Google Business Profile Website: What Replaced It

Google Business Profile websites were the free, templated sites Google generated from your profile information, and they no longer exist: Google’s help page, as quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, said that as of March 5, 2024 they were unavailable, with a redirect to your Business Profile only until June 10, 2024. Our take: do not look for a replacement inside Google. The Website field on your profile now simply points at a site you own, so the job is to put one canonical URL there, keep it open to Googlebot, and use that exact same URL on every other listing you have. This guide covers what happened and when, what the website field and button do today, how to add or change the link, what to do if you do not have a site, and whether any of it matters for local SEO.

What happened to Google Business Profile websites

For years Google let a verified business turn its profile into a simple website, usually on a business.site address. In early 2024 it turned that off. Here is the sequence, with the sources named.

Date	What happened	Source
March 5, 2024	Websites made with Google Business Profiles stop being available. Visitors are redirected to the Business Profile instead.	Google’s help page, quoted by Search Engine Roundtable
March 2024	The redirect is reported as a 302 (temporary) redirect to the listing on Google Maps.	Search Engine Roundtable (third party)
June 10, 2024	The redirect stops. Visitors to an old address get a “Page not found” error.	Google’s help page, quoted by Search Engine Roundtable

The three sentences Search Engine Roundtable quoted from Google’s help page were: “As of March 5, 2024, websites made with Google Business Profiles are no longer available”, “Your customers will only be redirected to your Business Profile until June 10, 2024” and “After that, customers will get a ‘Page not found’ error when they try to visit your website.” Separately, an earlier Search Engine Roundtable article on the January 2024 announcement quoted a Google spokesperson: “Due to low engagement, we are winding down websites made with Business Profiles.” Martech also reported that owners who pointed their own domain at the old site were told to set up a redirect with their hosting provider before the deadline, but we could not find that instruction on a current Google page, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.

One honest caveat about sources. The Google help article that carried that notice is support.google.com/business/answer/14368911. When we opened it in November 2026 it read as Google’s general “Edit your Business Profile” article, and we found no shutdown notice in the text we could read. So the dates above are Google’s words as reported at the time, not text we could re-read on Google’s own page today. Search Engine Land also covered the redirect, but its page refused our fetch tool, so we did not rely on it.

The practical consequence is simple. If an old business.site address is still printed on a van, a flyer, a directory listing or a social profile, it leads nowhere. Nothing at Google will bring it back.

What the website field and button do now

The website that shows on your profile is whatever URL you enter in the Website field. Google’s edit guide is the page to follow: the field sits inside Edit profile, you enter the full URL including “http://” or “https://”, and Google asks that Googlebot is not blocked on your site. It also suggests using Search Console to check for possible penalties on your site.

Three details from Google’s pages are worth knowing before you type anything.

• It must be a site for that location. Google’s guidelines for representing your business say to provide a website that represents your individual business location. They say not to provide URLs that redirect or refer users to landing pages, including pages created on social media sites, and not to create more than one page for each location.
• Other links are separate. Google lets you add booking, reservation, food ordering and shopping links as local business links, not through the Website field.
• The profile may not need to be verified to change it. Google says an unverified profile can still edit some information, including business name, category, address, hours, phone number and website, while verifying unlocks editing of everything.

Because the link on your profile is only a pointer, what matters is the page it lands on: a working page at a stable address that shows the same business name, address and phone number that the profile shows.

How to add or change the link

These steps follow Google’s Edit your Business Profile page.

On a computer

1. Sign in to the Google Account linked to your Business Profile and open your profile at business.google.com.
2. Select Edit profile.
3. Find the Website field and enter the full URL, including http:// or https://.
4. Select Save.

On a phone

1. Open the Google Maps app.
2. At the bottom right, tap Business.
3. Tap Edit profile.
4. Change the website field, then tap Save.

After you save

• Google reviews your changes before they go live. Its page on what happens to your edits says: “Edits usually take up to 10 minutes to review, but sometimes it can take up to 30 days.”
• An edit shows as Accepted (your updated information appears), Pending (still under review) or Not approved (Google may decline changes it cannot confirm). If an edit is not approved, you may be able to appeal it.
• Open the live profile in a private window and click the website button yourself. Check that the page loads, returns a normal page and shows your real details.

To replace a dead business.site link, do exactly the same thing: overwrite the old URL with your real one and save. Then search for the old address anywhere else you published it and replace it there too. Google’s pages do not give a separate “remove website” procedure, so if you want the field empty, edit the same field and save, and expect the same review step.

What to do if you do not have a website

This is the situation the shutdown created for the most owners. The honest options, and what Google’s own pages say about each, are below. We have left out the website builders other articles list, because Google’s current help pages do not recommend any.

Option	What Google’s pages say	Catch
Leave the Website field empty	The profile still exists without it. Edit the other details instead.	Customers have no destination beyond your phone and address.
Booking, ordering or appointment links	Added under the matching transaction type on your profile. Google’s local business links page lists the steps and says you can add up to 10 links per category for booking, reservations, food orders or shopping orders.	Not available through the Business Profile API or spreadsheet upload, and Google’s policy requires a dedicated landing page for your business.
Social profile links	One link per platform (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X, YouTube), added under Edit profile, Contact, Social profiles. See Google’s social links page.	Available in select regions only, so it may not appear on your profile.
A social page in the Website field	Guidelines say not to refer users to landing pages created on social media sites.	A risk to your listing, so we would not do it.
A small site on your own domain	Not a Google product. You enter its URL in the Website field.	You pay for the domain and hosting yourself, and you maintain it.

Google’s business links policy is strict about what a local business link can be: it cannot be a social media site, a messaging link, an app store link or a link shortener, and it must lead to a dedicated landing page that works without logins or captchas. That rules out the most common shortcuts.

Our view is that a one-page site on a domain you control is the right long-term answer, even if it only holds your name, address, phone, hours and a few service lines. It gives every directory, map and assistant one stable address to point to, and no platform can switch it off.

One canonical URL for your whole footprint

Our position is that every listing you have, on Google or anywhere else, should point to one canonical website URL, and the website field on your Business Profile should be that same URL. We hold this view because the website is part of your business identity just like your name and phone: if Google shows https://example.com, Yelp shows http://www.example.com/home and a third directory still shows an old business.site address, you have three versions of one fact.

Pick the version you want, with or without “www”, http or https, and a trailing slash or not, and write it down. Then:

1. Check what your own site redirects to, so the canonical form really is the one that loads.
2. Put that exact form in your Business Profile Website field.
3. Update every other listing that shows a different form or the dead business.site address. Our guides to finding and fixing duplicate listings and fixing NAP inconsistency show how to find them.
4. If you tag the link to measure clicks from your profile, decide on the tagged form once and keep it, as covered in our post on UTM tracking for your Business Profile.

The free NAP checker is a quick way to see whether the details published on your site and several public sources agree.

Does the website on your profile help local SEO?

Treat it as accuracy, not as a ranking lever. Google’s pages say the website field is a link you provide and that Googlebot should be able to read it. They do not say that adding a site raises your rank, and we have not found an independent source that proves it. What is defensible:

• A working, relevant site gives Google a place to confirm your details and services, which supports the same consistency signal every accurate listing supports.
• A broken or blocked URL does the opposite: people who tap the button get an error, and a crawler cannot read the page.
• The page the link points to is a normal web page, so everything you do to make it useful to visitors counts.

If your question is the other meaning of “add your website to Google”, getting a site into Search at all, Google’s own Search Console help says you do not have to sign up for Search Console to be included in Google Search results. It is a tool for seeing how Google views your site, not a requirement for appearing.

Common mistakes with a Business Profile website

• Leaving the old business.site address in place on a profile, directory listing, email signature or print piece. It now goes nowhere.
• Using a social media page as the website. Google’s guidelines warn against pages created on social media sites.
• Several versions of the same address across listings (www, no www, http, https, tracking tags).
• Blocking Googlebot with a robots rule, login wall or firewall, which Google’s edit page asks you not to do.
• A shared homepage for several locations. Google asks for a page that represents the individual location, so a multi-location business needs a dedicated page per location.
• Forgetting the review step. An edit can sit as Pending, so check the status rather than assuming it went through.

Where this fits in a wider citation plan

A Google Business Profile is the most important listing most businesses have, and our guide to creating a Google Business Profile covers the setup. The profile is one listing among many, though. Apple, Bing, Yelp, Facebook and the industry directories each show a website field of their own, and they only help if they all carry the same address. Our list of free business listing sites is a good place to start, and the local citation finder gives you the ranked directories for your country and industry from our catalog.

Citation Builder does not manage your Google Business Profile: you edit that directly with Google, as described above. If you want help keeping the same name, address, phone and website across the other directories, see our citation building service.

Related guides: adding your website to Google.