The State of Website Governance 2026

A website is never finished. Here is what goes wrong after launch, who is supposed to catch it, and what catches it in practice.

01 / 06What breaks

What actually breaks?

Five kinds of problem respondents see on their own and their clients' sites, ranked by how many raised each one.

  1. 63%
    of respondents raised it

    Wrong or outdated content

    Old offers still live, prices that differ from the catalogue, claims a product no longer meets, messaging that drifts between pages, AI copy that invented a number.

    Includes: stale content, wrong product or pricing info, brand inconsistency, AI-generated errors
  2. 43%
    of respondents raised it

    SEO and indexing problems

    Pages dropping out of the index, broken metadata, structured data errors, orphan pages nothing links to.

  3. 40%
    of respondents raised it

    Broken links, buttons and forms

    Dead links, redirects lost in a redesign, forms that stopped sending, buttons that lead nowhere.

    Includes: broken links and redirects, broken forms and CTAs
  4. 29%
    of respondents raised it

    Duplicate or conflicting pages

    The same content on several pages, or two pages that say different things about the same product.

  5. 16%
    of respondents raised it

    Missing images or alt text

    Broken images, missing sources, empty alt attributes. Invisible unless you look at the page itself.

1 of 5

We asked 60+ practitioners about website governance

What makes it hard, and what works for them. Here’s some of what we heard.

Most organizations do not have a website problem. They have an accountability problem.
Garrett GoldmanCEO, StateWP
Anything customer-facing needs a named owner, a review before publish, and a simple changelog so we know what went live and why.
Tim PetersCMO, Guideline
As websites become more connected, governance cannot sit with one department.
Colleen BarryHead of Marketing, Ketch
If everyone owns a page, no one updates it.
Rafay BalochCEO, REDSECLABS
The biggest issue is not usually one major website error. It is the accumulation of small inconsistencies.
Monica PanaitCMO, Brizy
A webpage with structured data can pass every validator while handing machines a pile of disconnected and patently incorrect facts.
Jared CarrizalesDirector of Organic Search, Augurian
Good governance shouldn’t make marketing slower. It should make it safer to move faster.
Molly S. McClurefractional CMO
Website or software system governance is really an access and compliance posture.
Artur YolchyanSolutions Architect, Aland Cloud
02 / 06Challenges

What makes a website hard to govern?

Three problems came up again and again. Most respondents named more than one.

Challenge 1 of 360%of respondents mentioned itContinuityAfter launch, pages go stale, fixes get undone, and nobody notices.
Challenge 1 of 3

Continuity

60%of respondents mentioned it

After launch, pages go stale, fixes get undone, and nobody notices.

Again and again, we heard that passing an audit doesn’t keep a site correct. Fixed issues come back weeks later, and pages stay live long after the offer behind them has ended.

What we heard

A campaign page outlived the offer. Sales kept sending it, support got confused tickets, prospects hit a dead end.
Portrait of Tim PetersTim PetersCMO, Guideline
A search snippet on one of our sites advertised a restaurant as open on Friday nights, two months after it closed. Three straight content audits passed it as clean.
Jack WrightHealthWright Technologies
The biggest problem was regression. You fix a website today and then another change breaks something six weeks later.
Tomas BukeviciusSCUBE Marketing
Challenge 2 of 343%of respondents mentioned itOwnershipNobody clearly owns the site, the page, or the fix.
Challenge 2 of 3

Ownership

43%of respondents mentioned it

Nobody clearly owns the site, the page, or the fix.

Every team assumes another one owns the fix. And the people who spot a problem often don’t know who to tell.

What we heard

Ask a firm who is responsible for their website and you get one of three answers: our IT person, our web agency, or our hosting provider. Each answer feels reasonable. None of them is correct.
Portrait of Garrett GoldmanGarrett GoldmanStateWP
All teams involved want the credits of the results, but… no one wants to be blamed when there’s a failure or a mistake is made.
Miguel GonzálezWebmaster, Spain Sotheby’s International Realty
Landing pages, help docs, and partner microsites are where brand drift and outdated claims show up first, usually because three teams each think the other owns the fix.
Tim PetersCMO, Guideline
Challenge 3 of 337%of respondents mentioned itScale and complexityMore pages, people and systems than anyone can keep consistent by hand.
Challenge 3 of 3

Scale and complexity

37%of respondents mentioned it

More pages, people and systems than anyone can keep consistent by hand.

Respondents described problems that multiply quietly as a site grows. One mistake in a shared template repeats on every page, and years of small changes leave thousands of pages nobody owns.

What we heard

The difficult part is often knowing when a simple website change has wider implications. A new form may look like a content update, but it can also involve personal data, consent, analytics, and third party tools.
Portrait of Colleen BarryColleen BarryHead of Marketing, Ketch
Google Search Console showed about 22,700 non-indexed URLs against roughly 1,076 real listings. No single mistake caused it; it was years of nobody owning the URL structure.
Rovin ChonielallGuyanaDirectory.gy
When you reuse something across multiple pages, you also repeat the mistake.
Gagan SainiJiT Home Buyers
03 / 06Continuity

How websites are kept in check today

What teams asked about their governance process actually do.
Mostly people and documents. Very little watches the live site.

Only 13% have something automated watching the live site.

The rest find out when a person looks, or a customer does.

  1. A named ownerper site, page or area
    50%
  2. Written rulesstandards, source of truth, RACI
    47%
  3. Manual review before publishstaging, checklists, QA
    41%
  4. Scheduled auditsmonthly or quarterly, by people
    38%
  5. Approval gatessign-off before changes go live
    25%
  6. Automated checks on the live sitescanners, monitors, scripts
    13%
04 / 06Ownership

Who should own the website?

Three teams usually end up owning it. Pick a card to see what each one is strong at, and where it falls short.

Tap a card to flip it

50%

of the teams we asked have one clear owner for their website. The other half do not.

Does your website have one owner responsible for its quality?

Pick an answer to see how others answered.

05 / 06Scale

What makes a website too big to check by hand?

Three things make it worse: more people, more pages and more systems. The more a site has of each, the less anyone can check it by hand.

More peoplecan change the site

What they mentioned, % of respondents

More people can publish29%
AI drafts faster than review8%
There are 3 main departments that work on the webpage.Miguel González, Webmaster, Spain Sotheby’s International Realty
More pagesand nothing comes down

What they mentioned, % of respondents

More pages17%
New campaigns10%
New locations and languages10%
Product and pricing changes8%
…an old campaign or landing page stays live long after the campaign has finished. Nobody considers it important enough to remove.Colleen Barry, Head of Marketing, Ketch
More systemsone change touches many

What they mentioned, % of respondents

More systems11%
Shared templates10%
More sites6%
Subdomains and microsites are forgotten during periods of high growth.Rafay Baloch, CEO, REDSECLABS
06 / 06AI workflows

Where AI already does the checking

A separate group of teams already uses AI to check their website. What the AI checks for them, and how the workflow runs.

What the AI checks

SEO and findabilitymetadata, indexing, AI search
87%
Brand and messagingtone, claims, consistency
68%
Stale content, broken links
61%

How the workflow runs

A human decides what changes
84%
Findings go to a named owner or tracker
61%
Scans run on a schedule
42%
Say the AI gets things wrong
29%
Check the live page again after a fixto confirm the fix worked
6%

One workflow to find and fix website issues

Marker.io's Report feedback button sending issues to Jira, Linear, Asana, ClickUp, GitHub and GitLab

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Marker.io website monitoring panel listing failing checks by severity: 6 critical, 9 serious, 3 medium, 2 low

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Scheduled scans of your whole website
An AI assistant prompt that reads "Fix this issue" followed by a Marker.io issue link

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AI agents read each issue and work on the fix.

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