Short answer: On October 28, 2026, AP Visible checked 280 independent shops in Aurora and eight nearby towns. 70% listed a website in their local directory. Of 171 working sites, 61% showed hours, 65% had tap-to-call, 40% linked to their Google listing and none had a Spanish version.
Quotable findings
Each line stands on its own. Please keep the base number (“of 171 working sites”) with any percentage.
- Of 280 independent small businesses in Aurora and eight nearby towns, 3 in 10 (83) had no website in their local directory listing.
- About 1 in 14 listed small business websites we could check didn't work (13 of 188), including 3 domains that had lapsed and now point to unrelated sites.
- None of the 171 working small business websites checked had a Spanish-language version.
- 61% of working small business websites showed opening hours (105 of 171), and 65% had a tap-to-call phone number (111 of 171).
- Only 40% of working small business websites linked to the business's Google listing or reviews (68 of 171).
- Just 44% of working websites had all four basics: a secure address, a phone-friendly layout, opening hours and tap-to-call (76 of 171). That's 27% of all 280 businesses.
- Half of the working websites took bookings, orders or reservations online (86 of 171): 63% of salons, 53% of restaurants and 31% of home-service businesses.
Sample at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Businesses | 280 independent businesses (chains and franchises excluded) |
| Types | Restaurants & cafes 99, salons & barbershops 86, home services 67, auto repair 28 |
| Towns | Aurora, Batavia, Montgomery, Naperville, Oswego, Plainfield, St. Charles, Shorewood, Warrenville (Illinois) |
| Where the list came from | Public chamber of commerce, downtown district and village/city business directories |
| What was checked | The website each directory listed, opened once in a phone-sized browser |
| Data collected | October 28, 2026 |
| Working sites scored | 171 (13 listed sites didn’t work; 8 couldn’t be verified and are left out) |
Limits to mention
- The sample covers businesses listed in public directories, not every business in these towns.
- “No website listed” isn’t the same as “no website”: in a hand check, 4 of 12 such businesses had one.
- Towns aren’t ranked. Differences between towns mostly reflect which directory each town’s businesses came from.
- Google Business Profiles weren’t checked; doing that at scale would require automated Google searches, which Google’s terms don’t allow.
- No business is named in the results.
Full study and method
Read the full write-up, with charts and a breakdown by type of business: How visible are Aurora’s small businesses online? (2026). The method and its limits are in the section How we did it. Anonymized data (no business names) is available on request.
How to cite
AP Visible, “How visible are Aurora’s small businesses online? (2026),” data collected October 28, 2026. https://apvisible.com/aurora-small-business-online-visibility-2026
Short form: “according to a 2026 check of 280 local businesses by AP Visible, an Aurora web design company.”
The Aurora population figure sometimes quoted with these results (41.6% Hispanic or Latino) comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s QuickFacts, not from this study.
Press contact
Priscilla Patel, CEO, AP Visible
Email: [email protected]
Phone or text: (331) 298-2109
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central
Company background: press kit