How digital are Guanajuato’s businesses? What the 2024 Economic Census says

Every five years, INEGI, Mexico’s national statistics institute, counts the country’s businesses in its Economic Census. The 2024 edition, with 2023 data, asked again whether they used the internet for their work and, for the first time, which digital tools they used. We took Guanajuato’s figures and compared them with five selected states (Querétaro, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Jalisco and Michoacán) and the national total. This compares states; it is neither a regional aggregate nor an official definition of the Bajío. The sources for every figure are listed at the end of the page, where you can also download the data.

How many businesses in Guanajuato use the internet?

In 2023, 68,476 of Guanajuato’s 270,040 businesses used the internet for their work: 25.4%. That’s one point below the national average (26.4%) and about 19 points below Querétaro (44.6%). Of the states we compared, only Michoacán came in lower, at 21.8%.

Guanajuato has almost three times as many businesses as Querétaro, but only 1.6 times as many connected ones: 68,476 against 43,602. Nationwide, the share keeps rising, according to INEGI:

Which digital tools do they use?

Of the 68,476 businesses in Guanajuato that used the internet, 62,072 used at least one digital tool. The percentages in this section are based on those 62,072, not on every business in the state, and a business can use several tools at once.

Among businesses that used digital tools, 84.3% used search engines, 2.0% artificial intelligence and 1.3% advanced robotics. Comparing with other states turns up something less obvious: the Guanajuato businesses that already use digital tools use the cloud and data analysis slightly more than the national average.

Going by these numbers, Guanajuato’s gap seems to be less about what connected businesses do and more about how many have connected at all. The exception is online stores: 41.5% in Guanajuato, against 48.2% in Querétaro.

How many businesses sell online?

According to INEGI’s state summaries, 5.2% of Guanajuato’s businesses sold online in 2023, almost twice as many as in 2018 (2.9%), but still below the national 5.6% and far from Querétaro’s 13.0%.

The difference comes down to size. In Guanajuato, 95.0% of businesses are micro businesses, with 0 to 10 people, and only 4.1% of them sold online in 2023.

In 2018, 2.1% of Guanajuato’s micro businesses sold online; nationwide, the figure was 4.4% in 2023. Meanwhile, one in four of the state’s small and midsize businesses and one in three large companies sold online in 2023. The open ground is with small businesses.

Where are Guanajuato’s businesses concentrated?

INEGI’s summaries don’t break internet use down by municipality, but they do show where businesses, jobs and value added are concentrated (value added is what businesses produce minus what they spend on materials and services). These are the 10 municipalities with the largest shares of gross census value added in 2023, ordered by that indicator as INEGI presents them. Each column shows a percentage of the state total:

León has almost one in three of the state’s businesses (31.0%) and 23.0% of its value added. Celaya, with 7.5% of businesses, generates 22.8%, and Silao, with 2.8%, generates 12.1%. Irapuato has 9.3% of businesses and 10.5% of value added. In the five cities linked in the table, we come in person to see how your business works.

What does this mean for your business?

If your business is like the three in four in Guanajuato that didn’t use the internet for their work in 2023, or like those that don’t sell online, it isn’t too late: you have room to get ahead of your competitors. Three steps, from smallest to largest:

1. Organize what you already sell. If your inventory or orders live in a notebook or in a spreadsheet only one person understands, move them into a single system where everyone records the same thing. One module, such as an inventory management system, starts at about $5,000 MXN.
2. Get found and get bought online. A website with your products, your prices and a WhatsApp button, or a store that takes payments online. Our website packages start at $10,000 MXN, VAT included, paid once.
3. Send updates without chasing anyone. Order confirmations, payment reminders and delivery notices that go out on their own over WhatsApp from your system. An automation like that starts at about $5,000 MXN.

None of these steps sells for you on its own; what they do is remove repeated work and bring into view what currently gets lost between notebooks and chats. For the full order, read how to digitize your business step by step. And if you’re not sure which comes first in your case, we’ll go over it with you in a free consultation.

How to read this data

• Year of the data. Internet and digital-tool indicators describe 2023, from the final results of the 2024 Economic Census, which INEGI published on July 24, 2025. The online-sales comparison also includes 2018; this is not a measurement of adoption in 2026.
• Universe. Businesses (economic units) in the private sector and state-owned (parastatal) companies that operated in 2023: 270,040 in Guanajuato and 5,468,180 nationwide. This is not the total of all establishments visited by the census in 2024.
• What we calculated. The percentage of businesses that used the internet in each state: we divided the businesses that used the internet by the total INEGI publishes and rounded to one decimal. INEGI does publish the national figure (26.4%), and our calculation matches it. The comparisons between states, such as “almost three times” or “about 19 points”, are also ours.
• What INEGI publishes as is. The business totals; the digital-tool percentages, which are based on businesses that used digital tools rather than on the total; the online-sales percentages; and the data by size and by municipality, which come from the state summaries.
• Michoacán. Its summary doesn’t publish the share of businesses that sold online, so it doesn’t appear in that table.
• Corrected figures. INEGI marks the national totals of businesses that used the internet and digital tools as corrected figures. We use results updated in accordance with its September 5, 2025 correction note, in Spanish.
• Rounding. We use percentages with one decimal, as INEGI publishes them, so some totals may not add up exactly.
• Responsibility. INEGI isn’t responsible for our calculations or how we interpret them, and this analysis doesn’t represent an official INEGI position or carry its endorsement.

Download the data and cite it

Download the CSV file with the figures for the six states and the national total: businesses, businesses that used the internet, our calculated percentage, digital tools, and online sales in 2018 and 2023, with a link to the source of each row. Column names are in Spanish, and it opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers.

You can use this data in an article, an assignment, a presentation or a report, crediting INEGI and linking to this page. We suggest this citation:

INEGI’s terms of free use (in Spanish) let you copy, adapt and publish its information with credit, as long as you tell readers about any calculation or transformation and don’t suggest that INEGI made or endorses it. If you’re a journalist or researcher and need another figure or an interview, reach us through our press page.