Your address is on the page. Is it in the code?
A search engine and an AI assistant read the same page in two different ways, and most local businesses only write for one of them. On 18 September 2026 we opened the home page of 229 local-business websites and counted six facts twice — once as visible text, once as machine-readable data. The gap between the two is the whole article.
Cittago runs this as a service — see seo agency cluj-napoca.
Google does not assume your website and your profile on the map belong to the same business. It matches them by reading what both of them say: the name, the address, the phone number, the city. When the website says none of it, the match stays a guess.
This is not everyone's problem. If you have no physical location customers can visit and you do not travel to them, Google says plainly that you cannot have a Business Profile. The rest of this article is not for you.
What you gain by fixing it: you turn up more often when somebody searches your service plus your city, and AI assistants have somewhere to take your address and opening hours from when somebody asks them who to work with.
- You see what is missing on most local sites, with numbers rather than impressions.
- You learn why the third local ranking factor is the one worth working on, in Google's own words.
- You get the fix list in the order that is actually worth doing.
- You learn what not to do, so you do not lose the profile you have.
One business, two readers
Open the home page of a restaurant. You see a photograph, a name, probably a phone number somewhere near the top. A machine opening the same page sees markup, and markup does not say “this string is the phone number” unless somebody wrote that down.
That sounds like a technicality until you count it. We counted it on 229 local-business websites on 18 September 2026, and the same three facts came out like this:
| Fact | Readable by a person | Readable by a machine |
|---|---|---|
| The postal address | 159 of 229 — 69.4% | 20 of 229 — 8.7% |
| The phone number | 158 of 229 — 69.0% | 18 of 229 — 7.9% |
| The opening hours | 84 of 229 — 36.7% | 17 of 229 — 7.4% |
Nothing is missing from these businesses. The information is written, on the page, in plain sight. It is just written once instead of twice — and the second copy is the one a search engine and an AI assistant can use without guessing.
The address exists for people in 69.4% of cases, for robots in 8.7%
The same three facts, counted first as visible text on the page, then as structured data a search engine or an AI assistant can read without guessing.
Source: Cittago audit, 229 websites, 18 September 2026; “for the robot” = the same fact written in structured data · cittago.com
| % | |
|---|---|
| Address, for people | 69.4% |
| Address, for robots | 8.7% |
| Phone, for people | 69.0% |
| Phone, for robots | 7.9% |
| Hours, for people | 36.7% |
| Hours, for robots | 7.4% |
How we measured 229 websites — the method and its limits
The set comes from OpenStreetMap — the free map of the world built by volunteers, a sort of Wikipedia for maps — limited to Cluj County in Romania, across seven categories that nearly always have a physical address: restaurants; cafés, bars and fast food; hotels and motels; guesthouses, cabins and hostels; dental practices; medical practices and clinics; law firms.
Of 1,782 mapped businesses, 347 had a website listed and, after removing duplicates, 314 unique domains remained. On 18 September 2026 we requested each home page once, with an ordinary browser. 229 answered. Every percentage in this article shares the denominator 229, and we write it next to the percentage each time.
| Signal | What it means, exactly | Found |
|---|---|---|
| Names its city | the string “Cluj” appears anywhere on the page | 185 of 229 — 80.8% |
| Address on page | a Romanian street marker: “Str.”, “Bd.”, “Calea”, “Piața”, “nr.” | 159 of 229 — 69.4% |
| A phone number | a tappable link or a number written in the text | 158 of 229 — 69.0% |
| Tappable phone | a tel: link you can press from a phone | 114 of 229 — 49.8% |
| Link to the map | a link to the profile on the map (maps.google, g.page, maps.app.goo.gl) | 91 of 229 — 39.7% |
| Opening hours | the words for “hours”, “open”, “Monday–Friday” in Romanian | 84 of 229 — 36.7% |
| Embedded map | an iframe carrying Google Maps | 38 of 229 — 16.6% |
| Structured data | a JSON-LD block carrying a local-business type | 24 of 229 — 10.5% |
We did not ask Google whether these businesses have a profile at all — no maps API was queried. We only measure what their website says. A business can have an excellent profile and a mute website, and here it is counted among the mute ones. And it says nothing about how much traffic or how many customers anyone loses: there is no way to know that from the outside.
One honest note about a number that appears to contradict what we published a week earlier. On 11 September we wrote that 17 of 231 sites carried local-business structured data; today it comes out as 24 of 229. The market did not change in seven days — the detection rule did. Today's count accepts more subtypes (lodging, store, professional service among them) and also catches broken code blocks, where the type is there but the JSON will not parse. Both numbers are written here so it is clear which set each belongs to.
The missing link between the site and the profile
Only 39.7% link to their own profile on the map
Eight signals looked for on each site's home page. Every percentage shares one denominator: 229 local-business websites in Cluj County that answered on 18 September 2026.
Source: Cittago audit of the home page of 229 local-business websites in Cluj County, 18 September 2026 · cittago.com
| % | |
|---|---|
| Names its city | 80.8% |
| Address on page | 69.4% |
| A phone number | 69.0% |
| Tappable phone | 49.8% |
| Link to the map | 39.7% |
| Opening hours | 36.7% |
| Embedded map | 16.6% |
| Structured data | 10.5% |
138 websites out of 229 — 60.3% — carry no link to their own profile on the map and no embedded map either. Nothing. A visitor who wants directions has to leave the site, go back to search and hope they land on the right business.
It is not a catastrophe, and we will not pretend it is. A determined customer finds you anyway. But every extra step is somewhere a person stops, and in your city there are another twenty businesses doing the same thing.
The part that matters more than convenience is what the link means to Google. A link from the site to the profile is the most direct way of saying “this is me”. It guarantees nothing — Google does not publish how it weighs signals, and says so openly. But it is a statement you make, instead of leaving everything to inference.
The phone that does not dial — the tel: link and the mobile customer
158 sites of 229 show a phone number on the home page. Of those, 44 — 27.8% of the 158 — show it as text only. You can see it, you cannot press it. On a phone that means long-press, select, copy, open the dialler, paste. Or, more often, give up.
Medical clinics have it twice as often as cafés
The share of each group's websites that expose the number as a tappable link. The small groups read as a hint, not as a stable percentage.
Source: same Cittago audit, 18 September 2026; the small groups (law firms 6, dental 12) read as a hint, not as a stable percentage · cittago.com
| % | |
|---|---|
| Medical clinics | 75.9% |
| Dental practices | 75.0% |
| Hotels | 52.1% |
| Law firms | 50.0% |
| Restaurants | 47.3% |
| Guesthouses | 36.7% |
| Cafés and bars | 30.0% |
The difference between trades tells a simple story. Where the customer has to call in order to book — medical clinics 22 of 29, dental practices 9 of 12 — the link is there. Where the customer simply walks in — cafés and bars 9 of 30, guesthouses 11 of 30 — it is missing.
The two small groups, law firms with 6 sites and dental practices with 12, read as a hint rather than a stable percentage. With six sites, one case moves the result by sixteen points.
The city nobody writes down
44 sites of 229 — 19.2% — do not write the word “Cluj” anywhere on their home page. One in five. These are businesses with an address recorded on a public map, so they physically exist in the city, and their front page does not say so.
It happens for reasonable reasons. Many modern front pages are one large image, a slogan and a button; the address lives in the footer, and the footer is a separate component that sometimes does not load with the page. Sometimes the business wanted to look bigger than it is and left the city out on purpose.
The consequence is the same either way. The three facts that identify a local business — name, address, phone — are exactly what Google compares between site and profile. The trade has an old habit of calling them “NAP”; it is jargon, not a Google feature, and you do not need to know the term to apply it. Just write them, on the same page, in the same form they take in the profile.
125 sites of 229 — 54.6% — have all three on the home page. Which means almost half of the set does not.
The identity card machines read — LocalBusiness structured data
Structured data is a block of code hidden in the page that states, without ambiguity, “the business name is this, the address is this, the phone is this, the hours are these”. It does not show on screen. It exists precisely so that nobody has to guess from marketing copy. The standard format is called LocalBusiness, and Google has a whole documentation page on how it wants it.
Only 18 sites of 229 — 7.9% — carry both the address and the phone number in structured data. Eight of 229 carry coordinates. And 53 of 229 — 23.1% — declare a sameAs somewhere, which is to say they explicitly state “my profile on that platform is this one”, the exact mechanism by which identities get tied together.
The good news is that this is not a content problem, it is a format problem. You already have the information written. It just needs writing a second time, somewhere nobody but machines will look. Most website platforms have an extension that does it; on a hand-built site it is an hour's work.
If you get as far as looking at this part, it is exactly the work we do in the SEO and AI Search service — because it is the same work for Google and for AI assistants.
The third ranking factor, in Google's own words
Google publishes a page explaining what local results are based on. We downloaded it on 18 September 2026 with a real browser, in English, Italian and Romanian, so we could read the same page in three languages on the same day.
The summary sentence reads: “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.” Then three sections follow, and the third one is not called popularity any more. It is called Prominence, and it is defined as: “Prominence means how well-known a business is.”
Two names for one factor on one page is a small thing in English. It is a larger thing in translation: the Romanian version of the page labels it “Vizibilitatea” — visibility — which points a reader towards their own website, while the body definition still says “how well-known a business is”. The Italian page keeps the meaning with “Evidenza” and “notorietà”. Worth knowing if you read Google's documentation in a language other than English.
The sentence that follows the definition is the one worth reading twice, because it says where the work actually is:
“This factor’s also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.”
How many other websites talk about you, and how many reviews you have. Both of those happen off your own site. That is the difference between being visible and being well-known, and it is why the third part of local SEO work happens in local press, trade associations, serious directories and the relationship with customers — not on the front page.
Both Romanian help pages we downloaded, and the Italian one, carry a line at the foot: the page may include content translated using AI, and AI translations may contain errors. The English pages do not carry it — we searched for it in ten different forms and it appears zero times. That is not an accusation; it is a practical reason to read the English version when a phrasing decides your budget.
The business name: what you may not put in it
This is where small businesses hurt themselves most often, because the temptation is obvious and the penalty is not.
The base rule, verbatim: “Represent your business as it’s consistently represented and recognized in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding.” The name on the profile is the name on the sign above the door, on the invoice and on the business cards. Nothing extra.
The examples Google itself lists as not accepted, with the forbidden part in italics in the documentation: a tagline (“TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank”), a store code (“The UPS Store - 2872”), a trademark symbol (“Burger King®”), opening hours (“Regal Pizzeria Open 24 hours”), a phone number or a web address in the name, location detail (“Holiday Inn (I-93 at Exit 2)”), containment (“Chase ATM (in Duane Reade)”) and the name repeated in two scripts.
So “Smith Dental – dental implants Cluj, 24h emergencies” is not a name, it is an advert. And the page says what follows: “Google reserves the right to suspend access to Business Profiles on Google or other Google Services to individuals or businesses that violate these guidelines.” A suspended profile means disappearing from the map for as long as the appeal takes, and appeals take.
We are not telling you this because it is immoral. We are telling you because it is a method that works for a while and then takes away the exact thing you were trying to win. Everything in this article can be done without a single shortcut, and that is the only way we work.
Reviews, and what you may not do with them
Reviews are half of the Google sentence quoted above. They are also the area with the most bad advice in circulation.
What you can do: ask for reviews, from every customer, without checking first how happy they seem. Reply to them, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing. Put the review link somewhere the customer finds without hunting.
What you cannot do, and it is the advice plenty of agencies give: survey the customer first and only send the happy ones to Google. It is called review gating, Google's policies forbid it explicitly, and it is detectable. The ironic part is that the compliant version — ask everyone — produces roughly the same result over time, because at a business doing its job the satisfied customers are the majority anyway.
Why this matters to ChatGPT too — local profiles and AI assistants
Until two or three years ago all of this would have been a conversation about Google alone. Not any more.
When somebody asks an assistant — ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude — where to eat well in a city, or which dentist to see, the answer leans on the pages the assistant was able to read. An assistant reading a page with no address, no phone number and no city has nothing to extract from it. It does not reject you; it simply has nothing to say about you.
Structured data matters more here, not less. A search engine has twenty years of practice at guessing an address out of untidy text. A model receiving your page among many others goes through it once. What is written explicitly survives; what is implied by layout often does not.
We wrote a week earlier, on this same set of Cluj websites, about the first gate — whether the robot is allowed in at all. It is worth reading before this one, because there is no point fixing the identity card on a page the robot cannot open: what we found on 231 websites.
What changes from a restaurant to a dental practice
| Trade | Sites | Tappable phone | Names its city | Link to the map |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medical practices and clinics | 29 | 22 — 75.9% | 27 — 93.1% | 15 — 51.7% |
| Dental practices | 12 | 9 — 75.0% | 11 — 91.7% | 8 — 66.7% |
| Hotels and motels | 48 | 25 — 52.1% | 42 — 87.5% | 20 — 41.7% |
| Law firms | 6 | 3 — 50.0% | 5 — 83.3% | 2 — 33.3% |
| Restaurants | 74 | 35 — 47.3% | 58 — 78.4% | 28 — 37.8% |
| Guesthouses, cabins, hostels | 30 | 11 — 36.7% | 21 — 70.0% | 9 — 30.0% |
| Cafés, bars, fast food | 30 | 9 — 30.0% | 21 — 70.0% | 9 — 30.0% |
Accommodation has a particularity: many send their customers through booking platforms, and the business's own site becomes a shop window nobody maintains. It shows in the numbers — guesthouses name their city in 21 cases of 30 and have a tappable phone in 11 of 30.
For medical and legal practices one thing needs saying explicitly. Advertising for those professions is regulated in Romania, and this article is not about paid advertising. A correct address, a phone number you can press and published opening hours are facts about where you are and when you are open. Cittago does not give legal opinions: if a specific wording worries you, ask your professional body, not a marketing agency.
What to fix, in this order — the short list
- Name, address and phone on the home page, written as they appear on the profile. Ten minutes. Almost half the measured set does not have it.
- The phone as a tappable link. One line of code. 44 of the 158 sites that show a number show it as text only.
- A link from the site to the profile on the map. Another ten minutes; 138 of 229 have neither that nor an embedded map.
- Opening hours on the site, not only on the profile. 84 of 229 have them.
- Local-business structured data, with address, phone, hours and coordinates. An hour, once. 18 of 229 have address and phone in there.
- Reviews asked for consistently, from everyone, plus replies. The only item on this list that never finishes.
- Mentions on other websites — local press, trade associations, serious directories. This is where “how well-known you are” lives, and the work is real.
A business can do the first four itself, in an afternoon. From the fifth down you need somebody who takes care of it — us or your own supplier, but somebody.
Three thresholds, so you know where you start
If you have no physical location customers visit and you do not travel to them, stop here. Google says it plainly: “If your business either has a physical location that customers can visit, or travels to customers where they are, you can create a Business Profile on Google.” Otherwise, no. There is nothing to fix.
If you have a profile but your site never mentions it, you are in the 60.3% majority. Do the first four items on the list yourself, in an afternoon. You do not need an agency for those, and it would not be honest to let you think otherwise.
If you already have the address, the phone and the link and you still do not show up, the problem is no longer on your website. It is in “how well-known you are”, and that is worked on monthly rather than in an afternoon, with results that show over the long run and rarely straight away. That is the point at which talking to somebody is worth it.
Let's talk about this again in 3–6 months 😉
Questions with answers we think are useful
The questions below are the ones that come up when we discuss this with an owner, plus a few we arrived at ourselves while measuring.
What is the difference between Google My Business and Google Business Profile?
Do I need a website if I already have a profile on the map?
Why does it matter whether the phone number is tappable?
What is structured data and why should I care?
Can I put keywords in the business name to rank higher?
How do I get more reviews without breaking the rules?
Do these numbers apply outside Romania?
How long before I see a result?
Can I check what you measured, on my own site?
Last updated: 18 September 2026. The measurement across 229 websites was made the same day, and the two Google documentation pages were downloaded at the same time, in English, Italian and Romanian. We update this page when the documentation changes or when we repeat the measurement.
Sources: Google — Improve your local ranking (EN) · Google — Local ranking (IT) · Google — Local ranking (RO) · Google — Guidelines for representing your business (EN) · Google — Representation guidelines (RO) · Google — Local business structured data · schema.org — LocalBusiness · OpenStreetMap — Cluj County, relation 91733
