On 2026-10-26 we ran our homepage check on the websites of 9 pest control services in Honolulu, found through a Google Maps search: open businesses with a website, five or more reviews, and a rating of 3.5 or better. Seven of the nine sites loaded. Two refused the automated check, so every count below is of the 7 that did.
The check reads what Google reads: the title tag, the description, the main heading, images and their alt text, business markup, the sitemap, analytics, and Google's PageSpeed test for phones. No business is named. "One site" or "a company we checked" is as specific as it gets.
What the counts show
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| No Google Analytics | 4 of 7 |
| Title tag over 60 characters | 2 of 7 |
| Description over 160 characters | 2 of 7 |
| No main heading | 1 of 7 |
| More than one main heading | 3 of 7 |
| No business markup | 2 of 7 |
| At least one image with no alt text | 6 of 7 |
| Old year in footer | 2 of 7 |
| Speed score under 50 | 4 of 7 |
Two numbers in that table stand out. Four of the seven sites count nothing: no Google Analytics, no Tag Manager, no record of how many people arrived from search or whether anyone called. And four of the seven load slowly enough on a phone that Google's own tool marks them in red.
The basics these sites got right
This was the tidiest set of sites we have checked in Honolulu so far. Every one of the seven has a title tag. Every one has a description. Every one has a sitemap, the file that tells Google which pages exist, and every sitemap is current: the newest date in each file falls between 2026-07-25 and 2026-10-26. Not one site has gone silent on Google for a year.
Five of the seven run on WordPress and one on Wix, and the builders' defaults deserve some of the credit. The point of this article is what the defaults do not cover. A site can have every basic in place and still be slow on a phone, invisible in image search, and counting nobody.
Titles and descriptions that run long
The title tag is the blue headline a searcher sees in a Google result. Google cuts a title at about 60 characters, so a longer one ends mid-word. Two of the seven titles ran long; the longest was 70 characters. The shortest across all seven was 31.
Descriptions had the same shape. All seven sites have one, but two run past 160 characters, which is about where Google cuts a description. The longest was 278 characters, long enough that a searcher sees barely half of it.
Neither cut-off decides whether a site appears in results. Both decide what a searcher actually reads, and a line that ends mid-sentence tells that searcher less than one that fits. The snippet preview tool shows how any page's title and description look in a result before Google trims them.
Headings and business markup
One site has no main heading at all. Three have more than one. Google uses the H1 to understand what a page is about, and one clear heading answers that question while several competing headings leave Google to guess.
Business markup is structured data that states the business type, address, and hours in a format Google reads directly instead of inferring from the page. Two of the seven sites have none. For a service business that lives on "near me" searches, that is a plain statement of where you work left unsaid.
Half the photos are invisible to search
The seven homepages carry 156 images between them. Eighty-six have no alt text. That is 55 percent, more than half of everything these sites show.
Alt text is the caption Google reads in place of a photo, because Google cannot see the photo itself. A blank image is invisible to search. Six of the seven sites have at least one blank image, and the worst case is total: one site has 45 images on its homepage and all 45 are blank.
Pest control sites lean on photos: the truck, the crew, the before and after of a treated home. On these sites, more than half of that proof does nothing for search. The image alt check lists which images on any homepage are blank, with no email or account needed.
Slow on a phone, where the customer is
We ran Google's PageSpeed test on all seven sites. The phone scores, lowest to highest: 16, 31, 40, 48, 51, 51, 65. The median is 48. Four of the seven score under 50, which Google marks in red as poor.
Most people who search for pest control do it on a phone, often standing in the kitchen looking at the problem. A score of 16 means that person waits while the page assembles itself. Google measures that wait and uses it when deciding which sites to show. There is more on what the score means and what moves it in what a speed score under 50 means.
The same tool runs its own SEO check, and the seven sites scored between 85 and 100 on it. Three scored a perfect 100 while still missing analytics, business markup, or alt text on dozens of images. That check does not look at any of those, so a perfect score there and most of the problems in the table above fit on the same site at the same time.
Small signals of a site running unattended
Two of the seven sites show an old year in the footer: 2022 on one, 2023 on the other. A visitor may never notice. But a footer three or four years behind is one more small signal that nobody has looked at the site in a while, on pages that otherwise do stay current.
Four sites counting nothing is the larger version of the same problem. Without analytics there is no record of how many people arrived, what page brought them, or whether the site produced a single call. Every other fix on this list becomes guesswork, because nothing measures whether it worked.
What these add up to
The pattern on these seven sites is not neglect. It is a checklist finished halfway: titles, descriptions, and sitemaps in place, while the pages load slowly on phones, 86 photos say nothing to search, and four owners have no way to know any of this is happening.
The free homepage check shows where any site stands on every check above in about ten seconds. For the full picture, including the Google listing, reviews, speed, and competitors, the free audit covers all of it.