Use of modern internet standards by Dutch businesses increasing
Adoption levels for individual standards differ according to business size and sector
Dutch businesses with 2 or more employees are making increasing use of modern internet standards for their web and mail domains. Overall adoption levels are very similar across all sectors of the economy, and for enterprises of all sizes. However, support for individual standards does differ considerably from one sector to the next, and according to the size of the business.
Those are among the central takeaways from Use of Internet Standards for Business Websites, a report published earlier this month by Statistics Netherlands (CBS).
The report is based on an annual scan performed by the CBS in partnership with the Platform for Internet Standards (the organisation behind the internet.nl test portal). The researchers focus on the web domains listed by respondents to the CBS's annual survey of ICT use by businesses. More than 80 per cent of those domains come under the .nl top-level domain, but the scan covers all the reported names rather than just the .nl domains. First, all the domains are scanned using the Internet.nl bulk test tool, after which the output data undergoes statistical analysis.
Smaller and larger enterprises
Measured on a percentage scale of 0 to 100, overall adoption levels in the period October 2020 to April 2023 rose from 60.3 to 65.1 per cent. Where the overall percentages are concerned, there are no significant differences between businesses in different sectors, or businesses of different sizes. Clear discrepancies do emerge, however, when support for individual standards is examined.
Small businesses and sole traders are considerably more likely to support IPv6 than larger businesses, for example. The picture is reversed, however, where HTTPS is concerned. Another example is that enterprises in the ICT/information/communication sector are (fortunately) ahead of other sectors on IPv6 support.
Top performers
The CBS also zoomed in on the enterprises with the highest overall support scores (90 per cent or higher). Again, small businesses and sole traders are seen to out-perform larger enterprises. That is very probably a reflection of our incentive scheme, which rewards registrars for deploying modern internet standards across their .nl domain name portfolios. Smaller enterprises are much more likely to rely entirely on external service providers for web hosting and the like, and therefore to benefit from those providers' support for modern standards.
Perfect scores
However, it's larger businesses (those with 250 or more employees) that dominate the perfect scores. The assumption must be that it's easier for such enterprises to get a support score of 100 per cent than for others. For example, they are more likely to have their own ICT department, instead of being reliant on external service providers, who typically base decision-making about the adoption of individual standards on commercial considerations.
Mail domains
This year's CBS scan was the first to provide (usable) data on mail domains. Again, the scores for the individual standards differ considerably between larger and smaller enterprises, and across economic sectors. For example, smaller businesses are more likely to support IPv6, DNSSEC and STARTTLS/DANE. However, they are less likely to support the e-mail security standards SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
Highest scores
Where mail domains with 90 and 100 per cent scores are concerned, the pattern again differs from that seen with web domains: small businesses, and especially sole traders, dominate both the high score rankings and the perfect score list.
Test a domain yourself
If you'd like to test your own domain (or someone else's), visit the Internet.nl portal:
Any domain that gets a perfect score of 100 per cent is added to the portal's Hall of Fame.