We measured Turkish manufacturers' certificate pages.

What did we find?

• Of the 77 sites we could reach, 42 had a certificate or quality page linked from the home page; 34 of them carried certificates (44.2%).
• Of the 34 pages carrying certificates, 4 presented them as a record, meaning at least two details as text next to at least one certificate: 11.8%. 19 pages had a scanned copy or PDF of the certificate but no details; 11 pages had only a logo or the certificate’s name.
• Pages stating the scope: 10; stating the issuing body: 9; stating the expiry date: 0.
• Pages linking to a lookup page where the certificate can be verified, or showing a QR code: 0.
• Pages marking up the certificate in machine-readable form (hasCertification): 0.

Which sites did we measure, and how?

The sample is that of the Exporter websites 2026 measurement: exporters in four provinces that have their own website. The denominator of this measurement is 81 sites; 4 sites of service exporters were measured but not included in the denominator, because no production certificate is expected of them. Because machinery manufacturers are not in the main sample, they were measured as a separate small group and counted separately.

We opened at most six connections to each site, from a single location, in sequence and without hiding our identity: robots.txt, the home page, the certificate page, the sitemap, the http address and the TLS handshake. We respected robots.txt; a site whose root was closed to us was only recorded. We found the certificate page automatically by searching the home page’s links for “sertifika”, “belge”, “kalite”, “certificate” and their equivalents; we did not open images or PDFs.

Each certificate page was coded by hand with six questions: are the certificates a record or only a logo; are the scope, issuing body and expiry date written; is there a verification link or QR code; is the ISO logo used? The coders were AI sessions: two sessions split the pages, and the codes of 10 randomly selected sites were redone by a third session that did not see the first codes. The two readings agreed on 59 of 60 codes (98.3%). The ambiguities the second reading revealed were written into the coding form as decision rules and applied in the same way to all sites; 11 codes changed under these rules.

How many sites have a certificate page?

Of the 77 sites we could reach, 42 had a home page linking to a certificate or quality page. 6 of these carried no certificates: they were a news item, a quality policy or an investor relations page. 2 pages could not be read. That left 34 pages carrying certificates; they are the base of the shares below.

Are certificates shown as a record or as a logo?

Mostly as a copy or a logo. Our threshold for counting a certificate as a record was low: next to at least one certificate, as text, at least two of scope, issuing body, expiry date and certificate number. 4 of the 34 pages met this threshold. The most common form was a scanned image or PDF of the certificate (19 pages): the certificate was there, but its details were inside the image, so neither a screen reader nor a search engine nor an AI crawler could read them as the page’s text.

The automatic count shows the same picture: on 8 of the pages carrying certificates, an ISO standard was written with its edition (e.g. “ISO 9001:2015”), and on 0 we came across a certificate number pattern in the text.

Which details are written, and which are missing?

Pages stating what the certificate covers: 10 (29.4%); pages stating the issuing body: 9 (26.5%). The expiry date was not in the text of any page. On some sites, the date appeared only in the PDF’s file name; because the file name is not shown to the reader, we did not count it.

These three details are a buyer’s first screening question: does the certificate cover the product I will buy, who issued it, and is it still valid? When the page does not state them, the buyer has to either open and read the certificate or ask.

Can the buyer verify the certificate on the site?

In this measurement, no. None of the 34 pages carrying certificates linked to the lookup page of the body that issued the certificate or of the standard owner, and none showed a QR code on the page. This does not mean the certificates cannot be verified: accredited certificates can be searched in an international database, and certificates from accredited bodies in Turkey carry a verification QR code. But the buyer cannot find this route on the site; they have to search themselves.

The machine-readable layer shows the same: sites with Organization markup identifying the company on the home page: 23 / 77; none marked up the certificate on the certificate page.

Is the ISO logo used?

There is no use we can state with certainty: images whose file name or alt text names the ISO organization’s own logo: 0. But 11 pages had a badge with “ISO” in its name, and because we did not open the images, we could not tell whether it was the certification body’s mark or ISO’s logo. ISO says certified companies may not use its own logo; this number is not a lower bound but an uncertainty.

What is the situation for machinery manufacturers?

We measured machinery manufacturers as a separate small group: 8 sites. On 3 of them, we found a certificate page carrying certificates. This number is not enough to give a share; that is why we give no percentages for the machinery group.

What are the limits of the measurement?

• A single moment and a single place: a snapshot of November 10, 2026.
• We found the certificate page automatically from the home page’s links and read a single page; if the certificates were on another page, this measurement did not see them.
• We did not open images or PDFs: the details may be in the certificate’s image. What we measured is not whether the certificate exists but whether it can be read in the site’s text.
• The coders were three separate sessions of the same model; agreement between independent human coders may be lower.
• In the automatic counts, text in the page’s HTML comments may also have been counted; it was not counted in the hand coding.
• The sample is exporters in four provinces, not all of Turkey’s manufacturers.

Where are the data and method?

Anonymous per-site data is published as JSON and CSV under the CC BY 4.0 license: rasathane/uretici-2026-11/veri.csv and veri.json. The rows contain no site name or province; sectors are grouped so that at least three sites remain in each group. The coding form and decision rules are in the same folder. The measurement was done with tools/uretici-olcum.mjs, the merging of the coding with tools/uretici-kodlama.mjs and the summary with tools/uretici-ozet.mjs.

What can you do on your own site?

Read your certificate page with this measurement’s six questions: next to each certificate, are the scope, issuing body, certificate number and expiry date written as text, and can the buyer see on the page where to verify the certificate? How to build the certificate record is covered in the certified manufacturer website guide, verification routes in the certificate verification guide, and what the scope is in the certificate scope entry.