How findable are Ghent businesses online? 200 small business websites measured

Half of the websites of small businesses in Ghent (50.6 percent) pass the four basic checks for Google: https, a page that fits a phone, a title with a meta description, and an H1 heading. That is better than the Belgian average of 44.5 percent, but it also means every second business owner in Ghent leaves something on the table exactly where their customers look for them. One in seven websites publicly listed for a Ghent business no longer works.

Ghent has 274,042 inhabitants and 32,656 VAT-registered businesses. In 2025, 3,759 were added and 2,975 closed. Anyone looking for a hairdresser, an accountant or a restaurant here usually starts on Google Maps, in Google or with an AI assistant. In October 2026 we measured the websites of 200 small businesses in Ghent to see how they show up there. This is the Ghent cut of our study of Belgian business websites, with the same method.

Ghent businesses against all of Belgium

On most checks Ghent scores slightly better than Belgium. The biggest gap is in the meta description: 72.2 percent of Ghent sites have one, against 63.5 percent nationally. The local business schema, the structured data from which Google reads your address and opening hours, is also more common in Ghent: 21.6 against 15.0 percent.

So anyone looking for a business in Ghent chooses from tens of thousands. In a market that busy, a site Google reads cleanly makes the difference between being found and being skipped.

On one point Ghent does worse: only 40.1 percent have exactly one H1, against 49.9 percent across Belgium. Ghent sites more often have several H1s on a page. That often happens with page builders, where every block can get its own large heading. Google is not confused by it, but you tell it less clearly what the main subject is.

With 162 working sites, the margin of error in Ghent is about eight percentage points. The six-point gap on the basics is therefore an indication, not proof; the gap on the description is large enough to count.

One in seven links leads nowhere

Of the 200 Ghent websites, 29 no longer worked: 11 domains no longer existed, 6 servers did not respond, 6 showed a parked page and 6 an error. That is 14.5 percent, less than the national figure of 21.8 percent. Another 9 sites refused our visitor.

A dead link on a map or in a directory costs customers who were already on their way. If you list your business in Ghent on Google, on maps and in directories, check those links twice a year. How to get your Google profile in order is in create a Google Business Profile; why it sometimes does not appear, in Google Business Profile not showing.

Per sector in Ghent

Business services, healthcare and personal care (hairdressers, beauty, yoga and sport) pass the basics most often in Ghent, around six in ten. Construction and trades, retail and hospitality stay around four in ten.

Ghent's hospitality sector stands out: only 52.2 percent have a description, and 69.6 percent of the sites fit a phone without problems, while people looking for a restaurant nearly always do so on their phone. Construction companies and tradespeople, on the other hand, nearly all have a site that fits a phone, but often without a description. Per sector it concerns 22 to 28 sites; read the differences as a direction.

Instagram beats Facebook in Ghent

On Ghent business sites, more owners link to Instagram (56.8 percent) than to Facebook (54.3 percent). Across Belgium it is the other way round: 60.0 percent Facebook, 42.4 percent Instagram. LinkedIn is on 17.9 percent of Ghent sites, TikTok on 4.9 percent. In a city with many young customers, that choice makes sense. Which channel reaches which age group is in our study of social media usage in Belgium.

AI assistants, cookies and legal details

• AI crawlersIn Ghent, 6 of the 182 sites that responded block GPTBot in their robots.txt (3.3 percent), more than nationally but still few. Not a single Ghent site blocks ChatGPT's search bots. An llms.txt file sits on 19.8 percent, mostly added automatically by Wix or Shopify. Our AI crawler checker shows how that stands for your own site.
• CookiesOn 33.3 percent of Ghent sites a tracker loads before the visitor gave consent; on 22.2 percent that is the Google Analytics cookie. A cookie banner is present on 43.8 percent. What is required is in do I need a cookie banner.
• Accessibility90.1 percent have at least one error that axe-core rates as serious, mostly too little contrast and links without a name.
• Enterprise number and Peppol46.9 percent show the enterprise number on the home page or a legal page. All 76 Ghent businesses whose number we found are on the Peppol network; more in our Peppol statistics for Belgium.
• Out of dateOn 9.9 percent the footer shows a year of 2024 or earlier, less than the 14.1 percent nationally.

What Ghent sites are built with

In Ghent, custom builds or an unrecognised system form the largest group (41.4 percent), ahead of WordPress (26.5 percent), Wix (10.5 percent) and Squarespace (4.9 percent). Nationally WordPress leads with 39.6 percent. Ghent business owners more often choose a custom-built site or a platform such as Webflow or Squarespace.

What a Ghent business owner checks today

1. Search for your business in Google and on Google Maps, and tap the link to your site. Does it work, and is the address right?
2. Read the line under your title in Google. If it shows something random, write a description that says what you do, in Ghent.
3. Give every page one H1, and only one: "Hairdresser in Ghent city centre" says more than "Welcome".
4. Put your address and opening hours in structured data, so Google and AI assistants read them; see schema markup.
5. Load Google Analytics and the Meta pixel only after consent.

If your customers include the city's students and international residents, add an English version of your key pages too: the checks above apply per language.

Want someone to do it for you? We are based in Ghent. Local findability is what we do in local SEO, and we build sites in web design in Ghent. Or book a call at our office.

Method and limitations

The Ghent sample was drawn within the municipal boundary of Ghent (including Gentbrugge, Ledeberg, Sint-Amandsberg and the other sub-municipalities) from OpenStreetMap, with the same rules as the national sample: no chains, no platforms, no government bodies, seven sectors weighted equally. We do not compare loading time with all of Belgium here: the extra Ghent sites were measured at a different moment, and loading time depends on the conditions of the measurement. None of the other checks depend on that. The full method is with the national study.