Why we give this away
We maintain Churches List, a public directory of American congregations. In July 2026 we counted every record in it: 237,225 of 334,555 congregations have no website at all. That is 70.9 percent.
The reason is almost never money. The fix that helps most is free and takes about ten minutes. The reason is that nobody in the organization is the person whose job it is, and nobody has written down what to do first.
So we wrote it down and built a tool that says which parts are already done. Both are open to any organization in any state. Neither asks for an email address.
Free, nationwide, no application
1. The web presence audit
Look up any of the 334,555 congregations in our directory and see exactly what a search engine can find today. The audit checks five things:
- Whether a website is on record
- Whether a verified Google Business Profile has been claimed
- Whether service or opening hours are published where a machine can read them
- Whether the street address is complete
- Whether map coordinates exist, without which a "near me" search cannot return you at all
You get a score, the specific gaps, and a comparison against your city, your state, and your tradition, so the result reads as a comparison rather than a verdict. It is free, instant, and requires no signup: run the audit.
2. The four step checklist
What to do about the gaps, in the order that pays:
- Claim the Google Business Profile. Free, roughly ten minutes, and it does not require a website. Among organizations that hold one, only 8.1 percent still lack a site. It is the step that pulls the rest along.
- Publish your times somewhere permanent. Six facts make a complete page: name, street address, times, a phone number with a name attached, one sentence on what to expect, and parking or access notes.
- Claim your directory listing. Most organizations already appear in public directories and can correct their own entry without owning a website.
- Name a person who answers. A working number with a name beats a designed homepage nobody maintains.
The full version, with the reasoning behind each step, is at Get your church found online. Written for congregations, but every step applies to any small nonprofit.
What these free tools do not cover
They cover what an organization can do on its own, which is most of what matters and none of what costs money. They do not include technical repair of a site that is broken, content work, Google Ad Grants setup, or anything that needs someone to sit down with your site for a day.
For that we run a separate program, and it is limited by geography because the work is done by hand.
Hands on help in Orange County
We take two Orange County 501(c)(3) organizations per quarter and do a fixed scope of work at whatever price fits the budget, including zero. No invoice follows and nobody chases you for payment later.
The scope: a technical and on page audit, direct fixes to the homepage, donation page and main program pages, Google Business Profile setup, and Google Ad Grants application guidance where the organization qualifies.
- Who qualifies: registered 501(c)(3), or equivalent such as a fiscally sponsored community project, serving Orange County or nearby Southern California
- Priority: small teams without an in house marketer
- Eligible: faith based missions, explicitly
- Not eligible: political campaigns
- Asked in return: a review, permission to publish results, and a link if you have somewhere to put one
Every application gets a personal reply within a few days, including a no, and a place on file for the next round. Details and the form are on our sister site: nonprofit SEO program.
Outside Orange County
The audit and the checklist are yours regardless of where you are, and they are the same advice we would give a paying client for the first hour of an engagement. If your organization needs more than that and you are outside Orange County, we work with clients nationally on normal commercial terms, month to month, with no long contract. Tell us what you need and we will say honestly whether it is worth paying us for or whether the free steps above will get you most of the way.
About us
Pinnacli has run search marketing since 2012, from Irvine, California. We maintain Churches List as a public reference, and the data on this page came out of maintaining it. The figures are counted from the production database and the underlying dataset is available under license, so anyone can check them.