Cosmetics in Moldova: Who’s Top?

Top most visited sites in the niche “cosmetics” in Moldova.

The purpose of the analysis: to show the potential of key queries, the dynamics of organic traffic, to identify leaders, to determine the market capacity and its growth.

The rating includes sites from Google search engine, offering for purchase: cosmetics and body care products, as well as other related products in Moldova.

The table reflects traffic that has been received in the last 30 days. (November 2025)

*Methodology and assumptions. The Ahrefs analytical service is used to collect and evaluate sites and their indicators. This tool accurately reflects the data on Western markets, but in Moldova, due to the less developed Internet environment, its indicators are often underestimated compared to the actual ones.

Ahrefs metrics are model estimates based on search engine positions and estimated clickability. According to our practice of working with local projects in Moldova, the discrepancy between Ahrefs data and actual performance is usually 3-5 times, we regularly check Ahrefs metrics with Google Search Console and GA4.

Thus, if the Ahrefs report shows a notional 1,000 visits, the real volume may be 3,000 or more. This is not a “trick,” but is due to the limitations of the model: the tool does not cover part of the “long tail,” brand variations, local and fresh queries, traffic from Google Discover and other sources.

Please take this assumption into account when interpreting the indicators: Ahrefs shows a conservative estimate for the Moldovan market.

Comparison of traffic from Google for the years 2024-2025

In this section, we compare the total search traffic of all players in the niche for 2024 and 2025.

“General traffic” is all conversions from Google for any search queries: both branded (e.g. “moonglow botanica“, “iherb md”) and general (“collagen buy chisinau“, “dior sauvage”, “kirke“, “hair mask” , etc.).
The indicator reflects the overall scale of a site’s visibility in search and covers all key areas, brands, categories, pages for which users search in Google.

Unbranded traffic

Non-branded traffic are queries that do not include the “brand name” but are related to the services the company offers. For example, queries: “scalp peeling”, “pudra enzimatica”, “apa micelara”, “scrub pentru fata”, “masca pentru fata”, “panthenol cream”. Shows the overall visibility of the site in Google by keyword, category, and brand.

For clarity, let us present the data in a pie chart. The top 5 sites in Moldova share branded traffic as follows

Branded traffic

Branded traffic is search queries that mention the name of a company, brand or domain.

For example: “viorica cosmetic”, “viorica cosmetic parfumuri”, “viorica cosmetic”, “viorica cosmetic reviews”, “viorica vie”, “viorica ulei de nuca”

Queries contain the name of a brand. The user heard somewhere, saw an advertisement, noticed a sign or a recommendation, and then decided to clarify the details in Google search.

100% branded traffic to the site – indicates that the site is ranking poorly in Google search and is hardly visible, the site is not getting traffic on users’ “key queries”.

Ratio of “branded – Non-branded” traffic in %

This is a bar chart of sites in the “pharmacies” niche for the year 2025.

Each column = 100% of a particular site’s traffic, broken down into two shares:

• purple – non-branded traffic (conversions from searches on general queries “name of the drug”, “name of symptoms”, etc.);
• blue – branded traffic (requests with the company name).

How to read

• Compare the height of the purple part: the bigger it is, the stronger the site grows due to SEO on general queries.
• The bigger the blue part, the higher the brand/offline/advertising dependency.

The diagram shows which sites in the “pharmacies” niche are gaining audience through SEO, and which ones are gaining audience through brand awareness.

Traffic to the site by top queries

The table demonstrates by which queries the site receives the most visitors.

Traffic to the site on commercial inquiries

The charts show commercial queries and the players who share traffic on them

How much is organic traffic worth?

Organic Traffic Value is an estimate of what the current volume of free visits would cost if a company were to buy those clicks through Google Ads.

Simply put – it is the market price of a site’s visibility in search.

If a site gets 8000 visits per month and the average click price for such queries is $0.30
then its organic traffic is valued at about $2.4k per month

Financial performance

Conclusions

General dynamics by monetary indicators

The total market turnover has grown from ~1.088 billion mdl in 2023 to ~1.180 billion mdl in 2024 – a growth of 8%. This indicates market expansion, sales of goods are increasing.

Net income has grown: from ~124.6M in 2023 to ~155.5M in 2024. That is, the market is not just selling more – profitability has increased, indicating improved margins, efficiency, possibly cost reduction.

The number of employees collectively increased from 743 to 816 – an increase of about 10%. That is, companies are growing and hiring more people.

Translated into business terms: the cosmetics market in Moldova is developing, sales are growing, companies are scaling up, the industry’s economy is healthy enough to support the growth of not only turnover, but also net profit.

Overall dynamics in terms of traffic growth

The cosmetics market as a whole is growing. The aggregate data shows that the niche shows traffic growth, but unevenly: some players have a powerful upsurge, while others are stagnating or falling.

Trend #1 – organic demand is growing, every year more and more Moldovans turn to Google for help.

The growth can be seen in keys: masks, powders, scrubs, micellar water, creams, shampoos, tonic, hair dye – almost all such queries give a surge of traffic on the sites.

Trend #2 – a huge share of traffic is coming from queries for specific products and product brands, not just categories.

On most sites, one top product brings in 10-45% of all traffic.

Almost all of the growth/decline of traffic is directly related to the popularity of individual brands and product lines, it is important that the site was SEO optimized for all products that-so that Google saw them on the site.

Customers in Moldova search for cosmetics by specific product-brands, not just by category.

Sites rank well by category:

moonglow.md → enzyme powder

organic-shop.md → pudra enzimatică

sublime.md → șampon fara sulfati

estel.md → vopsea de par

Websites rank well for specific product brands:

makeup.md → kirke

ovico.md → baccarat rouge 540

cosmeticshop.md → vivienne sabo

myskin.md → missha bb cream

Falling traffic at niche players“gloss.md“,“babor.md“,“vanila.md” is conditioned by

• They are tied to niche/small brands (Kevin Murphy, Babor, Ollin).

• These brands are not mainstream.

• The main demand has shifted towards Korean, organic and mid-segment care cosmetics.

If a product brand loses popularity → the site loses traffic as search demand decreases.

Goods of well-known and popular brands → generate a steady stream of search traffic. For example, the site gets hits on branded queries “Dior” or specific product lines of spirits that are widely known on the market.

Websites with high brand recognition: avon.md, viorica.md, md.oriflame.com, ibeauty .md – in their case the share of branded traffic is very significant. For such brands it is important to constantly work on image and maintain customer loyalty in order to keep such a high percentage of branded traffic.

These sites actively attract loyal customers who already know about the brand and go to the site for a specific request (for example, “buy Avon” or “Oriflame products”).

Increase in traffic and conversions depends on recognition than on SEO on queries. These sites rank poorly in Google search and will not get new customers from this channel. Traffic to the site comes from an already loyal audience that knows the names and products of these brands their growth will be limited unless they start working on SEO for generic queries

SEO remains the main channel for capturing the cosmetics market in 2026.

• 70-100% of most websites’ traffic is non-branded. (Branded traffic = loyalty, Non-branded = growth and new customers)

• People are looking for products, not stores.

• SEO on product queries is a major source of growth.

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