One address in twenty is dead
We wrote to 2,122 businesses across sixteen markets, at the address published on their own website. 104 mailboxes no longer existed. In Japan, one in eight.
4.9%
of published addresses no longer exist
In this article
Short answer: published contact addresses die quietly, and nobody notices. We wrote to 2,122 businesses across sixteen markets, each at the address it publishes on its own website. 112 bounced, 104 of them permanently: the mailbox no longer exists. A customer writing to that address gets nothing either, and unlike a mail server, a customer does not send a report.
12.7%
in Japan, against 0% in Poland
116
domains with no mail server left at all
A dead address warns nobody. The customer believes they wrote, the business believes nobody wrote, and both are right.
What we measured
Between 26 July and 7 September 2026 we sent 2,122 messages to 2,122 distinct addresses, one per business, across sixteen markets. Every address comes from the company's own website: we guess none and we buy none. Then we read what the servers sent back, keeping the distinction the protocol itself makes: a permanent refusal (the mailbox does not exist) is not a temporary one (mailbox full, server unavailable).
These are not businesses drawn at random: they are the ones we contacted, overwhelmingly small local outfits - practices, clinics, agencies, shops. We say so before the numbers rather than in a footnote.
One in twenty, and the country changes everything
104 permanent refusals out of 2,122 addresses, or 4.9%. Eight more were temporary and do not count: a full mailbox empties. The spread between countries runs from one to thirteen.
| Market | Addresses written to | Bounces | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | 102 | 13 | 12.7% |
| United Arab Emirates | 119 | 10 | 8.4% |
| Saudi Arabia | 119 | 10 | 8.4% |
| Qatar | 129 | 9 | 7.0% |
| United States | 675 | 40 | 5.9% |
| Brazil | 146 | 8 | 5.5% |
| France | 202 | 11 | 5.4% |
| Singapore | 103 | 4 | 3.9% |
| United Kingdom | 126 | 4 | 3.2% |
| Belgium | 144 | 2 | 1.4% |
| Switzerland | 117 | 1 | 0.9% |
| Poland | 100 | 0 | 0% |
Japan and the Gulf lose between one address in eight and one in twelve; Poland, Switzerland and Belgium lose almost none. We have no measured explanation for that gap. The obvious hypothesis is the age of the page: an address published then forgotten survives as long as the mailbox does, and dies the day the business changes provider without touching the site. We name it as a hypothesis; our measurement does not test it.
The generic address dies first
Of the 112 addresses that bounced, 60 were generic - `info@`, `contact@`, `hello@`, `office@` - or 54%. That is more than their share of what we sent. The reason fits in one sentence: an address in a person's name dies when that person leaves, which gets noticed; a generic address dies when nobody reads it any more, which does not.
And 116 domains receive nothing at all
Before sending anything, you can ask the DNS whether a domain has a mail server. Across 7,407 addresses in our base, 125 can receive nothing, or 1.7%, and 116 of those because the domain has no MX record left. The site answers, the contact page renders, the form looks fine: the mail arrives nowhere. Japan holds 29 of them, Belgium 18, the Emirates 17.
What this measurement does not prove
- The sample is not random: these are the businesses we contacted, in sixteen markets we chose.
- A permanent refusal says this server refused this message. Almost all of them name a mailbox that does not exist, but a very strict spam filter can produce the same code.
- We measure the address PUBLISHED on the site. A business unreachable at that address is often still reachable by phone, by form or on a social network.
- A missing MX record says the domain receives no mail today. It does not say the business has closed.
- All our sends leave from a single sending domain. Another sender might see different rates.
What it changes for you
Write to yourself, from outside.
Once a quarter, send a message to the address shown on your site from a mailbox that is not yours, and check it lands.
An address nobody reads is worse than no address.
The customer believes they reached you and waits for an answer that will not come.
The day you change mail provider
, check that the domain shown on the site still has a mail server. It is the quietest failure in this measurement.
Beware the orphan generic.
If `info@` has no named human behind it, give someone's address, or forward it.
Keep a second visible channel
- phone, form - so that one broken channel does not cost the contact.
You can see in a minute, free and without an account, what AI assistants answer when someone looks for your trade in your city.