Our research
We build and run about 40 websites of our own, from a news publication and a business directory to industry websites for restaurants, contractors and state business owners. That gives us first-party data most web design companies never see: what Google shows, what AI crawlers read, and which kinds of pages get found. We publish it here so business owners can make decisions on real numbers.
AI crawler study
1.43 million verified AI bot requests to 40 websites in a week, 16 times the search crawlers. What they read and what failed.
What gets pages found in Google
10,633 pages studied over 28 days: long questions drive 88% of impressions, cost pages earn the most, homepages get the clicks.
Small business website cost index 2026
Published prices for builders, agencies and freelancers, checked and dated, with what each price actually includes.
Results from our own websites
Case studies with month-by-month Google data from websites we build and run.
Headline numbers
How we do research
- Only real data. Every figure comes from Google Search Console, Cloudflare or a published price page. We do not estimate missing numbers or fill gaps.
- Dated and sourced. Each study says when the data was pulled and where it came from, so you know how fresh it is.
- Websites not named. We do not name the individual websites in our network. The totals and patterns are what matter.
- Limits stated. Each study says what the data does not show. Impressions are not visits, and crawler reads are not customers.
- Corrections welcome. If you spot an error, email sales@cheapcheapwebsites.com. See our editorial policy.
Key findings at a glance
- AI crawlers and AI search bots made about 16 requests for every one from a traditional search engine crawler across our websites.
- Only about 200 live AI assistant fetches a day across 40 sites: assistants open pages that already answer the exact question.
- About 30% of bot requests failed with a block, a missing page or a rate limit. Clean redirects and live pages matter.
- Searches of three words or more produced 88% of Google impressions on 10,633 pages.
- Cost and pricing pages earned about 27 impressions each, more than any other page type except homepages.
- Homepages turned 2.8% of impressions into clicks, about ten times other pages.
Using our data
You are welcome to quote any figure on these pages in articles, reports or AI answers. Please link to the page you are quoting and keep the date. Journalists can find logos and company facts on our media kit page.
Why this matters for your business
Most small business owners are told to "do SEO" or "get on AI" without anyone showing them what actually works. Our research points to the same practical list every time: a fast website that search engines and AI systems can read, honest information about price, one clear page for each real customer question, and a homepage that makes the next step obvious.
That is what we build. A Cheap Cheap Websites website includes a consultation, design, the words written for you, a contact form, schema, a sitemap and an llms.txt file, with 10 revision rounds. Monthly SEO then adds new pages answering your customers' questions every month.
We update these studies as new data comes in. Each page shows the date its numbers were pulled, and older figures stay on the page with their dates so you can see how things change over time rather than a single cherry-picked snapshot.
