On September 29, 2026 we opened the websites of 80 small residential builders, 40 in Arizona and 40 in Florida, and for each one we wrote down what a visitor, or Google, would find wrong. They are custom home builders, builders of casitas and accessory dwelling units (shortened to ADU: a second small home on the same lot), infill and rebuild builders, builders of flood-elevated and coastal homes, and small multifamily builders. We name no business in this article.
The result, let's say it at once: 54 of the 80 websites had at least one fault that two readings confirmed, 28 in Arizona and 26 in Florida.
How did we read the 80 websites, and what do the counts mean?
The method has a limit, it must be said. We opened each website once and wrote one note per site (a few notes name two faults). Then we opened every website a second time on the same day and checked each note against the live page. Twelve first findings did not hold, and we dropped them: one footer, for example, read 1981 in the page code and showed the current year in a browser. Because each website received one note, every count in this article is a minimum: a site whose note records an old year in the footer was never checked for every other fault. The 80 websites came from two lists that our team compiled by hand, so the counts describe these 80 alone.
How does a home buyer begin the search?
The National Association of REALTORS, in its "2025 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report", surveyed buyers across the United States who bought between July 2023 and June 2024. For 43 percent of them, the first step was to look online for properties for sale, the most common answer. For 1 percent, the first step was to contact a builder or visit a builder's models. And 17 percent named a home builder among the information sources they used.
The survey covers buyers of new and existing homes together. When a buyer who began online arrives at a builder's website, the pages described below are what that person reads.
Which faults did we record, and on how many websites?
Faults confirmed on 80 small builder websites in Arizona and Florida, each read twice on September 29, 2026. One note per website, so each count is a minimum.
| Fault | Websites | Out of | |---|---|---| | Footer shows a year before 2026 | 14 | 80 | | No blog or news section linked from the homepage or the menu | 14 | 80 | | Homepage title or main heading names no service or no city (for example "Home", or the business name alone) | 12 | 80 | | Contact details that disagree between pages, or a contact link that points to a wrong or non-working number or address | 7 | 80 | | Pages at leftover or duplicate addresses (ending in "-copy", "-2" or "/blank-1", or a second contact page) | 6 | 80 | | No page for any city or area served, linked from the homepage | 5 | 80 | | Homepage has no description text for search results | 4 | 80 | | No phone number, or no street address, shown | 3 | 80 | | Site has five pages or fewer | 3 | 80 | | Homepage title and main heading aimed at a different service from the one the builder sells | 1 | 80 | | Security certificate error on the https address | 1 | 80 |
What happens when the homepage title says "Home"?
The title of a page appears as the clickable line of a Google result, which Google calls the title link. On 12 of the 80 websites, the homepage title or the main heading named no service or no city. One custom home builder's homepage title is "Home" followed by the business name. One luxury builder's title is the business name alone.
What does the lot owner see? If Google shows the title as written, a person searching for a custom home builder reads "Home" and an unfamiliar company name.
And Google? Its instruction is plain: "Avoid vague descriptors like "Home" for your home page". When it detects a problem with a title, the same page says, "we may try to generate an improved title link from anchors, on-page text, or other sources". So Google can write the line for you, from other text on the page.
Google's guide for site owners, called the SEO Starter Guide (SEO is search engine optimization, the work of making a website findable on Google), says a good title "is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page", and adds that it could include the business name and "the physical location of the business". For a builder: the service, the city, the name. Our article on rewriting page titles and descriptions shows the method. At Licheo, titles belong to the part of the service we call "We make it rank": making the site findable on Google and citable inside AI assistants such as ChatGPT.
What does Google show when the homepage has no description text?
Under the title, a Google result carries a short summary, which Google calls a snippet. A page can propose its own in a short text that search engines read and visitors never see, called a meta description. On 4 of the 80 websites, the homepage has none.
Google names two sources for the summary: "Google primarily uses the content on the page to automatically determine the appropriate snippet. We may also use descriptive information in the meta description element when it describes the page better than other parts of the content." A homepage with no description leaves only the first source, and the buyer reads whatever Google selects from the page.
For the fix, Google advises: "Use site-level descriptions on the main home page". The Starter Guide describes the meta description as "a succinct, one- or two-sentence summary of the page". For a builder, that summary says what you build, in which cities, and for whom. This, too, is "We make it rank".
Does an old year in the footer matter?
On 14 websites, the year printed at the bottom of the page is earlier than 2026. It reads 2025 on 4 of them, 2024 on another 4, 2023 on 2, and one website each shows 2022, 2021, 2019 and 2018.
The visitor who scrolls to the bottom reads a year that has passed, and the line gives no sign of whether the business still takes projects.
Google's Starter Guide lists being up to date among the qualities of useful content: "Check in on previously published content and update it as needed, or even delete it if it's not relevant anymore." None of the Google pages we opened mentions the year in a footer, so we claim no effect on ranking.
The fix is made once: the website prints the current year by itself. This belongs to "We build the website", the part of our service that rebuilds or fixes a site so that it is fast, modern and right on a phone.
Does a small builder need a blog?
Fourteen websites link no blog or news section from the homepage or the menu, which ties with the footer year as the largest count in our table. Naturally, a builder has no wish to become a publisher. Is a blog necessary?
The Starter Guide places one suggestion above all its others: "Creating content that people find compelling and useful will likely influence your website's presence in search results more than any of the other suggestions in this guide."
Consider a lot owner who types a question into Google before calling any builder: how long a permit takes in this city, or whether a casita is allowed on this lot. On a website with no articles, the builder has no page that answers.
The fix is a few pages, each answering one question that clients ask you on the phone, each kept up to date. This is again "We make it rank", and our free check looks for the same thing: question-and-answer content, and content that answers specific questions directly, are two of the seven points in its grade for AI assistants.
Why give each city you build in a page of its own?
Five websites link no page for any city or area served from the homepage. On one more, the homepage title and main heading aim at a different service: they say "General Contractor" and leave out both the custom homes and the ADUs the business builds.
A person in Mesa who searches for a casita builder in Mesa wants a page about casitas in Mesa. The Starter Guide explains how such a page gets found: "Google primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled" (crawling is Google's word for its program visiting a page). A city page therefore needs a link from the homepage or the menu.
One caution comes from Google's spam policies: among their examples of a practice Google calls doorway abuse is a set of pages aimed at specific cities that all send the visitor on to one page. So the fix is one page for each city where you have built, with content about that city alone: the projects you completed there and the permit office you dealt with. Our guide to service area pages for builders explains how to write them.
What is wrong with a page address ending in "-copy" or "/blank-1"?
On six websites, pages sit at leftover or duplicate addresses. One builder's About page has an address ending in "-copy/", and its projects page one ending in "-2/". Another builder's accessibility and terms pages sit at "/blank-1" and "/blank-2". Two builders each have two contact pages. The address is part of what a searcher reads: Google's Starter Guide says "Parts of the URL can be displayed in search results as breadcrumbs, so users can also use the URLs to understand whether a result will be useful for them" (a URL is the address of a page). An address that says "copy" or "blank" tells that person nothing useful about the page.
For the two contact pages, the guide has a direct passage. Of duplicates it says they "can be a bad user experience and search engines might waste crawling resources on URLs that you don't even care about". The same guide states that duplicate pages on your own website break none of Google's spam policies.
Google gives the fix in the same passage: "If you have multiple pages that have the same information, try setting up a redirect from non-preferred URLs to a URL that best represents that information." A redirect sends anyone who opens the old address to the right page automatically. Give each page a plain address that says what the page is, keep one copy of each page, and redirect the old addresses. This is "We build the website" again.
What happens when the phone number on one page differs from another?
Seven websites show contact details that disagree between pages, or a contact link that points to a wrong or non-working number or address. Three other websites show no phone number, or no street address.
On a coastal builder's website, the tap-to-call link dials a number one digit different from the number printed beside it. One "Email us" link points to an address that does not work. And one builder's machine-readable business details (text on the page written for search engines and AI assistants, called structured data) give a hosting server address as the website and as the email address.
Google's guidelines for the Business Profile, the listing a business keeps on Google Search and Maps, ask for consistency: "Represent your business as it's consistently represented and recognized in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding." And Google's page on its AI features lists, among the practices that remain worthwhile, "Making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page".
The fix: one phone number, one address and one email address, written identically on every page, in the machine-readable details and in the Business Profile. Then tap every link on a phone. Our Google Business Profile guide covers the listing. This is "We make it convert": each page tells a visitor what you do, why to trust you and what to do next, with a real way for the enquiry to reach you.
What does a lot owner see when the email is a Gmail address, or missing?
Email addresses shown on the same 80 websites, read on September 29, 2026.
| What the site shows | Websites | |---|---| | Email address on the website's own domain | 54 | | Free mail address (gmail.com on 9, aol.com, outlook.com and mac.com on 1 each) | 12 | | No email address displayed on the homepage or contact page (contact form only, or nothing) | 8 | | Company email on a domain different from the website's | 6 | | Total | 80 |
An address on the website's own domain shows that the business that owns the website also controls the mailbox. A free mail address cannot show this, because anyone can register one. One casita builder's only email address is on a mortgage company's domain. And on the 8 websites that display no address, the visitor who prefers to write has a form at most.
The Google pages we opened on titles, descriptions and AI features, and the Starter Guide, contain no mention of email, so we claim no effect on search. The fix is a mailbox on the domain the business already owns, shown on the contact page. It belongs to "We make it convert".
In what order should a builder fix these faults?
- Rewrite the homepage title: the service, the city, the business name.
- Write the homepage description in one or two sentences.
- Make the phone number, the address and the email address identical everywhere.
- Give each page a plain address, keep one copy of each page, and redirect the old addresses.
- Let the footer print the current year by itself.
- Add one page for each city where you have built, then one for each question clients ask.
On timing, the Starter Guide says: "Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months."
At Licheo this is one service with three parts (we build the website, we make it rank, we make it convert), for one flat monthly fee, month to month, with no contract; contact us for pricing. Our guide to marketing for home builders explains the approach, and two pages give more detail: the builder's website and search engine optimization for home builders.
To see where your own website stands, run the free Get Found Check. You enter your website address, and it reads the homepage, the domain settings and the security certificate. In under 60 seconds it returns a letter grade from A to F with a score out of 100, findings in six areas, three to five quick fixes, a comparison with up to four competitors, and a separate grade for readiness for AI assistants. It reads one page, so take the grade as a place to start.
Sources
- 2025 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report, National Association of REALTORS Research Group, 2025, accessed 29 September 2026.
- Influencing your title links in search results, Google Search Central, Last updated 2025-12-10, accessed 29 September 2026.
- Control your snippets in search results, Google Search Central, Last updated 2026-04-20, accessed 29 September 2026.
- SEO Starter Guide: The Basics, Google Search Central, Last updated 2025-12-10, accessed 29 September 2026.
- AI features and your website, Google Search Central, Last updated 2025-12-10, accessed 29 September 2026.
- Spam policies for Google web search, Google Search Central, Last updated 2026-08-28, accessed 29 September 2026.
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help, accessed 29 September 2026.
- Licheo review of 80 small builder websites in Arizona and Florida (40 in each state), each read twice on 29 September 2026; one note per website, kept only where the second reading confirmed it.