Pilot edition, October 2026
MAD MIRROR Awards Ibiza 2026
The test winners of the pilot edition: how well beach clubs, hotels, restaurants and clubs in Ibiza are found, understood and booked online.
· 46 websites checked · MAD MIRROR STUDIOS
Disclosure: we're an agency and we also sell website optimization. The rating follows fixed points, and our clients are out of competition.
46
websites measured
4
Test Winner
7
with Mirrors
59
median Mirror Score
Test Winner
The 2026 test winners
The best venue of each category with at least one Mirror. All were measured on the same day with the same scanner.
Test Winner · Beach clubs
Experimental Beach Ibiza
Best of 14 beach clubs checked · part of a group
84Mirror Score
2 Mirrors- Google (SEO)100
- AI visibility (GEO)100
- Mobile speed72
- Booking and contact62
- Tech and trustnot measured
- Languages100
- Video and social63
Test Winner · Hotels
Hotel Montesol Ibiza
Best of 16 hotels checked · part of a group
80Mirror Score
2 Mirrors- Google (SEO)100
- AI visibility (GEO)100
- Mobile speed57
- Booking and contact62
- Tech and trustnot measured
- Languages100
- Video and social63
Test Winner · Restaurants
Bambuddha Ibiza
Best of 11 restaurants checked
74Mirror Score
1 Mirror- Google (SEO)100
- AI visibility (GEO)67
- Mobile speed52
- Booking and contact69
- Tech and trustnot measured
- Languages100
- Video and social75
Test Winner · Clubs
Hi Ibiza
Best of 5 clubs checked
72Mirror Score
1 Mirror- Google (SEO)83
- AI visibility (GEO)100
- Mobile speed58
- Booking and contact46
- Tech and trustnot measured
- Languages82
- Video and social63
Mirrors
These venues hold Mirrors
One Mirror from 70 points, two from 80 points with no discipline below 50, three from 90 points with no discipline below 70.
2 Mirrors
- Experimental Beach IbizaBeach club84
- Hotel Montesol IbizaHotel80
1 Mirror
- Bambuddha IbizaRestaurant74
- Hi IbizaClub72
- Ibiza Gran HotelHotel72
- Nikki Beach IbizaBeach club70
- Atzaro AgroturismoHotel70
3 Mirrors
Three Mirrors: not awarded in the pilot edition. No website is strong enough in all six disciplines, least of all in mobile speed.
Out of competition
We work for these venues. We measured them with the same scan, but they receive neither Mirrors nor a Test Winner title. That keeps the rating independent.
Migjorn Ibiza Suites & Spa
Our work for them: photo production
81 points, the level of one Mirror
UNIC Restaurant Ibiza
Our work for them: photo production
77 points, the level of one Mirror
Vanilla Beach Ibiza
Our work for them: film, website and social media
73 points, the level of one Mirror
The market
Where the island stands
The median of all websites checked, per discipline. Strong on Google basics and languages, weak on speed and booking.
- Google (SEO) · 18%83
- AI visibility (GEO) · 18%58
- Mobile speed · 22%36
- Booking and contact · 14%46
- Tech and trust · 10%not measured
- Languages · 9%82
- Video and social · 9%63
The quickest points
What most websites miss
The criteria met least often. This is where every venue on the island finds its quickest points.
- Lighthouse performance on mobile2%met
- Largest image visible within 2.5 seconds (LCP)2%met
- Homepage under 3 MB17%met
- Images in WebP or AVIF20%met
- WhatsApp contact20%met
- Structured data names the business type26%met
The numbers
What the island's websites can do
Ibiza sells itself through pictures, and most guests see the island on a phone first. How well prepared are the websites for that? We checked 46 publicly reachable websites of beach clubs, hotels, clubs and restaurants in Ibiza with the same procedure, no survey, no self-reporting, only what every browser and every crawler sees. Each website gets a Mirror Score from 0 to 100 across six disciplines; those ahead earn Mirrors, and the best of each category the title Test Winner.
This is the pilot edition. The first full survey of 200 venues follows before the 2027 season, with the same method, so the numbers can be compared.
Languages: the island speaks English, rarely German
Guests from Germany, Austria and Switzerland book in German when they can. Most websites leave them with English.
- At least two languages80%
- Three or more languages30%
- English version93%
- Spanish version78%
- German version17%
- hreflang set (languages linked for Google)74%
Reading: a German version is the exception in Ibiza (17%). Whoever has one competes almost alone in German Google searches and German-language AI answers.
Visibility: basics present, meaning missing
Title, description and sitemap have become standard. Few say in machine-readable form that a page describes a restaurant or a hotel.
- Meta description present80%
- Title under 60 characters76%
- Open Graph tags (previews in WhatsApp, LinkedIn)74%
- Any JSON-LD78%
- Structured data as restaurant, hotel or club26%
- Sitemap present89%
Reading: 78% have some structured markup, mostly generated by the CMS, but only 26% tell Google and AI assistants what the venue is, where it is and when it opens. Those are exactly the fields that feed Google Maps, AI Overviews and travel assistants.
AI readability: open, but unprepared
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini recommend restaurants and hotels. They can only recommend what they are allowed to read and can understand.
- robots.txt present96%
- Blocks at least one AI crawler (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended)7%
- llms.txt present35%
Reading: almost all sites are open to AI crawlers, 7% deliberately block them. 35% have an llms.txt, some generated by SEO plugins, some written by hand; that is more than on the web as a whole. Open does not mean understandable, though: without structured data and without text that is readable without JavaScript, the AI is often left with just the name.
Contact and booking: Instagram yes, reservations rarely
The path from scrolling to a table or room decides revenue. We counted which paths the homepages offer.
- Instagram linked89%
- Facebook linked74%
- TikTok linked13%
- WhatsApp contact20%
- Phone number as a link57%
- Google Maps link59%
- Recognisable reservation system built in33%
- Mentions reservations or tickets74%
Reading: 89% link to Instagram, but only 20% offer WhatsApp, the channel people on the island actually book through. We found a built-in reservation system on 33%.
Picture and video: lots of material, little technique
Ibiza websites live on pictures. The question is whether the pictures are delivered so that a phone on the beach can actually load them.
- Video on the homepage61%
- Lazy loading in use for images61%
- Modern image formats (WebP, AVIF) at all37%
- Majority of images in modern formats17%
- Images without alt text41% (high)
Reading: the median homepage shows 17 images, but only 17% deliver the majority of them in modern formats. That is the main reason for the load times in the next section.
Technology and speed on a phone
Measured with Lighthouse in mobile emulation on 46 homepages. Google rates pages under 50 points as slow; a largest image (LCP) over 2.5 seconds counts as too late.
- HTTPS100%
- Cookie banner detected39%
- Lighthouse score under 50 (slow)43% (high)
- Lighthouse score 90 or higher2%
- Largest image only after more than four seconds89% (high)
Reading: the median score is 57 of 100, the median largest image appears after 10.6 s, a homepage weighs 6.6 MB in the median. Server response time (median 733 ms) is rarely the problem, the images are.
Who leads
The Awards only name those who do well. The values come from the same scan as all other numbers.
Most language versions
- 1. Nikki Beach Ibiza6
- 2. Experimental Beach Ibiza5
- 3. Vanilla Beach Ibiza*5
- 4. Bless Hotel Ibiza5
- 5. Hotel Montesol Ibiza5
Fastest homepages on a phone (Lighthouse)
- 1. Playa Soleil91
- 2. Sa Capella Ibiza85
- 3. Cala Gracioneta Chiringuito78
- 4. Experimental Beach Ibiza77
- 5. Ibiza Gran Hotel77
* Disclosure: Vanilla Beach Ibiza is a client of ours (film, website, social media). Its website was measured with the same scan as all the others.
Badges
Badges for test winners, Mirrors and the top 5
The awarded venues can show their badge on their own website. Copy the code and paste it wherever the site allows HTML, for example in the footer; for systems without HTML every badge is also available as a PNG. The link leads to this page, so any guest can verify the award.
Badges apply to the 2026 edition and only to the venues listed on this page with the award in question.
Recommendations
What a venue in Ibiza should do now
Five steps, sorted by impact. The first three cost an afternoon, not a new website.
01
Structured data as a restaurant or hotel
Name, address, opening hours, cuisine or rooms, reservation link as JSON-LD. That feeds Google Maps, AI Overviews and travel assistants with the right facts.
More
02
WhatsApp and reservations on the homepage
One tap to a table or room, visible on a phone without scrolling. Reservation system or WhatsApp link, not just a contact form.
More
03
Images in modern formats and the right size
WebP or AVIF, lazy loading below the first screen, the hero image no larger than necessary. That halves the load time of most Ibiza websites.
More
04
A German version
Linked with hreflang, not machine-translated. On an island where hardly any website speaks German, that is a competitive advantage for the whole season.
More
05
Video that loads
A short brand film on the homepage, embedded rather than auto-loaded, with a poster image. Video is the format Google AI Mode and Instagram both favour.
More
Where does your website stand?
The Website Check measures your site by the same rules and shows which fixes earn you the next Mirror.
Start the website check
Method
Method
58 candidates from public lists and our own knowledge of the island were checked. Only websites that were reachable and demonstrably belong to the venue count (46); sites that block bots, have expired or could not be attributed are left out. 8 of the counted sites belong to international hotel or hospitality groups and were included because guests find them the same way.
For each website the homepage, robots.txt, llms.txt and sitemap.xml were fetched once and evaluated automatically: language versions (hreflang and language paths), title and description, canonical, Open Graph, JSON-LD and its types, social links, WhatsApp, phone, map, recognisable reservation systems, video embeds, image optimisation (lazy loading, WebP/AVIF, alt texts), CMS, cookie banner, HTML weight and response time. Mobile performance is measured by Lighthouse 12 in mobile emulation with simulated throttling, once per homepage.
The rating follows methodology 1.0 of the MAD MIRROR Awards: 32 criteria in six disciplines make up the Mirror Score from 0 to 100. Mirrors start at 70 points; the Test Winner is the best venue of each category with at least one Mirror. Measured on 14 October 2026, rated on 24 October 2026 on the same data.
- No individual scores: the Awards name venues only where they lead. Nobody is put on display for a weak website.
- Homepage only: subpages, booking flows and apps were not checked. The homepage is what search engines, AI assistants and guests see first.
- Single run: Lighthouse measures each homepage once, and scores vary by a few points between runs. The lists therefore show leading groups, not decimals.
- Automatic, repeatable, open: the scanner is deterministic, the method is published here, the aggregated data is available as JSON under a free licence with attribution.
Categories checked: Beach clubs 14, Clubs 5, Hotels 16, Restaurants 11. Not counted (unreachable, expired or not attributable): 12.
Every criterion and point of the methodologyFAQ
Frequently asked questions
Who are the test winners of the MAD MIRROR Awards Ibiza 2026?
The 2026 test winners are Experimental Beach Ibiza (beach clubs, 84 points), Hotel Montesol Ibiza (hotels, 80 points), Bambuddha Ibiza (restaurants, 74 points) and Hi Ibiza (clubs, 72 points). 46 websites were measured with the same scanner on 14 October 2026.
What is a Mirror?
A Mirror is the unit of the MAD MIRROR Awards rating, like a star in a restaurant guide: one Mirror from 70 points in the Mirror Score, two from 80, three from 90. Two and three Mirrors also require no weak discipline.
Why only the homepage?
Because it is the page search engines, AI assistants and guests see first, and because an identical procedure for all venues only stays fair that way. Booking flows and subpages are the next step of the full survey.
How do I find out where my own website stands?
With the free Website Check. It measures your homepage in about two minutes against the same 55 criteria as the Awards, shows your Mirror Score and which fixes take you to the next Mirror. No email address needed.
Why are MAD MIRROR STUDIOS clients out of competition?
Because a rating is only worth something if it's independent. Venues we work for are measured with the same scan and their result is shown with a disclosure, but they receive no Mirrors and no Test Winner title.
How often are the Awards held?
Once a year before the season, with the same method, so the numbers can be compared. The pilot edition is from October 2026, the first full survey follows before the 2027 season.
May I use the numbers?
Yes, with attribution and a link: MAD MIRROR STUDIOS, MAD MIRROR Awards Ibiza 2026. The aggregated data is available for download as JSON.