Written October 2026. We review this page every six months.
Most trend lists are written for large brands with large budgets. This one is for an Irish small business deciding where a limited budget goes over the next twelve months. Every figure carries its source and date, and we say plainly where the evidence is American, vendor data or missing.
The Irish baseline: nearly everyone is online
The CSO's Internet Coverage and Usage in Ireland 2025 release (7 November 2025, household survey fieldwork in the first half of 2025) found that 95% of households have internet access, and 95% of people aged 16 and over had used the internet in the previous three months. Access is a little lower outside the capital: 97% of households in Dublin, against 93% in the Border, Mid-West and South-East regions.
Older customers have moved most: 63% of people aged 75 and over were recent internet users, up from 54% a year earlier, although 34% of that age group had never used the internet at all.
People also shop around online before they buy. In the CSO's Household Digital Consumer Behaviour 2025 release (5 December 2025), 92% of internet users said they look up information about goods and services online, and 84% of male and 86% of female internet users had bought something online in the previous three months.
So what: "My customers are not online" is no longer a reason to put off a decent website, so check that yours answers the questions people ask before they ring you.
Search and AI: Google is still the front door
StatCounter puts Google at about 94% of search in Ireland in July 2026, with Bing at about 3.4%. StatCounter counts page views on sites running its code, not people, but the gap is wide.
AI tools are part of the picture too. The CSO reported on 5 December 2025 that 42% of Irish internet users aged 16 and over had used a generative AI tool in the previous three months. That covers any use, at home or at work, not only looking for a business. Nobody has published a measure of how Irish customers use AI to choose a local supplier.
On clicks, the best evidence is American. Pew Research Center (22 July 2025) studied the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025 and found people clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did. That is one month of US data, not Irish, but the direction is worth planning for: general "how much" and "how to" questions are the searches most likely to lose clicks.
So what: Keep your Google Business Profile complete, put prices, areas served and specifics on your website, and judge search work on enquiries rather than traffic.
Video: who is actually watching
Ipsos B&A's TechScape 2025 survey (face-to-face interviews with 1,005 adults aged 16 and over, June 2025) found that 76% of Irish adults watch or listen to content on YouTube. TikTok is used by 34% of adults, close to flat on 35% in 2024.
The overall TikTok figure hides a sharp split by generation. In the same survey, 74% of Gen Z use TikTok, against 38% of Millennials, 23% of Gen X and 8% of Baby Boomers. Facebook, by contrast, was the most-used social app outside WhatsApp for Millennials (69%), Gen X (64%) and Baby Boomers (36%).
A roofer whose customers are mostly in their fifties gains little from chasing TikTok formats. A few plain videos on YouTube and your own site, showing how a job is done or what a quote includes, will reach more of the people who pay. If your buyers are under about 35, short-form video earns its place.
So what: Choose a video platform by the age of your customers, and make your first videos answer the questions people ask before they buy.
Cookies are not going away, and consent is the real measurement issue
For years, small businesses were told third-party cookies were about to disappear. On 22 July 2024 Google dropped its plan to phase them out of Chrome. On 22 April 2025 it confirmed that Chrome would keep its current approach to cookie choice and would not launch a separate cookie prompt. On 17 October 2025 it retired most of the Privacy Sandbox technologies that were meant to replace cookies, citing low adoption.
The real gap in your numbers is consent. Google requires advertisers to collect consent from visitors in the European Economic Area and pass it on through Consent Mode, which since early 2024 has carried two extra signals, ad_user_data and ad_personalization, according to Google's own help page on consent mode for EEA traffic. If your cookie banner and your tags are not wired together properly, your Google Ads and Analytics reports will undercount.
How big is the gap? There is no Irish figure. Didomi, a consent platform vendor, reported in March 2026 that among its own clients in the region it calls the British Isles, 87.3% of recorded choices in 2025 were acceptances, while between 21.7% and 27.4% of visitors across its regions made no choice at all. That is vendor data from its own customers, and Ireland is not reported separately, but it shows why analytics alone will not count every enquiry.
So what: Ignore "cookieless" sales pitches, check that Consent Mode v2 is set up correctly, and count enquiries in your own records: your inbox, your phone log or a CRM.
Messaging: your customers already live on WhatsApp
WhatsApp topped the list in Ipsos B&A's TechScape 2025 (June 2025, 1,005 adults), which found that 86% of Irish adults use it, up 18 points since 2020, with the highest use of any app in every generation. The CSO (5 December 2025) found instant messaging is used by 99% of female and 91% of male internet users aged 16 to 29.
We found no reliable Irish data on how many people message businesses on WhatsApp. The figures circulating online are not tied to a named Irish survey, so we have left them out. The case for offering it rests on habit: your customers already have it open every day.
So what: Offer WhatsApp as a contact route only if someone answers it promptly and logs every enquiry, because a missed message is a lost lead that never shows up in your reports.
Email and the channels you own
The CSO found that 95% of Irish internet users use email (5 December 2025). There is no published Irish email benchmark, so the figures you will see come from vendors. MailerLite's 2025 benchmarks (December 2025, 3.6 million campaigns from 181,000 of its own accounts worldwide) put the average click rate at 2.09% and the average open rate at 43.46%. Treat the open rate with care: Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens, and Mailchimp warns that its own open rates are distorted for the same reason.
The stronger argument for email is ownership: your list and your website are the two channels no platform can switch off or reprice overnight.
So what: Collect permissioned email addresses from real customers, send something useful once a month, and measure clicks and replies rather than opens.
Accessibility and speed
The European Accessibility Act has applied in Ireland since 28 June 2025, through S.I. 636/2023, and e-commerce services are in scope. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), one of the compliance authorities, is clear on one point in its guidance for microenterprises: a microenterprise providing services, meaning fewer than 10 staff and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of €2 million or less, is exempt from the requirements. A microenterprise that makes products covered by the Act is not fully exempt. Many small businesses selling online will be exempt as service providers, but that changes once you grow past those thresholds. This is not legal advice; check the CCPC guidance.
Exempt or not, accessibility is cheaper built in than bolted on. Speed is the other half. Google's Core Web Vitals set three "good" thresholds, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads: Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less. A heavy site hurts most outside Dublin, where the CSO found household access is lower.
So what: Open the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console, fix anything outside those three thresholds, and ask your developer how the site meets basic accessibility checks.
What to drop
Some pitches are worth turning down on the evidence.
- A "cookieless strategy". Chrome kept third-party cookies and Google retired most of the replacements (April and October 2025). Consent is the gap, not cookies.
- Optimising for Bing to reach AI tools. Bing is about 3.4% of Irish search (StatCounter, July 2026). Do the Google basics first.
- Being on every new platform. TikTok use in Ireland was flat between 2024 and 2025 (Ipsos B&A) and is concentrated in Gen Z.
- "SEO is dead." Google still handles about 94% of Irish search, and AI answers draw on websites and listings. AI is a tool your customers use, not a reason to throw out the fundamentals.
- Bought or fake reviews. The CCPC says displayed reviews must be genuine and businesses must not buy or post fake ones.
- Forecasts sold as fact. A prediction about next year is not evidence. Ask for the source, the date and the sample.
So what: Before you pay for any new tactic, ask who measured it, where, and when.
Where we would put the next euro
If the budget is tight, this is our order.
- Your Google Business Profile and the key pages of your website: prices, areas served and specifics.
- Measurement you can trust: Consent Mode v2 set up properly and every enquiry logged in your own records.
- Speed and accessibility fixes flagged in Search Console.
- A useful monthly email to customers who asked for it.
- WhatsApp as a contact route, if someone will answer it.
- Video and newer platforms, matched to the age of your customers, once the basics are done.
If search is where your next euro goes, our SEO service starts with your Business Profile and your own Search Console data, and reports on enquiries rather than rankings.
If the website itself is the weak link, our web design service builds in speed, accessibility and clear contact routes from the start, so these basics are done once and done properly.