What Happened to Google's business.site Websites?

Google turned off its free business.site websites on March 5, 2024, and said visitors would later get a "Page not found" error (Google Business Profile Help, archived Feb. 4, 2025). Your profile survived. What needs fixing is the website field, which Google emptied if it held the old address, and any van wrap, card or directory listing that still prints it.

Last verified: November 1, 2026.

What Google turned off, and when

Google called them "websites made with Google Business Profiles": free, simple sites built from the profile's own details. By Jan. 9, 2024, its help page said they'd be turned off in March 2024 and would redirect to the profile until June 10 (archived Jan. 9, 2024), and TechRadar reported the shutdown (TechRadar, Jan. 11, 2024). During March, Google also cleared business.site and negocio.site addresses out of the profile's website field, and it said the rest of the profile wasn't affected.

Then Google took its own explanation down. Archived copies show the help article live on Feb. 18, 2025 and, by Feb. 21, 2025, redirecting to the general Edit your Business Profile page, which never mentions business.site or negocio.site (Wayback Machine index). Google's older help page for editing those sites lands there too, so an owner who goes looking in Google's help finds no explanation of what happened.

Where an old business.site address still sends people

Google's notice offered no way to restore the sites. On Nov. 1, 2026, all seven business.site and negocio.site addresses we tried, two of them made up, returned the same Google 404 page, with nothing on it about the business. A customer who types one in off a yard sign, or clicks one in a directory listing, hits a dead end even if your profile looks fine.

If you had your own domain forwarding to the Google-built site, check it too. Google said that forwarding would end along with the redirects and told owners to set up a redirect with their hosting company (archived Jan. 15, 2024). Unless someone changed the setting, yours most likely leads to Google's error page, so log in to the registrar and point it at a real site.

Bought it through Google Domains? Google says "all Google Domains users became customers of Squarespace" after the sale closed on Sept. 7, 2023 (Google Domains), so Squarespace was the migration destination. If the owner later transferred the domain, confirm the current registrar and account before planning the move.

The address has outlived the site in AI answers, too, though rarely: ChatGPT cited a business.site page in 12 October answers in the Cheers Market Baseline, and Google AI Mode and Gemini cited none. Since every business.site address was Google's, each of those citations pointed at a site Google had already turned off.

Search for the old address, and for any domain that used to forward to it, everywhere it might still sit. Start with the Yelp, BBB and Angi profiles, the website field on the Facebook page, and your Apple Business Connect and Bing Places listings. Then check the print nobody rereads: van wraps, yard signs, business cards, invoices and email signatures. Our citation cleanup guide covers the directory side.

Nearly one in five local map listings shows no website

Inside Google's own results, business.site is close to extinct. In our scans of Google's local map results from Sept. 28 to Oct. 31, 2026, 1 of the 7,528 website links we could read still pointed at a business.site address, and none at negocio.site, which fits Google clearing those addresses out of profiles.

The empty field is the bigger problem. In a Cheers study of 15,795 competitor listings in Google's local map results, in markets where 10 Cheers home-service customers operate, 19.1% showed no website link and 80.9% showed one. That's an upper bound, since scans miss some links and a missing link doesn't prove a business has no site.

Who's missing the link? Usually a listing with few reviews: weighted, the median no-link listing had 14 Google reviews, against 61 for listings with one.

Weighted the same way, 9.9% of the listings that reached Google's top three at least once across four weekly scans ending Oct. 25, 2026 had no website link, against 20.4% of listings that never did. A working website link gives those customers somewhere to learn about the branch and take the next step.

From Oct. 9 to 31, 2026, after a layout change that put far more links in every answer, 78.1% of ChatGPT's US local answers in the Cheers Market Baseline linked at least one business from its own map cards to that business's own website. We can't see where ChatGPT found those sites, but a business with no site of its own can't be one of those links.

If a location doesn't show up in Google Maps or ChatGPT at all, the website field is one of several things to check. While you're at it, ask ChatGPT about each branch and call the phone number it prints.

What to put in the website field now

Give every branch a useful website destination. Google's guidelines say to "provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location, or provide a website that represents your individual business location" (Guidelines for representing your business on Google). Point the website field at a page about that branch.

This week, open the website field on every location, not a sample. Flag a blank field first, then a Facebook or Instagram page, then any link that won't open on a phone, and last anything ending in business.site or negocio.site, which is rare now.

A few listings point the field at a social page or a Google Sites page instead: of the website links we could read, 64 pointed at a Facebook or Instagram page and 18 at a Google Sites page. Google's guidelines say:

Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or "refer" users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business, including pages created on social media sites.

Your own Facebook page isn't clearly covered by that line. Still, one company page can't give each branch a page of its own, and where Google offers it, the profile has a separate social media links section, which Google says is "currently available for select regions" (Edit your Business Profile). Treat a social page in the website field as a stopgap.

Google's shutdown notice pointed owners to common site builders (archived notice), and which one you pick matters less than what goes on the page: the profile's name, phone, hours, services and service area in plain text, on a domain the business controls. Give each profile its own location page rather than one homepage for every branch. Our guide to linking a Business Profile to a location page covers the mapping, and if you're building from scratch, this location page spec lists what AI answers cite.

After any change, open the link on a phone and call the number on the page. Then ask whoever runs the site to confirm it doesn't block Googlebot, a check Google's own edit page asks for. Moving several locations off a site vendor is a separate, bigger project, and the part to protect is the calls those pages bring in.

If you inherited the location in a tuck-in

Put the website field and the domain's registrar login on the pre-close checklist for every acquisition. Before close, find out what each profile links to and who holds that login, because a domain that once forwarded to a Google-built site has most likely pointed at an error page since the redirects ended. After close, move the domain into the buyer's account in the same week you transfer Business Profile ownership, so the login doesn't stay with a former owner or vendor. Across a portfolio, track the share of locations whose website field opens a page about that branch on a domain the company owns.

Method

Cheers samples Google's local map results each week around the locations its customers track. We took the competitor listings seen around 66 locations of 10 Cheers home-service customers, removed each customer's own and sister listings, and counted each listing once: 15,795 listings turned up in weekly scans from Sept. 28 to Oct. 31, 2026. The listings come from Cheers' weekly scans of Google's local map results in markets where 10 Cheers home-service customers operate, so they aren't a national random sample, and some listings in them aren't home-service businesses.

For 41.0% of website links we couldn't read the final address, so the business.site, social and Google Sites counts use the 7,528 links we could. A missing link can mean our scan missed it: the 19.1% counts each listing's latest scan, and 18.5% never showed a website link in any scan. Some well-reviewed businesses skip the link too; 537 of the no-link listings had 100 or more Google reviews.

The top-three comparison uses four of those weekly scans, Sept. 28 to Oct. 25, 2026. The listings aren't spread evenly across the 10 companies, so we weighted every comparison to keep any one company's markets from counting for more than a fifth. We also ran each comparison inside each company's markets on its own: the no-link review median came out lower in each of the 10, and the top-three gap held in 9 of the 10. The comparisons show correlation, not cause.

The Cheers Market Baseline is our own research panel: every week it asks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini the same 32 home-service questions in 100 metro areas, 60 in the US and 40 in Canada. The own-site share counts US answers from Oct. 2 to 31, 2026 (1,910 from Oct. 2 to 8 and 6,307 from Oct. 9 to 31) that linked at least one business from their own map cards by that business's domain, so it's a floor. Before the layout change, from Oct. 2 to 8, ChatGPT's share was 41.7%.

The business.site count covers cited source domains in October 2026 across all 100 metro areas: 12 of the 13,501 ChatGPT answers that listed sources, from 9 cities between Oct. 9 and Oct. 27, against none of 13,627 from Google AI Mode and none of 7,907 from Gemini. We counted domains, not full addresses, so how many different sites sit behind those 12 is unknown.

We read every Google page cited here on Nov. 1, 2026, the retired ones through the Wayback Machine, and ran the seven address checks that morning, Pacific time. We didn't test any custom domains that used to forward to a Google-built site.

Sources

• Websites made with Google Business Profiles are turned off, Google Business Profile Help, archived Feb. 4, 2025. The March 5, 2024 shutdown and the "Page not found" error.
• Websites made with Google Business Profiles will be turned off soon, Google Business Profile Help, archived Jan. 9, 2024. The March 2024 shutdown, the June 10 redirect end and the site builders Google pointed to.
• Google is shutting down websites made with Business Profiles, TechRadar, Jan. 11, 2024. Independent report of the shutdown.
• Edit your Business Profile, Google Business Profile Help, undated. Where the old help pages land now, the Googlebot check and the social media links section.
• Wayback Machine index for answer/14368911, Internet Archive, undated. When Google retired its shutdown explainer.
• Websites made with Google Business Profiles will be turned off soon, Google Business Profile Help, archived Jan. 15, 2024. The end of custom domain forwarding.
• Google Domains, Google, undated. Google Domains customers moving to Squarespace.
• Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help, undated. What the website field should point at, and the social page rule.

Sources read November 1, 2026.

Dylan Allen-Arnegård is the CEO & Co-Founder of Cheers, the done-for-you local visibility partner for established home-service companies and PE-backed portfolios.