Do you need a website if you have a Google profile?

For most small businesses the honest answer is: not on day one, but sooner than you think. A Google Business Profile answers where you are, when you are open and how to call. A website answers why someone should pick you, in your own words and on a page nobody else controls. If customers only ever need your hours and your phone number, the profile can carry you for a while. If they compare you with others before they call, you need both.

What your Google profile already does well

If you have not set one up yet, start with what a Google Business Profile is. It is free, and it covers more than people expect. According to Google's help page on editing a profile, you can show:

• your hours, phone number and address or service area
• a link to your website, and in some business categories extra links for online orders, reservations or appointments
• a menu (for food and drink businesses) or a list of services with prices, where Google offers it
• in-store products, for retail businesses in the US and a few other countries
• photos and videos of your place, your products and your work

For a coffee shop with regulars, a barber with a walk-in line or a food truck, that may be all a customer looks for before showing up.

What a profile cannot do for you

The profile is still Google's page about you, not your page. A few limits follow from that:

• You fill in the fields, Google decides the layout. There is no page for each service, no room for a longer story, no place to explain how a job works from first call to final invoice.
• It can be suspended. Google's guidelines say it "reserves the right to suspend access" to profiles that break its rules, so the page customers rely on can go dark for reasons you did not see coming.
• Free tools can disappear. Google used to let businesses build a simple website inside their profile. On March 5, 2024 it turned those websites off. Visitors were redirected to the profile until June 10, 2024, and after that they got a "Page not found" error. Owners who had only that website had to start again somewhere else.

The same is true of a Facebook Page used as a website: useful, free, and owned by someone else.

What customers do after they read your reviews

BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey, published in February 2026, asked 1,002 US adults what they do after reading positive reviews of a local business. Respondents could pick more than one answer:

Visiting the website was the most common next step, up from 32% when BrightLocal last asked in 2019. In other words, a good profile often sends people looking for your website. If there is none, they keep scrolling, and the next business in the list may have one.

The same survey found that 45% of consumers now use ChatGPT or other AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before. BrightLocal's advice for that shift is plain: keep your website up to date, keep your listings accurate, and check the sources the AI tools point to.

How a website helps the profile itself

Google explains that local results are mainly based on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Prominence means how well-known a business is, and Google says it is based partly on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. It also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

A website does not move you up the map by itself. What it does is give everyone else something to link to: the chamber of commerce, the supplier who lists its stockists, the local paper that wrote about your opening, the wedding blog that mentioned your cakes. A profile alone gives them very little to point at.

A quick way to decide

The smallest website that does the job

You do not need twenty pages. A useful first website has:

1. One sentence at the top: what you do and where.
2. The same hours, phone number and address as your Google profile, word for word.
3. A tap-to-call button and one clear next step: book, get a quote, order.
4. Your services, with starting prices if you are comfortable sharing them.
5. Real photos of your work, the same kind you post on social media.
6. A link to your Google reviews.

That is also the page your Instagram bio should point to. We covered what else can go there in what a local business should put in its link in bio, and what each route costs in how much a small business website costs.

If you want one built

Our New Website service is a one-time job for $999: up to five pages, the words written for you, your photos and brand kit, a contact form or booking button, click-to-call and directions, with Meta Pixel and Google Analytics set up from the start. It is built on a website builder you own, so the builder plan and the domain stay in your name and are paid by you. If the profile is enough for your business right now, keep it accurate and come back when it is not. When you are ready, the details are under one-time services.