Google Business Site: Many business owners have utilized the free website builder included with Google Business Profiles to quickly create a basic website for their company. However, Google recently announced that these auto-generated sites will be discontinued starting March 2024. Specifically, “In March 2024, websites made with Google Business Profiles will be turned off and customers visiting your site will be redirected to your Business Profile instead. The redirect will work until June 10, 2024.”
If you currently have one of these sites, this news may come as an unwelcome surprise. However, it also presents a prime opportunity to upgrade to a more powerful and customized website that fully reflects your brand and promotes your products and services. This guide will walk you through the process of transitioning from your old Google Business site to a new professional website.
Why You Need to Upgrade Your Google Business Site before March 2024.

Google recently announced that auto-generated websites connected to Business Profiles will be discontinued starting March 2024. After June 2024, any visitors to your current site will be permanently redirected to just your Business Profile.
To avoid losing functionality and control, you need to upgrade now to a custom-built site that seamlessly integrates with your Profile. An upgraded website can help you with :
Drive More Traffic
An upgraded custom website enables you to showcase your products, services, brand story, and mission on your own fully branded site tailored to your business needs. With custom web pages, layouts, calls-to-action and content, you can attract more local customers.
Gain Valuable Insights
A custom site allows you to continue accessing vital analytics and data through your website to identify customer behavior patterns and refine your digital marketing campaigns for better ROI.
Boost Credibility Maintain
Stay credible in your industry with a sleek, professional website that builds trust and confidence with customers. An upgraded branded site reinforces market positioning.
Improve Customer Experience
Smooth, seamless customer experiences translate to better conversions of visitors to paying customers. A tailored, strategic site provides intuitive navigation, frictionless transactions, and consistent branding.
Stay Ahead of Competitors
As your competitors ramp up their web presence, don’t get left behind with an outdated, redirected site. Claim your space and don’t lose website functionality that sets you apart.
Unlock More Features
A custom website enables you to retain and maximize features like blogs, calls-to-action, and integration with your Profile for greater visibility and functionality.
The time to upgrade is now – don’t get left behind when auto-generated sites disappear on March 1 2024. With strategic planning guided by your goals, an upgraded website drives growth as an asset not a liability.
Easy steps to update the business site into a new one .

Upgrading your online presence is vital for continued success. Follow these 3 simple steps to seamlessly transition to an upgraded, custom-built website before Google discontinues auto-generated sites in 2024.
Assess Your Needs
Before beginning the Google Business Site building process, take time to carefully evaluate your business requirements when it comes to an online presence. Consider the following:
– What are your goals for the new website? Do you simply need a basic online brochure site to provide information? Or do you need e-commerce capabilities to sell products and accept payments? Identifying goals will help shape key site features.
– Who is your target audience and what information/functionality would be most useful to them? Analyzing visitor demographics and needs will allow you to tailor content accordingly.
– What is your budget for development and ongoing management of the site? Determining available funds will dictate options like hiring a web developer vs using DIY website builders.
– What level of technical skill do you or your staff have to update and maintain the site long-term? More complex sites may require learning new systems.
Take time to thoroughly assess considerations like these. The analysis will pay dividends by ensuring you build a site tailored for business objectives and audience needs.
Choose a Platform
With a clear understanding of Google Business site goals and target audience interests, the next step is selecting an appropriate platform or tool for building the new website. There are three main options, each with their own pros and cons:
1. Hire a Web Development Agency: The most strong (but also most expensive) option is hiring a professional web development firm to design and build a fully custom site from the ground up. This allows for unlimited flexibility and personalization but requires a larger upfront time and money investment. Monthly fees for ongoing support and hosting are also common.
2. Use a Website Builder Service: Website builder platforms like Wix, Squarespace and Weebly offer DIY site creation with premade templates and drag-and-drop editors. Affordable pricing and ease of use make them popular for small businesses. However, design personalization and advanced functionality can be limited compared to custom-developed sites. You also remain reliant on the builder platform’s hosting and support.
3. Convert to a WordPress Site: Self-hosted WordPress offers an appealing middle ground. The open-source CMS boasts advanced features combined with user-friendly admin tools accessible even to non-developers. Thousands of design templates and plugins facilitate extensive customization potential. Reasonable startup costs also make WordPress viable for modest budgets while still retaining long-term flexibility.
When evaluating these options, carefully weigh cost, features, and usability to determine the best platform capable of achieving the goals outlined during your initial needs assessment. Most small business needs can be readily met with one of the DIY website builder services or WordPress. Complex e-commerce stores generating significant revenue may warrant the expense of a custom build.
Migrate Existing Content
If your Google Business site profile has been live for a while, you have likely published substantive content on the company blog and within site pages. While the site itself will disappear, this valuable informational content can carry over to the new website with a bit of work.
Here are some tips for migrating content:
1. Use a tool like Website Copier to create a temporary mirror site capturing a copy of all existing pages/posts on the old site. This allows you to view and access the content offline.
2. Export any blog posts into a document file. Copy/paste article text into new posts recreated on the fresh site. Be sure to transfer over images and media files as well.
3. For site pages, carefully review each and recreate essential pages on the new platform. Reorganize navigation and layout to better fit updated site goals and organization.
4. Update internal links pointing to migrated pages with new URLs on the revised site architecture. Use link checking tools to identify any broken connections.
5. Publish a sitemap and resubmit the site to search engines once migration completes. This will facilitate reindexing so existing content retains search visibility, carrying over hard-earned rankings.
By taking time to selectively transfer vital information from the old Google Business Profile site to the new platform, you preserve valuable content while still upgrading overall site functionality and design. Visitors enjoy continuity while benefiting from a better experience.
Design and Launch New Site
With backend logistics like platform selection and content migration handled, attention can shift to actually building out and launching the revamped website. The specifics will vary considerably based on whether you hire a web developer, use a DIY builder, or setup WordPress. However, common best practices apply across the board:
Craft Site Architecture
– Carefully plan information architecture and site navigation before starting development. Group related content together into distinct sections that make sense for your business type and user goals.
– Structure pages and posts in hierarchical relationships using categories and subpages to chunk long-form content into more manageable chunks.
– Create clear page titles and descriptive menu labels so visitors immediately understand what each page covers as they navigate the site.
Optimize Appearance
– Select a design scheme reflecting brand messaging through elements like color schemes, fonts, and logo integration. Refer to existing style guides.
– Ensure balanced layouts through strategic use of negative space, avoiding overly cluttered pages. Review mobile layouts to confirm responsive resizing.
– Feature high-quality images to visually engage visitors. Optimize photos file sizes for fast load times. Use descriptive alt text for accessibility.
Enhance Functionality
– Integrate features like contact forms, calls-to-action, and email signup forms tailored to business goals around lead generation and sales.
– If selling products directly, implement a secure and user-friendly e-commerce system with integrated payment processing.
– Include schema markup to enhance search visibility in results like rich snippets, breadcrumbs, product data, etc.
Promote New Site
– Create and submit an updated XML sitemap along with re-registering with major search engines. Monitor stats to identify top landing pages.
– Set 301 redirects on old Google Business Profile URLs pointing visitors to corresponding pages on the revised site to retain link equity.
– Publish an announcement blog post and spread news of the upgrade through existing marketing channels like social media, email lists, etc. Consider a launch promotion.
With preparation and attention to detail during development, the end product will be a professional custom website ready to deliver an exceptional user experience while also fulfilling crucial marketing and visibility goals.
Monitor Performance
Once the upgraded site goes live, the work has only just begun. You will want to track a number of performance metrics on an ongoing basis to confirm it is achieving the desired business objectives. Key indicators to monitor include:
Traffic Volume: Track overall visitor numbers to gauge if the site upgrade successfully grows your audience reach. Compare to old site benchmarks. Look at trends over time to see if traffic is increasing, decreasing, or remaining steady. Break down traffic by source – direct, organic search, social media referrals, etc – to gain more granular insight.
Engagement: View time on site, pages per visit and bounce rates signal how captivated visitors are exploring content. Higher engagement translates to conversions. Segment users by new vs returning visitors. See if new visitors brought in by the redesign are more engaged than past visitors. Monitor scroll depth and click depth as additional engagement KPIs.
Conversions: Measure signup rates, product purchases, or other site actions defined as conversions based on business goals. These demonstrate ROI. Make sure to analyze micro and macro conversions separately. Track changes in conversion rate – the percentage of visitors converting – as well as absolute conversion volume. Identify conversion funnels strengths & weaknesses.
Search Visibility: Monitor search engine rankings for important brand and product keywords along with related metrics like click-through-rates. See if the optimized site now ranks for a greater number of relevant keywords. Check that higher rankings are driving increased organic traffic and conversions. Maintain search analytics to uncover new keyword opportunities.
Technical Issues: Keep an eye on site uptime, page speed scores, 404 errors and other diagnostics for optimal performance. Set up monitoring to notify if uptime goes below 99%. Waterfall charts identify page speed optimization opportunities. 404 logs point out broken links or site architecture issues.
Segmentation: Go beyond overall aggregate metrics to segment performance by traffic source, device, geo, age, customer loyalty and more. Look for differential conversion and engagement rates among user segments to guide personalization.
Consistently evaluating these quantitative measures over the first months following the upgrade provides insight on how your overhaul is being received. Visitor patterns will guide future site enhancement decisions as you continually refine the website to better serve patrons. Set clear monitoring processes and use data to drive continual site optimization.
Conclusion

Revamping the online presence forfeited by sunsetting Google Business Profile websites presents a silver lining opportunity. The change encourages businesses to invest in building a superior custom site capable of making a true impression on customers. By following best practices around goal planning, content migration, site development, launch, and performance tracking, companies can cost-effectively transform their web presence. The end result will be an exceptional branded experience on par with larger competitors while supporting increased visibility and revenues.
With some strategic effort, losing default Google sites paves the way for major website upgrades. However, this should be viewed as just the first step in an ongoing process of continual optimization. Websites must be dynamic, not static. The work does not stop once the initial upgraded site goes live. View your website as an iterative platform upon which to constantly test, learn and refine.
Set clear goals and metrics right from the start to accurately gauge performance. Track visitor behavior patterns and site analytics to uncover optimization opportunities. Run A/B and multivariate tests to trial upgrades like new pages, content, designs, flows and functionality. Monitor conversions at every step so you can calculate ROI on site changes.
Formally reassess the entire site at least a few times per year. Look to third-party tools for fresh audits assessing technical SEO, speed and UX. Re-evaluate content against search queries and visitor personas through analytics. Be ready to overhaul ineffective pages. Interview customers and site visitors to lend qualitative, human insight to the data.
The website is the digital face of your organization. It needs to keep pace with customer expectations and business growth. Continued iteration and innovation must fuel its evolution. Establish effective processes, adopt enabling technologies and dedicate resources to energize ongoing development. Building the site is just the genesis of leveraging your digital presence to accomplish goals. View website enhancement as a customer-centric journey without end.
Contact our expert web development team today for a free consultation. We help craft custom-designed websites that showcase brands and accelerate business growth.
FAQs
1. What if I don’t migrate my content from my old Google Business Profile website?
If you don’t take steps to migrate valuable content from your old Google-generated site before it gets discontinued, that information will essentially get lost online. Any blog posts, pages, media elements, etc. would no longer be accessible to visitors searching for them. It’s important to plan a content migration strategy to preserve those assets for reuse on your new upgraded website. This will ensure no disruption for existing site visitors.
2. Do I have to rebuild my entire site from scratch?
Not necessarily. If you choose an option like WordPress for your new site, you can utilize imported content from your old site along with premade templates. This speeds up the rebuild process considerably compared to developing a totally custom site. You still get to overhaul navigation, layout, and functionality. But existing blog posts and basic pages can be retained and integrated, saving tons of work.
3. How can Colourmoon assist my business with the Google Business website website shutdown?
As an established web design company, Colourmoon can provide end-to-end support transitioning your online presence to a new custom website before your Google-hosted site is discontinued. Our team of experts can assist with planning site goals, migrating existing content, developing a tailored WordPress site, facilitating launch, and providing ongoing optimization – ensuring no disruption for your business. We guide clients through the entire process, using our proven methodology to create an exceptional website that drives real business growth. Get in touch to learn more about how Colourmoon can help future-proof your online presence.