What the details on a match card mean

A match card shows enough about the other website to judge whether it's worth contacting, without revealing who it is before you send a request. Alongside the category, services, and location, a card can show up to three details about how established the website and business are:

Domain age: 7 years · ~51–200 pages
Google ~4.8 ★ (100–249 reviews)

None of these details affects which matches you see or the order they appear in. They are there to help you decide, nothing more.

Every detail comes from public information: domain registration records, the website's own sitemap, and its public Google listing.

Domain age

Domain age is how long the website's domain name has been registered, taken from the public registration records that domain registries publish.

• It counts from when the domain's current registration began. Renewing the domain or moving it to a different registrar doesn't reset it.
• If a domain was allowed to expire and someone registered it again, the count starts over from the new registration.
• It's the age of the domain, not of the business. A long-running business may have moved to a newer domain, and an older domain may have changed hands.
• It's shown in whole years. Domains registered in the last year show as "under 6 months" or "under 1 year".

Some domain endings, including several country-code endings, don't publish registration dates. Those cards show no domain age.

Page count

The page count is an estimate of how many real content pages the website has, taken from its sitemap: the list of pages a website publishes for search engines.

• Pages that don't represent real content aren't counted: tag, category, author, and date archive pages; login, account, cart, and checkout pages; search results; feeds; "page 2" listings; thank-you pages; privacy, terms, and cookie pages; and files such as PDFs and images.
• Different versions of the same page (with or without "www", tracking codes, or filters) count once.
• It's shown as a range: 1–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–1,000, or 1,000+ pages. The "~" is there because a sitemap is an estimate. It can include pages that are hard to find, or miss some that exist.

Google rating

The Google rating comes from the website's Google Business Profile, the listing that appears on Google Maps and in Google search results.

• LocalLinkMatch identifies the listing from the Google link the website owner provided, links and maps on the website itself, or a Google Maps search. A LocalLinkMatch admin then confirms the listing belongs to that website before any rating is shown.
• The rating is shown the way Google shows it, to one decimal place. The "~" means approximately: it's the rating when we last checked, and it may have moved a little since.
• The number of reviews is shown as a range (for example "100–249" or "1,000+"), never the exact count.

LocalLinkMatch doesn't collect, verify, or moderate reviews. They belong to Google and to the people who wrote them.

Why a card might show less

A card shows no page count when the website has no sitemap, or its security settings block automated checks.

A card shows no Google rating when:

• We couldn't find a Google Business Profile for the website, or haven't confirmed one yet.
• The listing has no reviews yet, which is common for new businesses.
• The website is a content site (such as a blog or publication) rather than a local business.

A missing detail doesn't mean anything negative about the website. It only means we don't have that information to show.

If a detail about your own website looks wrong

Open the website's page in your dashboard and use Update information.

• Wrong or missing Google listing: the Google Business Profile section shows the listing currently connected. Paste the correct Google Maps link there (in Google Maps, open the business, choose Share, and copy the link) and submit it. An admin reviews the change before it takes effect, and your website stays live in the meantime.
• Domain age or page count: these come straight from public records and the website's own sitemap, so they can't be edited. If one looks wrong, say so in the note for the admin when you submit an update.

Common questions

Why ranges instead of exact numbers?

To keep every website anonymous until a request is sent. An exact review count or page count, together with a location, is often enough to work out which business a card belongs to. Ranges give you a fair sense of size without giving the website away, and the same protection applies to your own website on other members' cards.

Why don't cards show Domain Authority, Domain Rating, or traffic estimates?

Those are estimates made by SEO tool companies, not numbers Google publishes or uses. For small local websites they tend to be low and vary little from site to site, and traffic estimates are especially unreliable for sites with modest search volume. So they rarely separate one good local partner from another, and they can make a solid website look weak. Domain age, page count, and the Google rating come from public records, the website itself, and Google, and say more about whether a local business is established and active.

Do you show anything from Google Search Console?

No. If a website was verified through Google Search Console, that connection is used only to confirm ownership. None of the website's internal data from Search Console is shown on a card or anywhere else. The page count comes from the website's public sitemap file, not from Search Console.

How often are the details updated?

The Google rating and page count are checked when the website is added to LocalLinkMatch, and again about every three months. Between checks, the number of reviews usually goes up as the business collects more, while the rating can move up or down. Domain age goes up on its own as time passes, unless the domain is allowed to expire and is registered again, which starts the count over.

Can other members see these details about my website?

Yes. Members your website is matched with see the same kind of details about your website, shown the same way: in ranges, and without revealing who you are until a request is sent.