The short answer
Google turned off its free Business Profile websites in March 2024, and the redirects ended on June 10, 2024. Your profile still works without a site, but a real website gives you your own address, a page for each service and a way to take requests. You can build one from your listing's facts.
What happened to Google's free websites
Google Business Profile, once called Google My Business, used to include a simple website builder, so you may have known it as your Google My Business website. It filled a one-page site from your listing, at an address ending in business.site. It was free, and it was basic.
In January 2024, Google said it was ending them. Here's what happened, as Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal reported at the time:
- March 2024. The sites were turned off, and visitors were redirected to the business's profile instead.
- June 10, 2024. The redirects ended, and old addresses started showing a page-not-found error.
- The reason. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Roundtable: "Due to low engagement, we are winding down websites made with Business Profiles."
Google suggested other builders in its notice, including Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Google Sites, Shopify, Durable, Weebly, Strikingly and WordPress. We've linked those reports because they record what its notice said at the time.
Your profile itself wasn't affected. Your listing, reviews and photos all stayed. Only the website part went away.
Check your profile today
If you had one of those sites, look at your profile now. An old business.site address in your website field leads nowhere.
- Search for your business on Google or in Google Maps, signed in to the account that manages it.
- Choose Edit profile, then look for Website under your contact details.
- Replace or remove the address, and save.
Don't fill the gap with a Facebook page. Google's guidelines ask for a website that represents your location, and tell you not to use addresses that send people to landing pages, including pages on social networks. Where your region allows it, your profile has separate social links for those.
What your profile can and can't do
A complete profile can bring in calls with no website at all. Plenty of businesses run this way for years. So here's a fair look at what each one gives you.
| What you need | Profile alone | Your own website |
|---|---|---|
| Show up on Google Maps | Yes | Helps, but the profile does this |
| Phone, directions and hours | Yes | Yes |
| Reviews | Yes, on Google | Yes, with permission |
| Explain each service in full | A short description for each | A whole page for each |
| Show up in ordinary web results | Not by itself | Yes, page by page |
| Your own web address | No | Yes |
| Prices, FAQs and how you work | Limited | As much as you like |
| A form, quote request or booking page | Limited, and by category | Yes |
| Control over layout and words | Google decides the layout | You do |
| Visible on other maps and search engines | Google only | Anywhere |
What a real site adds
A page for every service. Someone searching "emergency boiler repair in Akron" is looking for a page about exactly that. Your profile's services list can't give them one. A site can, and that page can appear in web results for the search.
Something for others to link to. Google names links from other websites as part of how well known you are. Your supplier, your chamber of commerce and the local paper need somewhere to point.
Answers before the call. What do you charge for a callout? Do you cover my town? Are you insured? A site can answer all of it, and the people who call have already decided they're interested.
A way to reach you when you're closed. A form or a booking page takes the job that a phone can't at 10pm.
An address you own. A domain in your name stays yours when you change builders. A free address on someone else's platform can disappear, as business.site showed.
Numbers of your own. A site tells you which pages get read, and Search Console tells you what people searched to find them.
How to build a site from your listing
A website from your Google Business Profile starts with facts you've already written. These steps work with any builder, and take an afternoon by hand.
- Correct the listing first. A site inherits its mistakes. Check your name, phone, hours and service areas, and fix them using our profile guide.
- Copy out your facts. Note your name, category, address or towns, phone, hours, services and description.
- Add what the listing lacks. Write a few plain sentences on each service, how you price, who you are, and any license or insurance you hold. Customers want this, and a listing has little room for it.
- Gather your own photos. Your own pictures are yours to reuse. Photos that customers added to reviews belong to them, so ask first.
- Ask before quoting reviews. Link to your Google reviews, or get a customer's OK to quote them.
- Choose how to build it. See the best website builders for small business, and how to build a small business website for the rest of the steps.
- Get a domain in your own name. Buy it yourself, so it stays yours whoever builds the site.
- Publish, then point your profile at it. The last section covers this.
Let a builder read the listing for you
A few builders can start from a listing, so you don't have to copy anything out. Lindo says on its home page that it can build from a Google Business Profile, and Shingle does it too. Here's how that goes in Shingle, so you can see what to expect from this kind of tool.
- Paste a link to your business from Google Maps or Search, or type its name and town. You see the business as Google lists it, and confirm it's yours.
- Choose what to include. Your rating starts on if it's at least 4.0 from 10 reviews. Quoted reviews and customers' photos start off, because only you can say that you have permission to use them.
- Correct any details. Your notes take priority over what the listing says.
- Build. Shingle builds a one-page demo first, and you can change it by asking in plain words or make it a full site with more pages. It starts with a 7-day trial for $1 that can publish it, and the plan then continues at $49 a month.
Whichever tool you use, read every line before you publish. A site built from a listing can carry over an old phone number just as easily as a good one. You're the one who knows what's true, and you're the one customers will hold to it.
Add the site to your profile
Once your site is live, connect the two. Our help page has the steps, and they're short.
- Search for your business on Google or in Google Maps while signed in.
- Choose Edit profile.
- Choose Contact. In Google Maps, it's under Business information.
- Paste your full web address into Website, starting with
https://, then save.
Google may take a little while to show the change. Search for your business a day or two later, and tap through on a phone to check it lands in the right place.
Keep the two in step
Your listing and your site won't update each other. When you change your hours, your phone or your services, change them in both, plus anywhere else you're listed. Holidays are when this usually goes wrong, so set a reminder a week ahead of each one.
Every few months, read your site and your profile side by side as a customer would. If they disagree on anything, fix it that day. Then work through the local SEO checklist, because a site and a listing that agree are the start of being found.
What about Google Sites
Google still offers Google Sites, a free general-purpose page builder, and it was on the list of alternatives. It can do for a simple notice or an internal page. It wasn't made around a business listing, so you'd copy your details across by hand and build the rest yourself.
If free is the priority, compare it with the free plans in our guide to website costs. Check whether a free plan lets you use your own domain, because that's usually where the limit is.
