We measured 93 fish restaurant websites on the Bosphorus

The fish restaurants along the Bosphorus are among the most searched places to eat in Istanbul. No published measurement of their digital presence existed. On 22 September 2026 we read the Google listing of 93 restaurants, opened the home page of the 54 sites whose listing carried a link, and checked each against the same criteria. The figures below are the result.

The listing: most carry no link

The Google Maps listing is where most guests start. It holds separate fields for a website, a menu and a booking link, and whether those fields are empty can be seen from outside.

Criterion	Count	Share
Listing carries a link	54 / 93	58%
Listing carries a booking link	17 / 93	18%
Listing carries a menu link	13 / 93	14%

The menu figure looks low at first glance. The real finding is different: most restaurants do have a menu, it simply cannot be reached from the listing. The site-side numbers confirm this.

One more detail was measured. In several restaurants the link in the listing does not lead to a site at all. One points at a YouTube video, another at an Instagram page. The owner may not know what a guest sees when they look.

The sites: menus are there, trust is not

Criterion	Count	Share
Menu on the site	45 / 54	83%
Instagram link	37 / 54	69%
Booking on the site	35 / 54	65%
English version	24 / 54	44%
Phone link	22 / 54	41%
WhatsApp button	18 / 54	33%
Structured data	17 / 54	31%
Embedded map	8 / 54	15%
Privacy notice	5 / 54	9%

A menu on 83 per cent of sites is the headline result. Offering a restaurant a menu page usually means offering what it already has; when a restaurant website is built, the real question is not whether a menu exists but where it is updated from. A privacy notice, by contrast, appears on only 5 sites, which points to a compliance gap.

Structured data is low as well. That markup helps a search engine, and an AI assistant, understand what the business is; what it does is explained on what is AEO. It is missing on 69 per cent of the sites.

Faults: one site in five warns the visitor

Fault	Count	Share
No secure connection	11 / 54	20%
Site does not open	7 / 54	13%
Built on dated technology	8 / 54	15%
Not built for a phone screen	4 / 54	7%
Single page only	3 / 54	6%

When a site without a secure connection is opened on a phone, the browser shows a not secure warning in the address bar. A guest who sees that leaves, and that departure never shows up anywhere the owner can see it.

Of the 7 sites that do not open, some no longer resolve as a domain and some have an expired security certificate. To anyone looking from outside the two amount to the same thing: the listing has an address and nothing stands behind it.

Overall class distribution

Class	Count	Share
Dated	21 / 54	39%
Missing modules	14 / 54	26%
Sound	9 / 54	17%
Broken	7 / 54	13%
Single page	3 / 54	6%

Nine sites passed every criterion. In other words only one in six fish restaurants on the Bosphorus has a site that meets today's basics.

Of the 29 sites where a copyright year could be read, the oldest is 2015 and the median is 2026. The sites split in two: those kept current, and those untouched for years.

Method and scope

The measurement was made on 22 September 2026. Businesses were found by scanning districts along both shores through Google Maps. Listing fields were read by opening the listing itself rather than guessing from a search result. Each site was measured at its root address; reading the deep link held in the listing would have been misleading, because a subpage may lack a secure connection while the site itself has one.

Three things this measurement cannot see. Page load speed was not measured. The scan reads the first version of a page, so sites drawn later in the browser may appear thinner than they are. And what a business does on social media sits outside this study; a restaurant with a weak site may be working well through Instagram.

Business names were deliberately left out. The report describes the shore as a whole rather than individual restaurants.

What the numbers say

Three conclusions follow. The menu problem looks solved, since most restaurants have put their menu on the site. The real gap is trust and reach: one site in five warns the visitor, one in eight does not open at all. And on a shore where foreign visitors matter, only 44 per cent of sites can be read in English.

Someone arriving at a restaurant's site looks first at what the place is like, what the prices are, and how to get there. The measurement shows that on most of these sites the answer to those three questions is either missing or out of reach.