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Google Business Profile

Do I Need a Website If I Have a Google Business Profile?

Yes. Google shut down the free websites it once built from Business Profiles in 2024, and a profile without a website sends nobody to your own pages. A simple site with a page for each service and area also supports your rankings. A social media page is a weak substitute.
By Eric Walker · Last updated October 2026

What happened to Google’s free websites

For years, Google let you build a basic site from inside your Business Profile. Google turned those sites off in 2024, and the old business.site addresses stopped working after a short redirect period. If your website field still points at one of them, it leads nowhere and is worth fixing today.

So the question is no longer whether Google will give you a site. It will not. The profile has a field for your own website, and what you put there matters.

What a website does that the profile cannot

A profile gives people your hours, reviews, and a call button. It cannot hold a page for each service, explain how you work, show completed jobs in detail, or rank in regular search results for the long list of searches that never trigger a map pack.

The 2026 Whitespark survey puts a dedicated page for each service at number one for regular local organic results, and in the top 25 for the map pack. That is a website job.

The minimum a local business site needs

  • A home page that says what you do and where, in the first screen.
  • One page for each main service, written for customers, with real details.
  • A contact page with your name, address or service area, and phone number matching your profile exactly.
  • Photos and short descriptions of real jobs.
  • A layout that works on a phone and loads quickly.

That is enough to start. You can add more as you learn which questions customers ask.

What about just using a Facebook page?

Google’s guidelines say the website you list should represent your business and should not be a page that simply redirects people elsewhere. A social page used as a real storefront is not banned, but in my view it is a poor foundation. You do not control the platform, you cannot build a page per service that ranks on its own, and many customers will not log in just to see your prices.

What to put in the website field

If you have one location, link to your home page or to a page that clearly represents that location. If you have several, link each profile to its own location page, because Google’s guidelines ask for a website that represents the individual business location.

Where to start if you have nothing

You do not need an expensive build. A clean, fast, plain site beats a flashy slow one. My guides on getting your business on Google and making your website show up on Google cover the order I would do things in.

Track what the profile sends you

Add a tracking tag to the end of the web address in your website field, for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=business-profile. Your analytics will then show how many visitors came from the profile, separate from regular search. It takes a minute, and it tells you whether the profile is worth more attention.

Check the field once a year. Old booking links, retired domains, and pages that no longer exist are common, and each one sends a possible customer to a dead end.

Related questions

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