Where our numbers come from.
Every figure on our site, the page it appears on, and the source behind it. We only use sources you can open and check: government agencies, the groups that set web standards, and research that explains how it was done.
Last checked
The figures
On About
- 36,207,130
small businesses in the U.S. ("more than 36 million")
Source 1: U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy
- 45.9%
of private-sector workers are employed by small businesses ("nearly half")
Source 1: U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy
- 77.9%
of new business locations were still open after one year, so about 1 in 5 closed
Source 2: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- 51.4%
of new business locations were still open after five years
Source 2: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- 54%
of small employers found paying operating expenses a challenge
Source 3: Federal Reserve Banks
- 50%
of small employers dealt with uneven cash flow
Source 3: Federal Reserve Banks
- 54%
of owners facing money problems used their own personal funds
Source 3: Federal Reserve Banks
- 57%
of small employers named reaching customers and growing sales as a challenge
Source 3: Federal Reserve Banks
On Get found on Google
- 3
main things Google says local results are based on: relevance, distance and prominence
Source 4: Google Business Profile Help
On What your website needs
- 2.5 seconds
or less: Google's target for Largest Contentful Paint (loading)
Source 5: web.dev (Google)
On Is your website accessible?
- 95.9%
of the top one million home pages had detected WCAG failures in 2026, up from 94.8% in 2025
Source 6: WebAIM (Utah State University)
- 56.1
detectable accessibility errors per home page, on average (2026)
Source 6: WebAIM (Utah State University)
- 83.9%
of those home pages had low-contrast text, the most common problem
Source 6: WebAIM (Utah State University)
- 53.1%
had images with no text description
Source 6: WebAIM (Utah State University)
- 51%
had form fields with no label
Source 6: WebAIM (Utah State University)
- 46.3%
had empty links
Source 6: WebAIM (Utah State University)
- 4.1%
the share of those pages without detected failures (full conformance is certainly lower)
Source 6: WebAIM (Utah State University)
- April 26, 2027
the ADA web deadline for state and local governments serving 50,000 people or more
Source 7: U.S. Department of Justice, ADA.gov
- April 26, 2028
the deadline for smaller governments and special districts
Source 7: U.S. Department of Justice, ADA.gov
- 4.5:1
the minimum contrast ratio WCAG asks for with normal-size text
Source 8: W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
On How fast should your website load?
- 2.5 seconds
Largest Contentful Paint: how fast the main content should appear
Source 5: web.dev (Google)
- 200 milliseconds
Interaction to Next Paint: how fast the page should respond to a tap or click
Source 5: web.dev (Google)
- 0.1
Cumulative Layout Shift: how little the page should jump around while loading
Source 5: web.dev (Google)
- 75%
of page visits should meet those targets (the 75th percentile)
Source 5: web.dev (Google)
On Why we build this way
- 50 ms
to make a good first impression, in the words of a 2006 study's title
Source 9: Lindgaard, Fernandes, Dudek and Brown, Behaviour & Information Technology 25(2), pp. 115-126
- 20%
of the words on an average web page is about how much people read (2008 research)
Source 10: Nielsen Norman Group (Jakob Nielsen)
- 57%
of page-viewing time went to the first screen, above the fold (2018 eyetracking research)
Source 11: Nielsen Norman Group (Therese Fessenden)
- 10%
more users lost by the BBC for every extra second its site took to load
Source 12: web.dev (Google)
- 8%
more sales for Vodafone after a 31% improvement in how fast its main content loaded
Source 12: web.dev (Google)
All sources
Including the ones our guides cite for rules and advice rather than numbers. If a source updates a figure, we update it here.
- Source 1: Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business, 2026
U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy · February 2026
- Source 2: Business Employment Dynamics: Establishment Age and Survival Data (Table 7)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Data to March 2025
- Source 3: 2026 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey
Federal Reserve Banks · March 2026
- Source 6: The WebAIM Million: The 2026 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages
WebAIM (Utah State University) · Data from February 2026
- Source 7: Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments
U.S. Department of Justice, ADA.gov
- Source 9: Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!
Lindgaard, Fernandes, Dudek and Brown, Behaviour & Information Technology 25(2), pp. 115-126 · March 2006
- Source 15: Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials
U.S. Federal Trade Commission · August 14, 2024
- Source 18: Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices
Google Search Central · Updated December 10, 2025
- Source 24: Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA
U.S. Department of Justice, ADA.gov · March 18, 2022
- Source 25: California Business and Professions Code, section 22575
California Legislative Information
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