We Searched Google Maps for Plumbers in Three Countries. Here Is What We Found.

In Leeds, roughly 1 in 2 plumbers listed on Google Maps have no working website of their own. In San Antonio, Texas, that drops to about 1 in 8. In Bangkok, Thailand, it climbs to 9 in 10. We did not estimate these figures: we ran a live query against Google's Places API, the same data source that powers Google Maps and Google Business Profile, and counted the results directly.

This post explains exactly what we searched, how we defined "no website", and what the numbers mean for anyone selling web design or digital services to local businesses.

Why we ran this research

Fludi Leads is built on a straightforward premise: there are more local businesses with no website than most people realise, and the gap is measurable before you spend a penny on outreach. Every quote a customer runs on the platform produces a real count of qualifying businesses in their chosen area, pulled live from Google's data. That count is always higher than people expect. We covered the basic method for finding these businesses in an earlier post; this piece takes that same method further to see what the numbers actually look like across different markets.

We wanted to test that premise across different markets, not just the UK towns where most of our customers search, to see whether the opportunity is genuinely global or a quirk of smaller British markets.

How we ran the search

We used the Google Places API (New) to search for "plumber" in three cities: Leeds in the UK, San Antonio in Texas, and Bangkok in Thailand. We chose plumbers because the trade is universal across all three markets, the businesses tend to be small and owner-operated, and "plumber" is a search term that produces consistent results across different countries on Google Maps.

For each city we pulled up to three pages of results (20 per page, up to 60 per location) using a 30 kilometre search radius. Each business returned was classified as one of four types:

• No website: no URL listed on the Google Business Profile at all
• Social page only: the URL listed goes to a Facebook, Instagram, or trade directory page rather than a dedicated website
• Dead or parked site: the URL listed resolves to an error, a parked domain, or a completely different business
• Working website: the URL leads to a live site belonging to the business

We checked every URL that appeared to have a website with a HEAD request to confirm it was actually reachable. Businesses marked as permanently closed were excluded. Everything else was included regardless of review count or rating.

Total results: 51 businesses across three cities. Total cost to run the research: $0.11 USD (roughly 9p) in Google API charges.

What we found

Leeds, UK: 47% have no proper web presence

Leeds returned 15 plumbers. Seven of them, just under half, had no proper web presence of any kind. The breakdown inside that group was the most interesting part of the Leeds data: five of the seven had a website URL listed on their Google profile, but the site was dead, parked, or redirecting somewhere else entirely.

That means the majority of the "no website" cases in Leeds are not businesses that never had a site. They are businesses that once paid for one, let it lapse, and are now sitting on a dead URL that still shows on Google Maps. For a web designer making contact, that is a different and arguably easier conversation. You are not introducing the idea of having a website. You are offering to fix something they already know is broken.

San Antonio, USA: 13% have no proper web presence

San Antonio returned 16 plumbers. Two had no proper web presence: one with no site listed at all, one with a dead URL. The US market is measurably more digitally mature at this level, which aligns with what most web designers working across both markets tend to report.

That said, 13% is not zero. In a city the size of San Antonio, with hundreds of plumbers operating across the metro area, a 13% gap still represents a meaningful number of businesses. And the 87% who do have websites are not necessarily well-served by them: website quality, local SEO, and Google Business Profile completeness are separate problems that our research did not measure.

Bangkok, Thailand: 90% have no proper web presence

Bangkok returned 20 plumbers. Eighteen of them had no proper web presence. Nine had no website listed at all. Seven had only a Facebook or Line page standing in for one. Two had dead or parked URLs. Just two businesses out of 20 had a working website.

The 90% figure reflects something broader than individual businesses making poor decisions. In many Southeast Asian markets, Facebook and Line function as the primary online business presence, and a Google Maps listing with a social link is considered sufficient. The concept of a dedicated website as a prerequisite for a legitimate business is simply less established than it is in the UK or US. That makes Bangkok a striking data point, but the same pattern would likely hold across much of Southeast Asia.

What this means for web designers

The gap exists everywhere, but the size of it, and the nature of it, varies significantly by market.

In the UK, the dead website problem is as significant as the no-website problem. Roughly a third of UK plumbers in our Leeds sample had a listed website that no longer worked. These businesses have already demonstrated a willingness to invest in a website. They are not resistant to the idea. They just need someone to show up and offer a replacement. If you're making that call yourself, the free cold call script generator has an objection-ready script for exactly this scenario, and the free SEO Outreach Email Generator can flag a dead or broken site automatically if you'd rather open by email.

In the US, the gap is smaller but the market is larger. Even at 13%, the absolute number of plumbers in a city like San Antonio with no proper web presence runs to the dozens. Across a whole state the number is in the thousands.

In Southeast Asia, the gap is so large that the constraint is more likely to be budget and language than awareness. If you are a web designer operating internationally or targeting expat markets, the opportunity is significant, but the sales process looks different.

The limitation worth being honest about

Our samples are small. Fifteen to twenty businesses per city is enough to identify a clear pattern, and the pattern is consistent with what Fludi Leads customers find when they run their own searches, but it is not a statistically rigorous study of every plumber in each city. Google's Places API returns results ranked by relevance and prominence, not a complete census of every registered business. The figures above should be read as directional evidence, not precise market statistics.

If you want a more complete picture of your specific local market, the right approach is to run the search yourself and see the actual count before you decide anything.

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