Cleaning Website Benchmarks by City: How Your Market Compares

A cleaning company owner in Austin launches a new website and wonders if it’s good enough. Meanwhile, a competitor in Charlotte with a worse site dominates their local market because the bar is so low nobody’s clearing it. Same industry, same services, completely different competitive dynamics.

When we audited 837 cleaning websites across 43 cities and 11 states, the city-level data told a story the national average (38 out of 100) obscures. Some markets have fierce online competition. Others are wide open. Knowing which one you’re in changes everything about your website strategy.

This post breaks down the benchmarks city by city — where the strongest cleaning websites are, where the weakest ones cluster, and what it takes to win in your specific market.

The spread between the best and worst markets is massive

The highest-scoring market in our dataset is Austin, TX with an average website quality score of 61 out of 100. The lowest is Charlotte, NC at just 22. That’s a 39-point gap between two major metro areas.

This gap matters because it determines how hard you need to work to stand out. In Austin, you need a genuinely strong website to compete. In Charlotte, a functional site with the basics — online booking, a pricing page, and trust signals — would put you in the top tier overnight.

Here’s how the five largest samples in our audit compare:

City	Sites Audited	Avg Score	Gap to National Avg (38)
Austin, TX	29	61	+23
Houston, TX	33	57	+19
Orlando, FL	43	47	+9
Raleigh, NC	35	26	-12
Charlotte, NC	41	22	-16

The Texas cities lead by a wide margin. Both Austin and Houston cleaning companies invest more in their online presence — more booking widgets, more pricing transparency, more dedicated service pages. The North Carolina markets trail significantly.

Texas cleaning companies set the standard

Austin and Houston are the two strongest markets in our dataset, and it’s not close. Austin averages 61 — the only city where the average site would score in the “good” range. Houston follows at 57.

What makes Texas different? The cleaning companies there are more likely to use modern booking tools, display pricing publicly, and build dedicated pages for each service they offer. The tech-forward culture in Austin likely plays a role — both business owners and their customers expect a polished digital experience.

If you’re a cleaning company in Austin, the competition is real. A score of 50 would put you below your market average. You need to aim for 70+ just to keep pace with the top performers. Check our Austin market report for the full breakdown.

Houston sits at 57 with 33 audited sites. The gap between Houston and Austin is smaller than you’d expect for a city of Houston’s size. What separates them is mainly service page depth — Austin sites tend to have more specialty pages (Airbnb cleaning, move-out cleaning, post-construction) while Houston sites often stop at the standard services.

North Carolina markets are wide open

Charlotte and Raleigh averaged 22 and 26 respectively. Those are the lowest averages among our top-sampled cities. In Charlotte, we audited 41 websites and the average was nearly 3x lower than Austin.

What does a score of 22 look like? It typically means: no online booking, no pricing page, no dedicated service pages, possibly no HTTPS, and minimal content. These sites are digital business cards — a logo, a phone number, maybe a paragraph about the company.

Austin cleaning websites score nearly 3x higher than Charlotte on average.

For a cleaning company in Charlotte or Raleigh, this is actually good news. The competition is weak. A site scoring 50 would put you in the top tier of the entire market. You don’t need to outspend anyone — you just need a website that actually converts.

Orlando sits in the middle — and it’s the most competitive

Orlando has the largest sample in our dataset at 43 audited sites, with an average score of 47. That’s 9 points above the national average of 38, putting it in a middle ground between the Texas and North Carolina markets.

What makes Orlando interesting is the sheer volume. More cleaning companies compete online there than in any other city we audited. The vacation rental and Airbnb market drives a lot of the demand — and the companies that serve short-term rentals tend to have better websites because platform hosts expect a professional online presence.

Orlando sites are more likely to have an Airbnb cleaning page and move-out cleaning page than the national average. But they still fall short on basics like booking widgets and pricing transparency. 74% of cleaning websites nationally lack online booking, and Orlando isn’t much better.

What a low market average means for your strategy

If your city’s average score is below 30, the competitive bar is almost on the ground. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Most of your competitors have websites that are essentially broken — no way to book, no prices, no trust signals, no dedicated service pages. A visitor comparing you to them will choose the site that looks professional and functional, regardless of reviews or years in business.

In a low-scoring market, the ROI of website improvements is massive. Adding a booking widget, a pricing page, and a few service pages can move you from average to dominant in your local search results. These aren’t expensive changes. They’re table stakes that your competitors are skipping.

The cleaning companies that figure this out first in low-scoring markets have a window of opportunity. Once competitors catch up — and they will — the advantage shrinks. Right now, in markets like Charlotte and Raleigh, the window is wide open.

What a high market average means for your strategy

If your city’s average is above 50, you can’t coast on the basics. Your competitors already have booking, pricing, and service pages. You need to differentiate on depth and quality.

In Austin, the top-scoring sites have extensive blog content, service area pages for every neighborhood they serve, and polished visual design. They’re investing in the details that move a site from 60 to 80. In markets where everyone has booking, the differentiator becomes speed, UX, and content.

If you’re in a high-scoring market and your website is below average, you’re losing leads to competitors with better sites every single day. The gap between a 40-scoring site and a 60-scoring site in Austin isn’t just cosmetic — it’s the difference between showing up on page one and being invisible.

The gap analysis that matters most

When we looked at the top 20 gaps across all 837 sites, the numbers were consistent everywhere. But the impact of each gap varies by market.

In a low-scoring market (avg below 30), fixing these gaps gets you immediate wins:

Online booking — 74% of sites are missing it nationally. In low-scoring markets, the rate is even higher
HTTPS — 69% don’t have it. This is a free fix that removes the “Not Secure” warning
Clickable phone number — 62% skip this. One line of HTML
CTA above the fold — 60% don’t have one. Add a clear call-to-action to your hero section

In a high-scoring market (avg above 50), these gaps separate good from great:

Dedicated service pages for deep cleaning, move-out, and Airbnb
Blog content with local relevance
Service area pages for surrounding cities
First-time customer offers that reduce friction

Phone number mismatches are a hidden problem

33% of cleaning websites — 274 sites — have a phone number on their website that doesn’t match their Google Business Profile. This isn’t just a user experience problem. It’s an SEO problem.

Google uses NAP consistency (name, address, phone) as a ranking signal for local searches. When your website says one number and your Google listing says another, Google’s confidence in your listing drops. In competitive markets, that inconsistency alone can push you below competitors who have their basics aligned.

We saw this problem across every city in our dataset, but it’s especially damaging in high-scoring markets where small ranking factors matter more. If you’re in Austin or Houston competing against sites that score 60+, a phone mismatch is an unforced error.

Analytics blindness affects one in three sites

36% of all sites — 301 companies — have no analytics installed. No Google Analytics. No tracking pixel. Nothing. They can’t see how many visitors they get, where they come from, or what pages they view.

Higher-scoring sites are far more likely to have analytics and schema — the tools that make improvement possible.

This is the equivalent of running a store without a cash register that counts sales. You can’t improve what you can’t measure. And in competitive markets, the companies that track their data are the ones that iterate and improve — while the ones running blind stay stuck.

Where to find your city’s data

We’ve published market reports for every city in our dataset. Each report breaks down the score distribution, gap analysis, and competitive positioning for that specific market.

If you want to see how your cleaning website stacks up against the local competition, start with your city’s market report. Then run through the homepage checklist to see which elements you’re missing.

The cleaning companies that win online aren’t always the best cleaners. They’re the ones with websites that make it easy to book, easy to trust, and easy to find. In most markets, that bar is still shockingly low. The question is whether you’ll raise it before your competitors do.