Bathroom and tile in Moldova: Who is top on Google?

Top 20 most visited sites in the «Plumbing fixtures and tiles» niche 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 seasonality and capacity of the market.

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

The ranking includes websites from Google search results that offer the following product categories:

• Tiles,
• Toilets,
• Bathtubs,
• Mixers/faucets,
• Bathroom furniture,
• Shower cabins,
• Heated towel rails,
• Other product categories.

The table reflects traffic received over the last 30 days, April 2026.

Methodology and assumptions.For the assessment, we use the Ahrefs analytics service, one of the most accurate tools on the market. However, its Organic Traffic metric is a modeled estimate based on rankings and click-through rate, so it is often lower than the actual traffic.

In our projects, the difference is usually 3-5 times, which we regularly cross-check with GSC/GA4. If an Ahrefs report conditionally shows 1,000 visits, the real volume exceeds 3,000.

These are limitations of the model: the tool does not account for part of the long tail, brand variations, local and fresh queries, Discover, and other sources.

*Please take this assumption into account when interpreting the data: Ahrefs generally provides a conservative estimate.

Comparison of Google traffic for 2025-2026

In this section, we compare the total search traffic of all 20 players for 2024 and 2025.

“Total traffic” means all visits from Google search for brand queries, for example: “linia h2o”, “linia h2o magazin”, “zikkurat botanica”, where the brand is mentioned. It also includes target queries such as “gresie chisinau”, “cabina de dus chisinau”, “cada de baie” and others.

The table reflects the overall scale of the site’s visibility in Google search, including queries by product and category names.

Non-Branded Traffic

Non-brand traffic means user queries in Google search. They do not include a specific brand name, but they are related to products. For example: queries such as “плитка для ванной”, “купить плитку в кишиневе”, “душевая кабина”, “sticla pentru dus” and other keywords used by residents of Moldova on Google.

For clarity, we display the organic traffic volume data in a pie chart so that it is clear who holds the largest share.

How much is organic traffic worth?

The value of organic traffic, Traffic Value, is an estimate of how much the current volume of free visits would cost if the company bought these clicks through Google Ads.

Simply put, it is the market price of a website’s search visibility.

If a site receives 8,000 visits per month and the average click price for such queries is $0.30, then its organic traffic is estimated at approximately $2.4k per month.

Branded Traffic

Brand traffic means search queries that contain the name of the company, brand, or domain.

For example: “gresie metru patrat”, “dulap pentru baie linia h2o”, “унитазы супратен” and others.

Ratio of brand to non-brand traffic, in %

A bar chart by sites in the “Plumbing fixtures and tiles” niche.

Each column = 100% of a specific site’s traffic, split into two shares:

• Blue – the percentage of non-brand traffic. This means that the site attracts users who do not yet know the brand; they search for “полотенцесушитель кишинев”, “ванны кишинев”, “mobilier baie”, “dulap pentru baie” and others. This indicator is important for attracting a new, targeted audience.
  
• Red – the percentage of brand traffic. These are users who intentionally search for “abc плитка”, “faianta metru patrat”. Such traffic is a sign of trust and brand awareness in the market and is formed through work with an already “warm” audience, including offline.
  

How to read it

• Compare the height of the blue part: the higher it is, the stronger the site grows through SEO for general queries.
• The larger the red part, the higher the dependence on brand/offline/advertising – that is, on people who already know you.

The chart shows which sites in the “plumbing fixtures and tiles” niche attract an audience through SEO and which ones do so thanks to brand awareness.

supraten.md has excellent indicators: 76% organic traffic from commercial queries, Non-brand, and 24% traffic from the supraten / супратен brand.

ceramic.md, stroylux.md, termoformat.md, bicomplex.md receive approximately 99% “blue”, which means: the site receives traffic only from product and category queries; no users use the ceramic or stroylux brand name when searching.

Seasonality for the query “Gresie”

*Chart No. 1 shows the seasonality graph in the form of monthly query volume, comparing 2024-2025.

There was an issue displaying the chart. Please edit the chart in the admin area for more details.

The dynamics of search queries for the keyword “Gresie”, considering that there are many more related queries, show growth from March, when Google recorded 838 queries. Peak interest occurs in May, when the number of queries reached 1,025. This confirms that residents of Moldova use Google every month to choose tiles: they browse the assortment, compare prices, study reviews and characteristics.

Top 5 sites capturing traffic for “commercial queries”

Every day, residents of Moldova search for the same product in completely different ways. For tiles alone, there are more than 50 variations of search queries, for example:

плитка, плитка для ванной, плитка в ванную дизайн, плитка в ванную кишинев, плитка для ванной в кишиневе цены, керамическая плитка, плитка под дерево, ванная комната плитка and others.

And this is only in Russian; in Romanian the picture is similar.

*This is exactly why, in SEO promotion, the first thing we do is identify all query variations in the category so that the site is optimized for the maximum number of keywords. Each of them brings traffic from potential buyers. The worse the site is optimized, the less traffic it receives.

Using the example of 6 “key queries” from different product categories, we want to show how Google distributes traffic between websites.

For the keyword “Gresie” – more than 228 queries. Top 5 sites capturing traffic

For the keyword “shower cabin Chisinau” – more than 337 queries. Top 5 sites capturing traffic

For the keyword “bath tub” – more than 314 queries. Top 5 sites capturing traffic

For the keyword “towel warmer in Chisinau” – more than 331 queries. Top 5 sites capturing traffic

For the keyword “toilets in Chisinau” – more than 243 queries. Top 5 sites capturing traffic

For the keyword “bathroom faucet” – more than 243 queries. Top 5 sites capturing traffic

Financial Indicators

The table contains financial indicators for 2023-2024 based on financial reports submitted by the companies to the State Tax Service.

Conclusions:

Financial Indicators

The market is growing.

• Total company revenue: €317.66 mln, 2023, → €353.48 mln, 2024, +11.3%.
• Net profit: €16.60 mln → €19.24 mln, +15.9%.
• Employees: 3,037 → 3,464, +14%.

General online picture

Key conclusion: out of the 20 analyzed sites, only 4 grew: nanu.md +50%, romstal.md +35%, capcap.md +20%, 4elements.md +19%. The other 16 lost traffic, and some did so catastrophically:

• bicomplex.md −77%
• uniplast.md −74%
• termoformat.md −52%
• paradyz.md −49%
• climatec.md −44%

The leader shook, but kept first place

supraten.md dominates in absolute numbers, 24,700 visits in 2025, but lost -28% of organic traffic over the year.

traffic over the year.

That is, supraten is losing exactly what is hardest to recover – positions for commercial queries not related to its own brand.

Success story: nanu.md

The most impressive growth in the sample:

• Total traffic: 5 800 → 8 700 (+50%)
• Non-brand traffic: 1 353 →5 425 (×4)
• Share of non-brand traffic: 23% → 62%

This is a classic sign of a successful SEO strategy. The site stopped depending on its own brand and began competing for general commercial queries.

Brand vs non-brand: red flags

There are several sites where almost all traffic is non-brand, which sounds good, but in reality it means the brand is not recognizable:

• ceramic.md, termoformat.md, stroylux.md, bicomplex.md: ~100% non-brand.
  

uniplast.md − is a separate case: brand traffic collapsed from 2,011 to 103, -95%. This happened because of the incompetent work of the contractor who implemented changes, a very common mistake faced by businesses in Moldova. The site changed its structure – the URLs changed – the links to categories changed. As a result, traffic dropped catastrophically. Similar losses could have been avoided if the company had had an in-house SEO specialist or if the team had contacted RocketSEO in advance for consultation.

Who controls the key niches

The market is consolidating around 2-3 players in each product category. Three sites take up to 70% of the traffic.

The data on top sites show a clear division of the market:

Niche	Leader	Share
Tiles	plitka.md	33,3%
Shower cabins	pandashop.md	37,1%
Bathtubs	romstal.md	38,2%
Heated towel rails	supraten.md	36,3%
Toilets	supraten.md	41%

Traffic decline

In 2025-2026, Google rolled out updates in conveyor-belt mode.

• March 2025 – core update, 14 days,
• June/July 2025 – core update, June 30 – July 17;
  
• December 2025 – according to analysts, the most significant update, affecting 52% of e-commerce sites,
• February 2026 – Discover Core Update, 22 days;
  
• March 2026 – Spam Update/Core Update – the general search algorithm, 12 days.

Websites were hit by 5 major waves in a row. Even strong sites were “shaken” by Google, while those that already had quality problems simply did not have time to resurface between waves.

What exactly has Google started to «penalize»?

New search engine updates have hit affiliate content hard (–71%), “SEO content” optimized for keywords rather than people (–63% in rankings), and websites with weak E-E-A-T signals (a 45–80% drop in visibility) For plumbing supply stores in Moldova, this means:

In the new updates, Google does not distribute traffic equally; it gives it to favorites. That is why nanu.md, romstal.md, plitka.md  are growing, while everyone else is splitting the shrinking remainder.

Updates are part of the reason, but not the main one. In 2024-2025, Google continuously raised the bar for content quality and technical requirements for websites:

1. Website speed and technical health,
2. Correctly optimized page meta tags,
3. Useful reviews and articles for the user,
4. Expertise signals: link building, authors, reviews,

How to grow organically in 2026

• Technical hygiene. This is the basic level without which all other efforts will be useless.
• Rewrite product cards. Fill out the cards in accordance with Google’s new requirements.
• Optimize meta tags.
• E-E-A-T – stop being a faceless catalog. In the December 2025 update, sites with weak E-E-A-T signals lost 45-80% of visibility. This is one of Google’s filters.
• AEO/GEO – preparing for AI Search. Visibility depends on whether the system understands your content well enough to cite it. In shopping, AI Overviews are still weak, but not for long.

Experts’ Opinion

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