Local Google visibility in Harghita County: I opened 283 business profiles on Google Maps

For a small business in a small town, local Google visibility mostly means Google Maps: that is where people look for a dentist, a car repair shop or a guesthouse nearby. On 27 September 2026 I went through the Maps results for 10 trades in 5 towns of Harghita County, a largely Hungarian-speaking county in the middle of Romania, and opened the profiles of the first 10 or so local businesses one by one: do they link to a website, how many reviews do they have, and has the owner claimed the profile. After filtering, 283 business profiles remained.

This is a measurement, not a how-to. I wrote about setting up a Google Business Profile in an earlier article; here I look at where businesses in Harghita actually stand. I do not name any business, only aggregate numbers.

The main numbers

• Of the 283 profiles, 87 are unclaimed (31%): Maps shows the "Own this business?" link on them. That means the owner has not taken over the profile, so they cannot edit it and cannot reply to reviews.
• Of the 87 unclaimed profiles, 65 have at least one review, 2,652 reviews in total that the business cannot reply to.
• Only 99 profiles (35%) link to a website of their own. 25 (9%) link only to Facebook or Instagram, 136 (48%) have no link at all, and the rest link to a directory or a booking platform.
• 34 profiles (12%) have no reviews. The median number of reviews is 15, the median rating 4.8 stars.
• Among businesses in the top three places, 41% have their own website, against 30% in places 4–10. The median number of reviews is 22 in the top three and 11 in places 4–10.

How I measured

For each trade and town I searched Google Maps (for example "dentist Miercurea Ciuc") and opened the first 10 or so local results one by one. The ten trades: dentists, physiotherapy and private clinics, accountants, lawyers and notaries, car repair, plumbers and electricians, beauty salons, restaurants, accommodation (guesthouses) and real estate agencies. The five towns, with their Romanian and Hungarian names: Miercurea Ciuc (Csíkszereda), Odorheiu Secuiesc (Székelyudvarhely), Gheorgheni (Gyergyószentmiklós), Toplița (Maroshévíz) and Cristuru Secuiesc (Székelykeresztúr). For every profile I recorded the website field, the number of reviews and the average rating, the category shown on Maps, and whether the "Own this business?" link appears.

I opened 348 profiles in total and removed 65: 13 I could not identify unambiguously, 40 whose category belongs to another trade (for example a car wash in the car repair search), 7 duplicates (the same business in two searches), 4 located in another town, and one closed business. I filtered the trades by the Maps categories. I did not count a directory link (business registry, booking or listing site) as an own website.

The limits of the measurement:

• I did not search on location, with GPS. Google takes the searcher's location into account, so someone in town may see a different order.
• Small towns return fewer results. 34 profiles remained in Cristuru Secuiesc and 51 in Toplița, against 72 in Miercurea Ciuc. Where the sample is small, one or two businesses move the percentage a lot.
• The measurement was taken at a single point in time, on 27 September 2026. On another day the Maps order may differ.
• I also looked at opening hours and the number of photos, but could not collect reliable data on them, so I do not publish those.

The top three places: correlation, not cause

The gap between the top three and places 4–10 stands out: 41% versus 30% with their own website, a median of 22 versus 11 reviews. That still does not mean a business moved up because of its website or its reviews. This is correlation, not cause and effect: older, better-known businesses may simply have both more reviews and a website more often.

In its help page on local ranking, Google names three factors: relevance (how well the profile matches the search), distance (how far the business is from the searcher) and prominence (how well known the business is, which according to Google includes the number and score of reviews and the information about the business found across the web). My measurement could not account for distance, so I read the order with caution.

What does not differ: 29% of the top three and 32% of places 4–10 are unclaimed, and the median rating is 4.8 in both groups. Close to a third of the top three places are held by profiles the owner never took over.

Local Google visibility by trade

Each line shows the share of profiles with their own website, the share of unclaimed profiles and the median number of reviews.

• Real estate agencies (18 profiles): own website 78%, unclaimed 44%, median 5.5 reviews.
• Accommodation (36 profiles): own website 53%, unclaimed 19%, median 128 reviews.
• Dentists (33 profiles): own website 45%, unclaimed 33%, median 10 reviews.
• Plumbers, electricians (20 profiles): own website 40%, unclaimed 25%, median 3 reviews.
• Restaurants (32 profiles): own website 34%, unclaimed 12%, median 422.5 reviews.
• Car repair (32 profiles): own website 31%, unclaimed 25%, median 27.5 reviews.
• Lawyers, notaries (24 profiles): own website 29%, unclaimed 33%, median 2 reviews.
• Accountants (26 profiles): own website 27%, unclaimed 42%, median 1 review.
• Physiotherapy, private clinics (27 profiles): own website 26%, unclaimed 52%, median 10 reviews.
• Beauty salons (35 profiles): own website 3%, unclaimed 31%, median 16 reviews.

Where guests leave reviews on their own, in restaurants and accommodation, unclaimed profiles are the rarest. Accountants and lawyers, on the other hand, have a median of 1–2 reviews: someone looking for one on Maps sees hardly any opinions on most profiles. More than half of the physiotherapy and private clinic profiles are unclaimed, and of the 35 beauty salons only one links to a website of its own.

By town

• Miercurea Ciuc (72 profiles): own website 46%, unclaimed 18%, median 23 reviews.
• Odorheiu Secuiesc (65 profiles): own website 45%, unclaimed 26%, median 10 reviews.
• Gheorgheni (61 profiles): own website 34%, unclaimed 34%, median 11 reviews.
• Toplița (51 profiles): own website 24%, unclaimed 33%, median 17 reviews.
• Cristuru Secuiesc (34 profiles): own website 12%, unclaimed 56%, median 15 reviews.

The county seat, Miercurea Ciuc, has the tidiest profiles. In Cristuru Secuiesc more than half of the 34 profiles are unclaimed and only 4 link to their own website, but this is also the smallest sample.

What is worth doing

Briefly, since I covered the details in the Google Business Profile guide:

• Claim your profile. If Maps shows the "Own this business?" link on your business, you are not the one managing it. Claiming is free.
• Fill in the website field with your own address, not a directory or booking link.
• Ask satisfied customers for reviews, steadily rather than many at once.
• Reply to reviews, including the critical ones. You can only do this on a claimed profile.

If your website does not show up in search either, the article on why a website is not showing up on Google will help. How the company websites themselves look in Harghita, I described in the measurement of 100 company websites.

If you would like me to look at your Maps profile and your website together, send me your business name and I will tell you what I see. If you do not have a website of your own yet, the business websites page shows how I work.