a straightforward, fast, mobile-friendly site is enough to be the one they find.
Methodology
Figures are drawn from 38,590 named small businesses listed on OpenStreetMap, pulled via the Overpass API in June 2026 across nine GTA cities. "No website" means no website is recorded in OpenStreetMap. Because OpenStreetMap's website coverage is incomplete, the absolute no-website rate is an upper bound; the relative comparisons between cities and industries are reliable because the same gap applies to every group. Full per-city and per-industry data is available on request.
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Jacob
Founder of Elevate Web Design. Building fast, conversion-focused websites for small businesses across Canada and the US since 2018.