Google has announced plans to shut down their basic starter websites made by Business Profiles in March. This removal will affect all websites ending in business.site. Google will automatically redirect customers from those sites to your Google Business Profile in March.
This is only a temporary until June 10, which gives business owners less than six months to update their online presence.
Does This Affect You?
Google sent the notification email below to owners of business profiles that have a business.site page activated. You’re checking your notifications right?
If “some guy” at your networking group created a profile and business.site page for you and then vanished to go build bouncy castles, then you might not be receiving any notifications. Visit Google Search and Maps to look up your business and check your online presence asap.
Customers will begin to see the dreaded “page not found” error after June 10th when arriving at the deactivated business.site page.
Update Your Profile
Google closes out the notification asking you to update your business profile with a link to a new website with a few not so helpful recommendations.
- Wix and Squarespace – Lower tier site builder platforms that are useful for a business just starting out. The main limitation with these platform builders is that they intentionally make it difficult to use your own data or leave. Images are not utilized in SEO friendly standards, backups cannot be used elsewhere, limited features, etc.
- Google Sites – Trust us! It will still be here next year! /s Nope. Google continues to kill off or marginalize different services so best to avoid for your long term growth and sanity.
- Shopify – Excellent for e-commerce storefronts.
- WordPress – Excellent for business sites with access to an entire extended world of custom plugins. Just remember to avoid shared hosting providers (GoDaddy, InMotion, or similar) that will warehouse you with hundreds or thousands of other sites on a single server. A top tier dedicated and secure cloud platform with a data center in Atlanta. Sounds perfect!
Reach out to us if you happen to have a business.site page and have questions on a solid foundation for your online business presence.