01 · Cost
How much does a website cost in 2026?
Sourced price ranges for builders, freelancers and agencies, what drives cost, red flags in a quote, and a budget table.
Guides
Guides for owners who want straight answers
Guides
Website and search guides from Stewart Code
These guides answer the questions owners of service businesses ask most about websites, Google and AI search. Each one is written to be useful without hiring anyone. Every number links to its source and carries a date, and each guide says where the evidence is thin.
02 · Contractors
The contractor website checklist: 25 things that win jobs
Phone-first pages, quote forms, license and reviews, Google Business Profile and speed, each checkable on your own phone.
03 · Local search
Google Business Profile: a setup guide for service businesses
Eligibility, name, categories, service areas, posts and reviews, following Google's own rules, with links to its help pages.
04 · AI search
How a local business gets mentioned by ChatGPT and Google's AI answers
What Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity say about how their AI finds websites, and what is still unproven.
How we write these
How our guides are sourced and checked
Each guide is written by Shaun Patrick Stewart. Market numbers come from the published source linked beside them, with the date it was published or the date we read it. Google's rules are quoted from Google's own help and documentation pages. When something is a common belief rather than a documented fact, we say so. When a source changes, we update the guide and its date.
Words you don't recognize are explained in the glossary.
Next step
Put the guide to work on your own site.
Run the free X-ray to see which of these fixes your site needs, or book a call and we'll go through them with you.