What we counted
Churches List is a public directory of American congregations. We maintain it, and in July 2026 we counted every record in it: 334,555 congregations across all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
237,225 of them have no website of any kind. That is 70.9 percent. Americans run more than a million searches a month for phrases like "churches near me," and seven in ten of the places they are looking for have nothing to arrive at.
The figures below were counted directly from the production database on July 31, 2026. Nothing here is an estimate or a projection.
The numbers
- 334,555 congregations counted
- 97,330 have a website, which is 29.1 percent
- 237,225 do not, which is 70.9 percent
- 11,363 hold a verified Google Business Profile, which is 3.4 percent
The spread by state is wider than the average suggests
South Carolina sits at 84.2 percent without a website. New Hampshire sits at 49.0 percent. Both describe the same country in the same month.
- Highest: South Carolina 84.2%, Mississippi 83.5%, West Virginia 83.3%, Tennessee 82.2%, Oklahoma 80.9%
- Lowest: New Hampshire 49.0%, Massachusetts 52.0%, Connecticut 52.9%, Colorado 55.2%, Arizona 56.1%
Every state above 79 percent is in the South, the Great Plains, or Appalachia. Every state below 58 percent is in New England, the urban Northeast, or the interior West.
Tradition separates congregations more than geography does
Among traditions with at least 5,000 congregations, the gap runs from 48.6 percent to 87.5 percent. Catholic parishes are the only large tradition where most are online, and the reason is structural rather than cultural: a parish belongs to a diocese, and dioceses build and pay for parish sites centrally. Where each congregation is responsible for its own infrastructure, most end up with none.
The finding that matters most for any nonprofit
Among the 11,363 churches holding a verified Google Business Profile, only 8.1 percent lack a website. Among all churches, 70.9 percent do.
That is the single strongest correlation in the data, and it is not about money or size. A congregation that has claimed one public record has almost always claimed the others. The organizations that are invisible are usually invisible everywhere at once, and the ones that fixed it started with the free thing.
This generalizes past churches. Any small nonprofit sitting on an unclaimed Google Business Profile is in the same position, and the fix costs nothing.
The free checklist
We wrote down what actually works, in the order that pays, and published it openly. Four steps, no budget, no developer, no application to anyone, valid in every state:
- Claim the Google Business Profile. Free, roughly ten minutes, and it is what answers a local search. It does not require a website.
- Publish service or program 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 the 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 checklist, with the reasoning behind each step, is at Get your church found online. It is free, it asks nothing in return, and you do not need to contact us to use it.
If you want a second pair of eyes
The checklist covers what an organization can do alone. Beyond that, we run a pay what you can program for nonprofits in Orange County: two 501(c)(3) organizations per quarter, at whatever price fits the budget, including zero. The scope is fixed: 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.
Faith based missions are eligible. Small teams without an in house marketer get priority. Political campaigns are the one exclusion. Details and the application form are on our sister site: nonprofit SEO program.
That program is limited to Orange County because the work is done by hand. The checklist above is not limited to anywhere.
Method and limits
Counted from the Churches List production database on July 31, 2026, across all 334,555 congregational records. Three limits worth stating plainly:
- A congregation counts as having a website if its record carries a non empty web address. We did not test whether every address still resolves, so the true share with a working site is somewhat lower, not higher.
- A social media page is not counted as a website. Organizations maintaining only a Facebook presence are counted as having none, so 70.9 percent is an upper bound on invisibility.
- Directory coverage is uneven between traditions. Traditions that do not maintain individually named public listings for each congregation are under represented, which is why we publish no per capita rankings alongside these figures.
The underlying dataset is available for research and commercial use, with a free 500 row sample and a per field data dictionary, on the Churches List dataset page. Anyone can check these numbers against it.
Why we publish this
Pinnacli has run search marketing since 2012, from Irvine, California. We maintain Churches List as a public reference, and the study above came out of maintaining it rather than out of a marketing plan. Publishing the checklist openly is the part of this work that helps the most organizations for the least money, which is the reason it is free and unrestricted.