4 in 10 of the Twin Cities’ busiest home-service websites fail Google’s speed test.
We measured 563 websites belonging to roofers, plumbers, HVAC companies and other home-service businesses across the Twin Cities. Google publishes a speed record from real visitors only for the busier ones: 173 of them. 74 fail it.
What real visitors actually got
Google keeps a rolling 28-day record of how a website performed for real people using Chrome. It calls the three measurements Core Web Vitals: how fast the main content appears, how quickly the page responds to a tap, and whether the page jumps around while it loads. A site passes when at least three out of four visits meet Google's standard on each one.
All three checks
173 sites- Pass every check9957%
- Fail at least one7443%
Loading is where most of them fall down. On 52 of the 173 sites, more than a quarter of visits waited longer than Google's 2.5 second standard for the main content to appear. At the middle site of the group, three out of four visits saw it within 2.0 seconds.
How fast the main content appears
173 sites- Good12170%
- Needs improvement4425%
- Poor85%
Whether the page jumps while loading
173 sites- Good14282%
- Needs improvement2514%
- Poor63%
How quickly it responds to a tap
104 sites- Good9894%
- Needs improvement66%
- Poor00%
Google had enough taps to judge this on 104 of the 173 sites.
Most sites are too small for Google to measure
390 of the 563 websites have no published record. Google only reports on a site once enough people have visited it, so for 69% of these businesses there is no measurement of what their visitors experience.
For those we ran Google's own PageSpeed test instead, which loads the page on a simulated mid-range phone over a slow connection. 373 could be tested and 17 could not. The middle score was 59 out of 100.
Google's performance score on a simulated phone
373 sites- Good, 90 to 100236%
- Needs improvement, 50 to 8926471%
- Poor, under 508623%
A lab test is a stress test. It is harsher than most real visits, so these figures should not be compared with the real-visitor ones above.
The count for each trade
Sites with a real-visitor record, and how many pass all three checks.
| Trade | Measured | Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Electricians | 16 | 7 |
| Garage door companies | 14 | 7 |
| HVAC contractors | 29 | 20 |
| Landscaping companies | 19 | 12 |
| Painting contractors | 8 | 5 |
| Pest control | 17 | 10 |
| Plumbers | 31 | 20 |
| Remodeling contractors | 14 | 6 |
| Roofing contractors | 21 | 12 |
| Window and siding contractors | 19 | 8 |
Listed alphabetically, not ranked. Each group is small, so a difference of a few sites between two trades is not a finding. A business listed under two trades is counted in both.
The website is where the advertising lands
A home-service business pays to be found: search ads, a television commercial, a truck wrap with a web address on it. Whatever brought the person, the next thing they do is open the website on their phone. If the page is still loading when they give up, the money that brought them there is spent and nothing came of it.
Google also uses these same measurements as one of the signals for how it ranks pages. A slow site is asking for the click and making it harder to get.
How we measured, and the limits
- Which businesses
The ones Google Maps returned for 10 home-service trades in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Bloomington, Plymouth, Woodbury: 50 searches and 835 listings, which came to 563 separate business websites. Directory and social pages were left out.
- Real visitors
For each website we asked Google's Chrome UX Report for its record, on October 13, 2026. It covers the 28 days before, with phones and computers together. Google publishes one only when enough Chrome users have visited, and 173 sites had one.
- The lab test
The home pages of the other 390 were run through Google's PageSpeed Insights on its simulated phone. 373 produced a score. 17 could not be tested.
- What "fail" means
A site fails when fewer than three in four visits meet Google's "good" standard on any one of its Core Web Vitals. That is Google's own pass mark, not ours.
The limits. Google Maps shows the more prominent businesses first, so this sample leans toward them, and a wider one could look different. The real-visitor record covers a whole website and the lab test covers its home page, and both were taken on one date. No business is named, here or anywhere else.
Trades covered: electricians, garage door companies, hvac contractors, landscaping companies, painting contractors, pest control, plumbers, remodeling contractors, roofing contractors, window and siding contractors.
Sources: the Chrome UX Report and PageSpeed Insights, both published by Google. Questions about the data: info@wearelaunchmedia.com.
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