Where your profile website traffic should land next

Next Friday the free website attached to your Google Business Profile stops working. If you have one, this is the week the decision gets made, because after 1 March it gets made for you.

We flagged the date in January. This is the part that takes an afternoon.

What actually happens on 1 March

Google built those sites automatically out of the listing: business name, hours, phone, category, a photo, a short description, a button. They usually live on a business.site address. Nobody maintained them, and for a good number of businesses they have been the only thing besides the listing itself.

From 1 March the pages stop loading and visitors are sent to your Business Profile instead. Google has said that redirect runs until 10 June. After that the old address is a dead link.

So there are two jobs here, and only one of them is a website:

1. The website field on your listing. If it points at the free site, it needs a new destination before Friday or the listing loses its website button.
2. Every other place that address is printed. Directories, review request texts, an email signature, a QR code on a window.

Where the traffic should go instead

In the order we would actually do it, best first.

A real site on a domain you own. Five to seven pages: home, services, a page for each main service, about, contact, book. If you have been running a business on a page Google generated, this is the week that stopped being optional. A small site on your own domain is the only part of your presence no platform can switch off. Ours are built so the phone number and the booking button are visible before anyone scrolls, because that is what the traffic is there to do. That is what our website work is.

One good page on a domain you own. If a full site is not happening in eight days, buy the domain and publish a single page: who you are, what you do, the areas you serve, hours, the phone number as a tappable link, a booking button, four photos of your actual work, and the same name, address and phone as the listing. It beats the free page comfortably and it can grow later.

A booking page on a custom domain. If you already run a CRM like GoHighLevel, you have somewhere to publish today. Put it on your own domain rather than the platform’s default address, so that when you move, the links move with you.

A social page. Last resort. Pointing the website field at a Facebook page is better than an empty field and worse than everything above it, because you are renting again from a company with its own deadlines.

What we would not do is leave the field blank and hope the profile carries it. The website button is one of the two buttons people tap on a listing. The other one is call.

Move it properly, not just the listing

The order matters, because a redirect you set up after Friday is a redirect nobody follows.

• Publish the new page first and open it on a phone. Check the phone number dials, the booking button opens, and the address matches the listing exactly.
• Update the website field on the Business Profile, and the appointment link field if you use one.
• Update Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Yelp, your Facebook page, and the trade, insurance or healthcare directories that carry you.
• Update the links in review request texts and emails, automated reminders in your CRM, and your email signature.
• Check any QR code that points at the old address. That sticker is now scrap, so reprint it.
• Ask whoever runs your ads to check every final URL. Ads pointing at a business.site address will stop converting quietly rather than loudly.
• Add the new site to Google Search Console the day it goes live, so you can see what it gets indexed for.

One more thing landed on profiles this month: Google has told businesses that chat and call history on the Business Profile end on 31 July. If people message you through the listing, that conversation needs a new home, and the sensible one is a business text number your team already watches.

The other thing that changed this week

On Thursday Google and Reddit announced a data partnership that gives Google structured access to Reddit content. Threads from forums have been climbing in results for a while, and plenty of people now add “reddit” to a search because they want an answer from a person rather than a page written to rank.

For a local business that means part of the research your customers do now happens somewhere you cannot edit. You cannot publish your way onto a thread about the best orthodontist in town.

What you can do about it:

• Be worth describing well. People repeat what they experienced. Wait times, the price they were quoted against the price they paid, whether anyone called them back. Reviews and forum comments are downstream of the front desk.
• Do not post as a customer. Pretending to be a happy patient is against the rules of every forum, it is noticed more often than people think, and the screenshot outlives the thread.
• Participate honestly where you are allowed to. Some communities welcome a professional answering a question under their own name. Read the rules, answer the question, do not pitch.
• Answer the same questions on your own site. Costs, what a first visit involves, insurance and financing. That page is what gets quoted when somebody links you.

What to do this month

• Open your listing today and check whether the website field contains business.site.
• Publish the replacement page on a domain you own before Friday.
• Update every listing, every automated message and every printed link that carries the old address.
• Point ad final URLs at the new page and confirm the conversion tracking fires there.
• Ask the last five customers who were happy for a review, because that is the version of your business people quote.
• Put 10 June in the calendar as the day the old address stops redirecting at all.

Eight days is enough time to do this properly, and 1 March is not a bad forcing function. The businesses we see handle it well treat it as the moment they finally own their own address. If you want the listing side handled while the page gets built, that is profile management, and it is the half of the job that decides who taps the button in the first place.