1. Many businesses send customers nowhere
Of the 2,399 businesses in the sample, 38% show no website on their Google Maps listing, and another 5% link to Instagram, a delivery app or another platform instead of a site of their own. A customer who wants prices, a menu or opening hours has to leave the listing and look somewhere else.
Of the sites that are listed, 1 in 9 is broken. Tapping the link leads to a domain that no longer exists, a security warning or an error page. What broke:
Share of the 130 broken links. A domain that no longer resolves is the most common cause, often because it was not renewed, while the old address stays on Google.
2. City by city
| City | No website listed | Listed site broken | No Arabic version | No WhatsApp link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dubai | 60% | 15% | 70% | 50% |
| Abu Dhabi | 44% | 14% | 58% | 55% |
| Riyadh | 43% | 9% | 26% | 55% |
| Jeddah | 40% | 8% | 31% | 53% |
| Kuwait City | 24% | 13% | 51% | 68% |
| Doha | 19% | 8% | 68% | 64% |
The language gap splits the region. In Riyadh and Jeddah most sites offer Arabic. In Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi most do not, even though Arabic is the official language in all three.
3. What the working sites are missing
Across the 1,049 sites that loaded, these are the basics we checked for, most often missing first:
The WhatsApp gap stands out. For businesses that take enquiries on WhatsApp, 58% of homepages give no one-tap way to start one, and 46% have no tap-to-call number. Missing business schema (62%) means Google has to guess the business type, hours and location instead of reading them.
4. Speed on a phone
We ran Google's own PageSpeed test (mobile) on a random sample of 384 working sites. The median performance score is 60 out of 100. 22% score under 50, and only 8% reach 90 or above.
Largest Contentful Paint, the moment the main content appears, has a median of 6.1 seconds. Google counts under 2.5 seconds as good: 13% of sites manage it, while 68% take longer than 4 seconds.
Where Google has real-visitor data for a site (25% of those tested), we used it. Otherwise the figure comes from Google's lab test on a mid-range phone.
5. By sector
| Sector | No website listed | Listed site broken | No Arabic version | No business schema | Median speed score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Travel agency | 36% | 20% | 62% | 75% | 65 |
| Beauty salon | 52% | 19% | 65% | 70% | 64 |
| Interior design company | 20% | 13% | 72% | 57% | 67 |
| Real estate agency | 38% | 11% | 56% | 64% | 66 |
| Restaurant | 50% | 11% | 63% | 75% | 58 |
| Abaya shop | 54% | 11% | 27% | 38% | – |
| Dental clinic | 33% | 10% | 36% | 65% | 56 |
| Car rental | 44% | 7% | 54% | 68% | 53 |
| Furniture store | 47% | 6% | 48% | 48% | 57 |
| Law firm | 10% | 5% | 37% | 60% | 60 |
6. What the sites are built on
Share of working sites, top eight shown. Detected from each homepage's code.
What to check on your own site this week
- Tap the “Website” button on your own Google Maps listing, on your phone. Does it open, over HTTPS, on the right page?
- Check when your domain renews, and that the card on file is current. A domain that no longer resolves was the top cause of broken links.
- Put a WhatsApp button and a tap-to-call number where a phone visitor sees them without scrolling.
- If your customers speak Arabic, give them an Arabic version, not a translate widget.
- Add business schema (type, address, hours, phone) so Google reads your details instead of guessing.
- Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Under 50 is costing you customers.
Or run our free website audit. It checks most of the above and shows what to fix first.
How we did it
- Sample: the first 40 Google Maps results for 10 searches (restaurant, dental clinic, real estate agency, car rental, beauty salon, furniture store, law firm, travel agency, interior design company, abaya shop) in each of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha, Kuwait City. 2,399 listings in total, collected on 2026-09-18.
- Websites: the website each listing shows. Sites shared by several listings (branches of one business) were checked once: 1,232 unique sites. Sites that blocked automated visits were left out of the broken count.
- Checks: each homepage was loaded as a phone would load it and checked for the items above. “Arabic version” means Arabic content on the homepage, an Arabic page link, or hreflang tags.
- Speed: Google PageSpeed Insights, mobile, performance only, on a random sample of 384 working sites.
- Limits: homepages only; Google Maps results reflect what Google shows for each search, not every business in a city. Figures are rounded.
Using these numbers
You are welcome to quote this research with a link to this page. Cite as: Zerak, “State of Gulf Business Websites 2026”, zerak.io, September 2026. Journalists can reach us at hello@zerak.io for the breakdowns.