Blog · Aug 3, 2026
Healthcare sites lead, ecommerce trails: what the industry data shows
Healthcare sites scored highest and ecommerce lowest, a 10-point gap that points to completeness, not technology.
Key takeaways
- Healthcare averaged 70.3 (1,157 sites), the highest of any identified industry. Ecommerce and retail averaged 60.1 (173 sites), the lowest.
- The whole range is about 10 points, so every industry has room to improve.
- The leaders describe their services fully, in text. That's a habit any business can copy.
The industry picture
| Industry | Average score |
|---|---|
| Healthcare | 70.3 |
| Automotive | 69.2 |
| Professional services | 69.1 |
| Home services | 68.6 |
| Real estate | 67.9 |
| Fitness | 67.5 |
| Hospitality | 65.1 |
| Personal care | 65.0 |
| Ecommerce and retail | 60.1 |
Industry could be identified for about four in ten scored sites, mostly from keyword matching, so read these as directional. The ecommerce sample (173 sites) is much smaller than healthcare (1,157), and the exact gap could move with a bigger sample.
What healthcare sites tend to do
We haven't tested why healthcare leads, but the pattern in the sites themselves is clear. Healthcare sites usually describe each service, list providers, show addresses, phone numbers and hours, and answer common questions such as insurance accepted and what to bring to a first visit. Many work with agencies or plugins that fill in titles and descriptions. The result reads like a reference document: who, what, where, how much and how to book. It is easy for an assistant to quote.
Why ecommerce trails
Online stores often have scale without substance. A catalog of 500 products can mean 500 near-identical pages: a name, a price, a photo and little else. Category pages say "Shop our collection," and the homepage is a carousel. Ecommerce also scored lowest on metadata in our data (68.3, versus 87.8 for healthcare). See why online stores score lowest on metadata.
What ecommerce owners can borrow
- Describe every product: what it is, who it's for, specs, materials and sizing, in at least two sentences.
- Write unique titles and descriptions for each page instead of one template.
- Answer buying questions: shipping, returns, care and sizing, the ecommerce version of "do you take my insurance?"
- Show complete contact details: address, phone, hours and returns address.
- Add Product structured data (name, price, availability).
What everyone else can learn
You don't need regulation to be thorough. Describe what you offer, answer what customers ask, and leave no field blank. Ask yourself whether a stranger could learn from your site alone what you do, where, for whom and at what cost.
About this data: 10,369 small business sites scored in October 2026. Industry was identified for about 4,000 sites, largely from keywords on the page. Averages are CrawlReady scores.