Ready to grow?Short answer: Google turned off its free Business Profile website service on 5 March 2024, so any site with a business.site address is gone and now shows an error. Your Google Business Profile still works. Confirm it is complete, point it at a new one-page site, and update the old link everywhere.
You clicked your own link and got an error page. Or someone told you "Google gives you a free website," you went looking, and the page you built years ago is dead. Either way, the fear is the same: you think you have vanished from Google.
You have not. You lost one page. The part that actually brings you customers is untouched, and it takes about an hour to sort out. Here is what died, what lived, and the order to fix it in.
What exactly did Google shut down?
Google ran a free website builder tied to your Business Profile. You filled in your hours and photos, and it spun up a simple one-page site for you at an address like yourshop.business.site. No cost, no coding. For a lot of small businesses it was the only website they ever had.
That product is gone. According to the Victorian Government's small-business guidance, Google shut down the free Business Profile website service on 5 March 2024. WPBeginner reported that the change switched off more than 21 million of these sites in one go, so if yours went dark, you are in very large company.
Here is the line that matters, and the one most owners miss in the panic. The website closed. Your Google Business Profile did not. Business Victoria's guidance is blunt about it: the profile itself stayed the same, and customers can still find you on Google Search and Google Maps exactly as before. The free site was a bolt-on. The profile is the engine, and the engine is still running.
Think of it like a shop that lost its paper flyer. The shop is open. The lights are on. One piece of paper stopped working, and that piece of paper is replaceable.
How do you know if you were affected?
Check the web address, not your memory. The shut-down sites all had a specific kind of URL. Business Victoria notes that affected addresses contained business.site or, for Spanish-language accounts, negocio.site. If your old link reads something like joesplumbing.business.site, that was a Google-built free site, and it is one of the ones that closed.
If your website lives on a real domain you pay for, such as joesplumbing.com through a builder or host, this shutdown does not touch you. Different product. You can stop reading and go about your day.
For a while, the ending was gentle. Business Victoria's guidance explains that visitors to the old address were automatically redirected to your Google Business Profile until 10 June 2024. After that date the redirect was switched off. Now anyone who clicks the old link, from an old business card, a directory listing, a Facebook bio, gets an error message instead of you.
That is the real cost of doing nothing. Not that Google forgot you. That a customer holding your old flyer taps the link, hits a dead end, and calls the next name on the list. Every stale link out there is a small leak. The rest of this is about plugging them.
Step 1: Confirm your Google Business Profile is complete and current
Start where the value already is. Before you build anything new, make the free profile you still own as strong as it can be, because for most local searches it is the first thing a customer sees and often the only thing they need.
Search your own business name on Google. Your profile should appear on the right on desktop, or at the top on your phone. If you can edit it directly from search or in the Google Business Profile app, you control it. If it looks unclaimed or wrong, claiming it is job one, and our guide on how to claim your Google Business Profile walks through the verification.
Then work down this list and fix anything stale:
- Phone number that rings the right phone today.
- Address, or your service area if customers do not come to you.
- Opening hours, including the holiday hours people actually check.
- Photos of the real place, the real work, the real faces. Not stock.
- Categories that match what you do, so you show up in the right searches.
- The website link, which right now may still point at the dead business.site page. Leave that for Step 3; just note it.
Doing this cleanup for owner-run shops, the same thing happens almost every time. The owner is braced for a rebuild, and the actual problem is a phone number from two premises ago and hours that still say "closed Mondays" from a schedule they changed last winter. Fix those two lines and the calls start landing before a single new page exists. The profile was doing the heavy lifting all along. It was just pointing people at the wrong details. If you want the full pass, our walkthrough on Google Business Profile optimization covers each field in order.
Step 2: Put up a real website, even a single page
Now replace what you lost. You do not need a ten-page site with a blog and a booking system. You need one honest page that loads on a phone and tells a stranger three things: what you do, where you are, and how to reach you.
A single page is enough to start, and it can rank. A window cleaner does not need a "Solutions" menu. He needs his services, his suburb, his number, and a few real photos, on one page that opens fast. If that is all you can manage this week, ship that. Our guide to a one-page website that still ranks shows how to structure it so Google can read it.
The builders that make this cheap or free are the same ones the migration guides pointed people to. The team at WPBeginner published a migration walkthrough for site owners after the shutdown, laying out the handful of things to do before the redirect ended, and the move it kept coming back to was the same: get off the dead free page and onto a site you actually control, even a modest one. Owning the domain and the page means the next time a platform changes its mind, your link does not break. Pick the cheapest option that lets you keep your own domain, and do not overspend on features you will not touch this year.
One rule while you build: put the same phone number and address on the site that you just confirmed on your profile. Google reads both. When they match, you look like one consistent business. When they disagree, you look like two half-finished ones.
Step 3: Update the website link everywhere the old one lived
You have a live profile and a live page. The last job is the boring one that most people skip, and skipping it is what keeps the leak open.
The old business.site address is probably still published in more places than you remember. Hunt it down and replace it with the new link, in this order:
- Your Google Business Profile itself. This is the big one. The "Website" field on your profile may still send people to the error page. Point it at your new site.
- Any Google Ads or local ads that use the old URL.
- Directory listings: Yelp, Yellow Pages, your trade body, your local chamber, industry lists.
- Social profiles: the Facebook "about" link, the Instagram bio, LinkedIn.
- Printed material you hand out next time: cards, invoices, van signage, the flyer.
Work from most-visited to least. Your Google profile link and your Facebook bio see far more clicks than a directory nobody browses, so fix those first and the rest can trickle in over a week. While you are in your profile pointing links to Maps and the new site, our guide on adding your business to Google Maps is worth a look if any of your location details drifted.
Here is the test for whether you are done. Open a private browser window, search your business, and click every link you can find as if you were a customer who has never met you. Every click should land somewhere real. The moment one lands on an error page, you have found a leak a customer would have found instead.
Do you even need a website?
For the smallest operations, honestly, maybe not yet. A one-chair barber or a solo dog walker who books by phone can run for a long time on a strong Google Business Profile alone, because that profile can carry your photos, hours, reviews, a call button, and even a booking link.
The profile-first path is real, and Business Victoria's own guidance underlines why it holds up: your presence on Search and Maps never depended on the free website in the first place. If you have an hour, spend it on the profile in Step 1 before you spend a week on a site. You can layer a proper page on later. For the full picture of how far a profile alone can take you, we wrote up how to get found on Google without a website.
That said, a link is still worth having. A page you own is the one piece of your online presence a platform cannot switch off on a Tuesday, which is the whole lesson of March 2024.
Frequently asked questions
Is Google Business Profile still free?
Yes. The free website builder closed on 5 March 2024, but the Business Profile itself is still free to claim, manage, and keep updated. It remains the single best no-cost way for a local business to show up on Google Search and Maps.
What happens if I do nothing about my old business.site link?
The link no longer redirects. Business Victoria's guidance confirms that after 10 June 2024 the automatic redirect was switched off, so anyone clicking your old address now sees an error page instead of your profile or a site. Any old card, listing, or bio still carrying that link is quietly sending customers to a dead end.
Did I lose my Google reviews and my Maps listing?
No. Only the free website product closed. Your reviews, your Maps pin, your photos, and your profile details all stayed exactly where they were, which is why the fix starts with confirming that profile rather than rebuilding from scratch.
Do I have to build a full website to replace it?
No. A single page with your service, your area, your phone number, and a few real photos is enough to start and can rank on its own. You can grow it later. The goal for now is a link you control that does not break.
The bottom line
You did not disappear from Google in March 2024. You lost one free page, while the profile that actually brings in calls kept working the entire time. Fix the profile first, put up one honest page you own, then chase down every old link until a private-window search of your own name lands somewhere real on every click. That steady, unglamorous upkeep, keeping your details right and your presence in your own hands, is exactly the work Fonzy takes off your plate so a platform's next change never turns your customers away at the door.
Sources
- Business Victoria (Victorian Government): the 5 March 2024 shutdown date, the business.site and negocio.site addresses affected, the redirect ending on 10 June 2024, and confirmation the profile itself was unchanged
- WPBeginner: reported more than 21 million Business Profile websites were shut down, with a migration walkthrough for affected owners
