Posted by Aimee Cozza on March 5th, 2018We’ve had a lot of notifications about this particular feature on Google My Business. When managing a lot of different locations on Google, Google can get obnoxious with reminders sometimes. However, any other owners on these accounts will also get notifications, which means that the business owners may be getting confusing notifications from Google as well. Don’t worry, business owner! We have it handled.
What is it?
Google has integrated the use of a “website” on their own server. This is great if you don’t have a website, and Google gives you the tools to build one without worrying about domains or server space. It is located in the Google My Business dashboard, under “Website”.
Not to be confused with your actual website…
If you’re one of our customers, chances are you actually have a website, and a decent one at that. Don’t be confused when Google asks you to “publish your website”. Publishing additional information on top of what already exists on your existing website can confuse customers. This “website” and your actual .com website are two entirely different entities.
Why shouldn’t I use it?
It’s great if you don’t have a web presence. However, because it is highly Google-centric, customers may have a hard time finding this website outside of Google. Since all of our websites are general search engine optimized, that means any search engine can find your normal website, meaning Bing, Yahoo, Lycos, Ask, and all other search engines can and will index this site appropriately. Using just the Google-centric website might mean you’re losing out on valuable hits from other web sources.
On top of this, the website builder is limited to what it can do and Google does not give you free reign to do whatever you like.
All in all, don’t worry about those emails Google is sending about “publishing your website”. It’s good the way it is!
