234&That / State of Nigerian business websites, 2026
A third of the web addresses Nigerian businesses publish no longer exist.
Published 8 October 2026 · checks run 22 August 2026 · data JSON, CC BY 4.0
We took 1,656 Lagos and Abuja businesses listed in a major Nigerian business directory and tested every web address they publish — 673 domains in all. 33% no longer exist. 38% cannot receive email. Only 56% put a working web page in front of a customer.
What we found
Of the 1,656 businesses, 706 publish an address on a domain of their own — a website, or an email address that isn't Gmail or Yahoo. Another 488 use only a free email address, and 462 publish neither. We checked each of the 673 distinct domains for three things: does it still exist, can it receive email, and does it serve a web page.
- 220 domains (33%) are gone. 159 are unregistered — anyone could buy them today — 5 had expired, and 56 no longer resolve at all.
- 257 (38%) cannot receive email. There is no mail server behind the address. A customer's enquiry is dropped, and neither side is told.
- Only 379 (56%) serve a working page. The rest return nothing, an error, or a server that refuses the connection.
- 30 more were within 60 days of expiring on the day we checked.
By sector
Schools and education fare worst: 39% of their published domains are gone and 44% cannot receive email — the address a parent writes to about admissions or fees.
| Sector | Domains | Gone | No email | Working site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schools and education | 194 | 39% | 44% | 55% |
| Arts and events | 18 | 33% | 50% | 39% |
| Professional and business services | 207 | 33% | 37% | 57% |
| Health | 121 | 29% | 34% | 58% |
| Retail | 72 | 28% | 33% | 54% |
| Hotels and apartments | 60 | 25% | 33% | 63% |
By city
| City | Domains | Gone | No email | Working site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lagos | 456 | 33% | 38% | 57% |
| Abuja | 216 | 31% | 40% | 56% |
Lagos and Abuja are within a couple of points of each other. This is not a regional problem.
The sites that do work are slow to answer
Of the 378 working sites, the median server took 1.5 seconds just to send the first byte of the page, measured from a Lagos connection — before any image, font or script starts loading. 135 (36%) took longer than two seconds. Google treats a first-byte time under 0.8 seconds as good. For how the best-known web studios' own sites perform on a phone, see our studio speed benchmark.
Why this matters
Directories, Google results and AI assistants all hand customers the address a business published, sometimes years ago. When that address is dead, the business does not get an error message. It just stops hearing from people. And an unregistered domain that still appears in listings can be bought by anyone, along with every customer who types it.
Three checks any business can do in ten minutes:
- Email yourself at your published address from a different account. If it doesn't arrive, neither do your customers' enquiries.
- Open your website on a phone, on mobile data. Not office Wi-Fi.
- Check your domain's expiry date with your registrar and switch on auto-renew. Then search your business name in the directories customers use, and correct any old address.
Method and limits
- Source: Finelib business directory listings, Lagos and Abuja, harvested 21–22 August 2026. 1,656 businesses (Lagos 1,073, Abuja 583) across six sectors.
- Domain tested: the website the business published, or else the domain of its published email address. 673 distinct domains.
- Checks, 22 August 2026: WHOIS registration and expiry, DNS address (A) and mail (MX) records, and one HTTP request per domain from Lagos.
- A domain is the one the business published in the directory (website, else email domain). A dead published domain does not prove the business has no site: in a hand check of six unregistered domains, two were genuine, three were stale listings for businesses that had moved, one was a directory typo.
- An automated typo check over 109 unregistered domains found 1 directory typo.
- Server response time (TTFB) was measured from a Lagos connection on 22 August 2026; it is the wait before the first byte of the page, not full load time.
- No business is named on this page or in the data file. If you want to know whether your own listing is affected, ask us — it takes a minute.
Questions
How many Nigerian business websites are broken?
In our check of 673 domains published by 1,656 Lagos and Abuja businesses in a major Nigerian directory (22 August 2026), 33% no longer existed, 38% could not receive email, and only 56% served a working web page.
Why does a dead domain matter if the business is still trading?
Because the customer only has the address they were given. An email to a domain with no mail server is dropped without the sender being told, and a link to a lapsed domain leads nowhere — or, once someone else registers it, to a stranger. The business never finds out the enquiry was lost.
How do I check my own business domain?
Send an email to your published address from a different account and confirm it arrives. Open your website on a phone using mobile data, not office Wi-Fi. Check your domain's expiry date with your registrar, and turn on auto-renew. Then search your business name in the directories customers use and correct any old address.
Send us your site. We'll tell you what's wrong with it, free.
A two-minute recording of your own site loading on a phone, with the three things that would fix it. No pitch first.
WhatsApp +234 708 188 9364 or email enquiries@234andthat.com