This piece covers what belongs in the field, what to do when there is no website, and the four ways the link usually fails. What follows about the field and its behaviour comes from Google's own Business Profile help pages and its 2024 notice on profile websites, both checked on 23 October 2026; the links are listed at the end.

What does the website field actually do?

It is the destination behind the "Website" button on your listing in Search and Maps, next to "Call" and "Directions". Google treats it as the official address of the business, which is why it must be a page you control and can update.

The field is a link, not a website. Adding it does not create anything: it points. Everything a customer judges you on after the tap, the hours, the prices, the photos, the phone number, the booking form, lives on the page at the other end. That distinction explains most of the disappointment people feel about their profile: the profile earns the tap, the page has to earn the call.

Is the website field optional?

Yes. A profile can be created and verified without a website, and plenty of listings run that way: a plumber with a phone number and a service area, a market stall, a food truck. What you give up is the button itself.

With no link, a customer who wants details has three options: call, get directions, or send a message. Each one asks for effort at the exact moment interest is highest. On a phone, outside opening hours, at 22:40 on a Sunday, that usually means the visit ends. The field is optional in the interface and expensive in practice.

What happened to the free website Google used to give you?

Google used to generate a basic site from the profile information, at a Google-owned address. It turned those sites off in March 2024 and redirected visitors to the Business Profile until 10 June 2024. After that date, the address stopped working.

Google pointed owners at third-party builders instead: Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Google Sites, Shopify for shops, and WordPress among others. The practical consequence is simple and worth stating plainly: since 2024, the website field is a decision you make yourself, with your own address and your own hosting, or with a hosted page you rent month by month.

What should you put in the field when you have no website?

The short answer: the smallest page that answers the questions your customers already ask. Not the most complete site, not the one with the best animations. A page with what you do, where you are, when you are open, what it costs, and how to reach you beats a five-page site that says "coming soon".

Why not just use your Facebook or Instagram page?

Because you are renting the shopfront. A social profile puts the platform's own furniture around your business: a login wall for some visitors, an app interstitial on a phone, related posts and advertising underneath, and a feed ordered by the platform rather than by what a customer needs. Your opening hours end up in a post from March.

There is a consistency argument too. Google's guidelines ask that a business be represented as it is across signage, stationery and branding, and a link to a platform profile asks the visitor to trust that this page is the business. A page with your name, your address and your prices does that in one screen. A feed of your last forty photos does not.

The same reasoning applies to a marketplace listing: it belongs to the marketplace, it shows competitors beside you, and the day you leave, the link in your profile breaks.

What should the page do in the first ten seconds?

Ten seconds on a phone, one thumb, possibly on mobile data in a car park. That is the real test, not how it looks on the desktop in the office.

• Say what you do and where, in one line. "Emergency plumber, Mulhouse and 20 km around" beats a logo and a slogan.
• Put the phone number at the top, as a tap target. Not in a footer, not inside an image.
• Show opening hours, including today. "Open now" is worth more than a full weekly table nobody reads.
• Give a price or a price range. "From €60" removes the fear that stops the call.
• Add one way to act that is not a phone call. A booking link, a form, a menu, a quote request.
• Use the same name, address and phone as the profile. Different details on the two pages read as two businesses.

If the page is a QR destination as well, check it on the actual code, printed and scanned, not on a link you paste into a browser. A page that opens correctly from a link and badly from a scan is a page nobody has tested. The table card and the shop window are where that failure gets noticed.

How do you add or change the link?

1. Sign in to Google Business Profile with the account that manages the listing.
2. Select the business, then open the profile editing screen.
3. Find the contact section and the website field.
4. Paste the full address, including https://, and save.
5. Expect a review before the change appears publicly; edits are checked, and a new domain can take longer than a change of page on the same domain.

Two details that save a support ticket: use the exact final address (not a redirect you set up years ago), and if you connect a custom domain, add it to the profile only once it resolves with a valid certificate. A link that throws a security warning is worse than no link.

Does the website link change where you rank?

Not the way people hope. Google describes local ranking in three parts: relevance (how well the profile matches the search), distance, and prominence (how well known the business is, based on reviews, citations and coverage elsewhere). A website link is a small part of relevance and completeness, and no link makes a listing appear in a town forty kilometres away.

What the link does change is what happens after the click, and that number is visible in your own analytics: calls, direction requests and bookings per visit. A profile with a fast page and clear prices converts better than the identical profile with an empty field, and the difference shows up in revenue before it shows up in position.

What goes wrong most often

A free subdomain you do not control. The address belongs to the builder. Move plan, cancel, or let a trial lapse, and every printed QR code and every profile link dies at once. If the page matters, put it on a domain in your name.

A link to a PDF. Menus and price lists as PDF files zoom, pinch and scroll sideways on a phone. A page does not. For a restaurant, the PDF menu is the usual bad destination.

A homepage that hides the answer. The customer wants hours, prices and a phone number, and lands on a full-screen video with a cookie banner. Two taps to the useful part is the target.

A link nobody updates. Rebrand, new phone number, new address, and the profile still points at the old page. Put the profile link in the same checklist as the domain renewal.

A page that costs less than the reprint

The old Google site is gone, and the builders Google recommends are full websites with full website work. For a business whose customers need one screen of facts, that is more machinery than the job requires: a page with your hours, your prices, a phone button and a QR code behind it covers the field, the shop window and the table card at once. A hosted Fastpage page is $3.99 a month at the price shown on fastpage.app on 23 October 2026, with a QR code included, and it can sit on your own domain when you have one. Setting the page up is a five minute job: the steps are here.

Whatever you choose, the test is the same. Open the link on a phone, on mobile data, as a customer would. If the answer to "what do they do, what does it cost, are they open, how do I reach them" arrives without pinching or scrolling, the field is doing its job.

Sources and method

Field behaviour, review of edits and local ranking factors: Google Business Profile Help, "Guidelines for representing your business on Google" and "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google", consulted on 23 October 2026. The 2024 shutdown of profile websites and the 10 June 2024 end of redirects: Google's notice as reported by Search Engine Journal on 29 February 2024, and Google's own help pages. The Fastpage price quoted is the one displayed on fastpage.app on 23 October 2026; it is a displayed price, not a calculation. Nothing here is a measurement of your own traffic: the conversion comments describe what to watch, not results we hold.

What a dynamic QR code actually does

A static QR code contains the destination itself. Whatever address is encoded at printing time is the address forever, so changing the menu means printing again.

A dynamic QR code contains a short link that belongs to your account. When someone scans it, the link redirects to whatever page you have set as the destination. You change the destination, not the code. The card on the table keeps working.

Where the code earns its keep

• On the table. One code for the room, not one per table, unless the lunch and evening menus differ.
• On the receipt. A review request or a booking for next time, decided after the meal rather than during it.
• In the window. Opening hours, the menu and a way to book, for the person walking past at 19:40.
• On the van or the toolbox. A quote request form for a trade, where the customer is standing next to the problem.
• On the business card. A page with your phone, address and services, instead of a number typed by hand.

Point it at something worth the scan

The scan is a small effort, so the page behind it has to pay it back immediately. Three rules:

Answer the question they already have

At a table, that question is "what can I eat and what does it cost". Not "who are we". Put the menu first, the hours second, the story last.

Keep the path short

Two taps from scan to menu. If the code opens a homepage with a cookie banner, a video and a newsletter popup, half the scans stop there.

Make the phone version the real version

Large tap targets, no horizontal scrolling, no PDF. A PDF menu zooms and pinches on a phone; a page does not.

Two things people get wrong

Printing someone else's code. Free generators sometimes hand out codes that stop resolving when a trial ends. Check who owns the redirect, and keep the code in an account you control.

Putting the code everywhere at once. Start with one surface, usually the table or the shop window, and watch the scans for two weeks. When you know people use it, add the next surface.

A menu that updates itself

Keep the menu in a content list rather than inside the page design. Change a price once and the QR page, the website section and the printed-format export all show the new price. That is the part that saves the reprint, not the QR code alone.

Before you open the editor

Write these five things down first. You will paste them, not compose them.

• Your business name, exactly as it appears on your invoices.
• One sentence about what you do and where: Hair salon in Mulhouse, open Tuesday to Saturday.
• The one action you want: a booking, a call, a visit, a quote or a message.
• Your phone number, your email and your address.
• A logo, or a good photo of your work if you do not have a logo.

One sentence is enough for the introduction. A paragraph that begins with "we are passionate about" tells a reader nothing they can act on.

Pick a template, then stop looking at templates

Choose the template closest to your trade, not the prettiest one. A restaurant page and a coaching page do not lead with the same thing: one leads with food and hours, the other with a person and a first session. The template is a starting point, and every section can be rewritten or removed.

The most common mistake at this stage is comparing ten templates until the evening is gone. Pick one, publish something, improve it next week.

The four settings that matter

What to check before you share it

1. Open the page on your phone, not on your laptop. That is where most visitors will see it.
2. Tap every button. A phone number that dials the wrong number is worse than no phone number.
3. Read the first screen out loud. If it does not say what you do and where, rewrite it.
4. Check the opening hours against the sign on your door.
5. Send the link to one person who does not know your business, and ask them what you sell.

Then leave it alone for a week

A page does not need to be perfect on day one. Publish it, put the link in your Instagram and Google Business profile, print a QR code for the till or the window, and watch what people ask you in the first week. The questions they ask in person are the sections your page is missing.

The update you will make most often is a price or an opening time. Keep those in a content list rather than inside the page design, so changing them once updates every page that shows them.

What not to do

• Do not copy a competitor's wording. It reads like a competitor's page.
• Do not add a newsletter popup before your first hundred visitors.
• Do not hide prices if you are a local service. "Contact us for pricing" sends people to the next result.
• Do not use five fonts and four colours. One of each is a style, five is an accident.

That is the whole method: prepare five facts, choose one template, set four things, check on a phone, publish, then improve one section a week.