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

Yes, you should have both, and they do different jobs. Your Google profile is where most people will find you, and your website is the part whose rules you set rather than Google.

This is not an argument that profiles do not matter. For a lot of trades the profile brings in most of the enquiries. It is an argument about what happens when you rely on it alone.

What the profile is good at

It puts you on Maps, it shows your phone number and hours at the moment someone is looking, and it collects reviews. If you only ever do one thing, claim and fill in your profile.

If yours is not appearing at all, that usually has a specific cause, and we have written separately about why a business does not show on Google Maps.

What you do not control

The profile is Google's product, and it runs by Google's rules.

The naming rules are a good example. Google's guidelines say the name on the profile should be the real-world name, the one used consistently on your storefront, website and stationery. Adding extra material to it, such as a tagline or a list of services, risks the profile being suspended. So the name that would describe you best to a customer is often not a name you are allowed to use.

The address rules work the same way. Google's eligibility guidelines say an address you rent but do not operate from is not eligible, PO boxes are not permitted, and a co-working space counts only if it has your signage, your staff on site and customers received there during your opening hours.

None of that is unreasonable. The point is simply that you are a tenant. The rules can change, the profile can be suspended, and the decision is not yours. When a profile does go down, there is an appeals process, and it is worth knowing it exists before you need it.

What the website does that the profile cannot

Three things, in rough order of how much they matter.

It says what you want it to say. No category list, no character limit, no guidelines about your trading name. If half your work is a speciality that Google has no category for, the website is where that gets explained.

It is the thing Google reads for its AI answers. Google's own guidance on AI features is blunt about what is required: a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet, and there are "no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode". There is no special markup to add and no AI-specific file to publish. What it does recommend is ordinary: allow crawling, keep important content in text rather than locked inside scripts, link your pages together so they can be found, and make sure any structured data matches what a reader can actually see.

Google is careful to say that meeting those requirements is no promise it will crawl, index or show a page, and we will not promise it either.

It sits on a domain registered in your name. Your profile lives at a Google URL. Your website lives at an address you are the registrant for, which is also where your email goes. Nominet, which runs .uk, is precise about what that means: a domain name "is not an item of property and has no 'owner'", and what exists instead is a registrant, the person entered on the register as responsible for it. Being that person is the part worth having, and it is worth checking who it currently is. If a designer holds yours, we have written about getting it changed.

Google's own advice is to do both

The clearest answer comes from the same AI features page. Among the things it recommends site owners do, alongside allowing crawling and keeping content in text, is to keep your Business Profile details current.

That is Google describing the profile and the website as two parts of the same job, not as alternatives. The profile is how you are found. The website is what is found, and the part you can change on a Tuesday afternoon without asking anyone.

What this will not do

Having a website does not move you up Google, and nobody can sell you a position. What it does is give you somewhere to answer the questions a profile has no room for, on an address that is yours.

If you are weighing up what that costs, we have checked what UK trade specialists charge.

If your website needs work, ask us for a free preview of a new one. You pay nothing unless you approve it.