We Analyzed 3,829 Tree Service Websites: Here's How Fast They Really Are

When someone pulls up a tree service website on their phone and it takes forever to load, they don't wait. They hit back and call the next company. We ran Google PageSpeed Insights on 3,829 tree service websites across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The results paint a picture of an industry that's significantly underperforming on the web, especially on mobile, where the majority of customers are actually searching.

The Headline Numbers

Across nearly 4,000 sites, the national mobile median score is 60 and the desktop median is 80. For context, Google considers anything below 50 "poor," 50–89 "needs improvement," and 90+ "good."

That means the typical tree service website lands squarely in the "needs improvement" zone on mobile and just barely clears it on desktop.

Read that mobile number again: only 6% of tree service websites score "good" on mobile. One in four scores "poor." The vast majority — nearly 70% — are stuck in the middle, loading slowly enough to frustrate users but not so badly that anyone's sounding the alarm.

To put a finer point on it: just 74 sites out of 3,829 scored a perfect 100 on mobile. That's less than 2%. On the other end, 110 sites scored below 30 on mobile — effectively unusable on a phone. And 225 sites scored "poor" on both mobile and desktop, meaning the experience is bad no matter how someone finds them.

Why Mobile Matters More for Tree Service

Think about when someone searches for a tree service. It's rarely a planned Tuesday afternoon at the office. It's after a storm knocked a limb onto the driveway. It's a Saturday morning when they notice the oak in the backyard is leaning toward the house. It's urgent, and they're searching from their phone.

The Mobile–Desktop Gap

One of the most striking findings is the consistent gap between mobile and desktop performance. The national median drops 20 full points from desktop (80) to mobile (60), and the average gap across all 3,829 sites is 16.1 points.

But averages hide the extremes. The largest single gap we found was 63 points — a site scoring 32 on mobile and 95 on desktop. We found 31 sites that managed a "good" desktop score (90+) while simultaneously scoring "poor" (<50) on mobile. These sites look fine when you check them on a laptop, but they fall apart on the phones customers are actually using.

Only 20% of sites with a good desktop score also have a good mobile score. A desktop pass is not a mobile pass.

An interesting counterpoint: 393 sites — about 10% — actually scored higher on mobile than desktop. That's unusual and suggests some developers are specifically prioritizing mobile performance, likely through mobile-first builds or aggressive optimization. It's a small minority, but it shows the gap is reversible.

State-by-State: Who's Leading and Who's Lagging

On mobile, the spread between the best and worst performing states is 14 points. Vermont and Massachusetts lead with a mobile median of 66, while Utah trails at 52. On desktop, Louisiana and Montana lead at 85 while Delaware and D.C. trail at 70 and 69. Vermont is an interesting case — first on mobile but dropping to 8th on desktop.

The Perfect Score Club

Out of 3,829 sites, 72 scored a perfect 100 on both mobile and desktop. That's less than 2% of the industry — but it proves it's possible. These sites tend to share common traits: lightweight page weight, minimal third-party scripts, modern image formats, and often a static or semi-static architecture rather than a bloated CMS theme.

What's notable is how tightly correlated perfect scores are. Of the 74 sites that hit 100 on mobile, 72 also hit 100 on desktop. At the top end of performance, mobile and desktop converge. It's only in the messy middle — the 50s, 60s, and 70s — where the gap between the two widens.

The takeaway: if you get mobile right, desktop almost always follows. But the reverse isn't true. Building for desktop and hoping mobile falls in line fails 80% of the time in this dataset.

What's Dragging Scores Down

While PageSpeed Insights measures many factors, the usual suspects in the tree service space tend to be:

Oversized images. Most sites serve uncompressed images without modern formats like WebP or AVIF — a single unoptimized hero image can add 2–3 seconds to load time.

Heavy themes and page builders. Multipurpose WordPress themes load dozens of unused CSS and JavaScript files on every page, trading performance for visual flexibility.

Third-party scripts. Chat widgets, review aggregators, tracking pixels, social embeds — it's common to see 15–20 third-party scripts loading before the main content even paints.

No caching or CDN. Basic shared hosting with no content delivery network and minimal browser caching means even repeat visitors get a slow experience.

What This Means for Your Tree Service Business

Speed is a real competitive advantage. When the vast majority of the industry is stuck in the "needs improvement" zone on mobile, a fast-loading site gives your visitors a noticeably better experience than what they'll get from almost anyone else. That translates directly into more calls.

Template sites are part of the problem. Many of the sites in the 50–65 range share a common origin: off-the-shelf templates or budget page builders. They look fine visually, but under the hood, they're loading far more code than necessary. A performance-optimized build can look just as good while loading in half the time.

How to Check Your Own Score

You can test your site for free right now. Go to pagespeed.web.dev, enter your URL, and see where you land. Pay attention to the mobile score — that's the one that reflects what your customers actually experience.

If you're scoring below 50 on mobile, your site is actively hurting your ability to win new business. If you're in the 50–70 range, there's meaningful room for improvement. And if you're above 90, you're in rare company — ahead of 94% of the tree service websites we tested.

The Bottom Line

A mobile score of 90+ means your site loads fast enough that visitors never think about the wait. Even pushing from 60 to 80 represents a real improvement in how your site feels to use — and that translates directly into more calls and fewer people bouncing to a competitor.

If your website isn't performing the way it should, we can help. We specialize in building fast, high-converting websites for service businesses — and we have the data to prove the difference it makes. Book a free consultation and we'll show you exactly where your site stands and what it would take to fix it.

Methodology

We compiled a dataset of 3,829 tree service websites across all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., sourced from Google search results for tree-service-related queries. Each site was tested using the Google PageSpeed Insights API, which returns both mobile and desktop performance scores on a 0–100 scale based on Lighthouse audits. Only sites returning valid scores for both mobile and desktop were included in the analysis. State-level statistics (median, mean) were calculated from all qualifying sites within each state. Data was collected in 2026.