Website readiness of Wellington lawyers: the data.
We audited 26 lawyers’ websites in Wellington. The average historical rules-v1.0 website-readiness score is 69/100. Under that ruleset, 4% triggered its crawler check and 38% had no detected structured data. These are technical observations, not proof of current AI recommendations; the crawler figure requires a v2 re-scan under the current taxonomy.
avg score
69/100
historical crawler flag
4%
no structured data
38%
JS-only content
0%
As of July 2026, the average rules-v1.0 website-readiness score of 26 audited lawyers’ websites in Wellington, New Zealand is 69 out of 100. 4% of the audited sites triggered the historical rules-v1.0 crawler check; that figure must be re-scanned before it is interpreted using the current v2 crawler taxonomy. 38% publish no detected structured data identifying their business, 0% appear to omit main content from the initial HTML, and 38% show no visible review/update date. These are observable website signals, not proof of current AI recommendations. The businesses were drawn from Google’s local results for lawyer services in Wellington, where the average Google rating is 4.6 stars with a median of 28 reviews. Source: Surfaced audit dataset, n=26, July 2026. Method: surfaced.co.nz/methodology.
What are Wellington lawyers getting wrong?
38% have no structured data at all
The fix: Add LocalBusiness JSON-LD so AI engines can identify the business, its services and its area.
38% show no visible review/update date
The fix: On time-sensitive pages, display a maintained review date so readers can assess currency.
4% triggered the historical rules-v1.0 crawler check
The fix: Run the current v2 check before changing robots.txt. It separates discovery, user-fetch, training and model-control crawlers, then shows the exact rule evidence for the checked page.
0% appear to rely on JavaScript for main content
The fix: Put the key service and location content in the initial HTML so it does not depend on a later rendering stage.
Why does this matter for a lawyer in Wellington?
This benchmark shows common access, initial-HTML, structured-data and content signals across the sampled websites. It does not show which Wellington businesses are named for “a good lawyer near me”, or whether fixing one signal changes an answer. Repeated monitoring across engines is required for those claims.
The pages AI cites for lawyers in Wellington
Our July 2026 study of 225 NZ AI answers recorded which sources the engines cited; these are the roundup pages we captured from those sources for lawyers in Wellington (5 in total).
top5.nz
Best Employment Lawyers in Wellington | Top 5 Ranked 2026 | Reviews, Fees & Communicationlists 10 businesses
top5.nz
Best Family Lawyers in Wellington | Top 5 Ranked 2026 | Reviews, Fees & Communicationlists 10 businesses
top5.nz
Best Law Firms in Wellington | Top 5 Ranked 2026 | Reviews, Fees & Communicationlists 10 businesses
top5.nz
Best Property Lawyers in Wellington | Top 5 Ranked 2026 | Reviews, Fees & Communicationlists 10 businesses
Look up other markets in the free citation lookup.
Compare: the historical rules-v1.0 category average for lawyers is 68/100 across 444 sites.
How does your current site look under rules v2?
Run the current free check in about 20 seconds, with no signup. The Wellington average of 69 used historical rules v1.0, so treat your v2 result as a fresh diagnosis rather than a direct comparison.
Check my siteLast updated July 2026 · based on 26 audited websites from 30 local listings · methodology · aggregates only — no individual business is named without consent