Your website and your Google listing do different jobs
A Google listing and a website answer different questions for the same customer. What belongs on each, in Google's own words, and the four details that have to match between them.
Someone looking for a plumber, a dog groomer or a café sees two different things on the same search page. One is a small panel or a strip of map results: a name, stars, opening hours, a phone button, sometimes a photo. The other is the ordinary list of links, one of which is your website.
They are different tools with different jobs, and treating one as a backup for the other causes real problems. Here is what each does, taken from the rules that actually govern the listing.
What the listing does and your site cannot
A Business Profile, the free listing that shows up on Google Search and Maps, is available to you if you have a place customers can visit, or if you travel to them. It holds the facts someone needs with their coat half on: are you open, where are you, what is the number, what do other people say about you.
Two rules from Google's guidelines for representing a business are worth reading before you fill anything in. Your business name has to be the name you are actually known by. Not "Sam's Plumbing 24 Hour Emergency Callouts", not a phone number, not a keyword. Google's guidelines say unnecessary information in the name is not permitted and can get the profile suspended. And if you work from home, a service business hides its address and sets a service area instead; the guidelines describe that area as not stretching much beyond about two hours' driving time from where you are based.
Hours are the part people get wrong most often. Set your regular hours, then set special hours for holidays and one-off closures rather than leaving a wrong number standing. If a counter, a phone line or a class schedule keeps different times, Google has a field for that too.
What only your website can say
The listing has no room for the questions that decide whether someone actually books. What do you make, what does it cost, how far ahead should they ask, do you take cards, what happens after they send a message, what does finished work look like.
Google's own advice points the same way. Its guide to completing a profile is about photos, services and hours; its description rules say no links are allowed and content built around promotions and prices is not permitted. Prices, examples and explanations are your website's work. If what goes on it is still undecided, what to put on a small business website is the place to start, and what a tradesperson's website needs covers the pages a trade business is expected to have.
One more difference matters. You do not control the listing: Google decides how it looks, customers write the reviews and anyone can suggest an edit. Your website is the one place where the words are yours and stay yours.
Four details that have to match
Someone who reads one then the other notices a disagreement fast. Make these four agree:
- The business name, spelled the same in both places.
- The phone number: one number, answered by a person.
- The hours, typed as text on your site, including closed days.
- The area you cover, described the same way in both.
Point the listing at the right page
The website field on your listing is a link like any other, so send it somewhere useful. If most people who get in touch want one thing, such as cake orders, boiler servicing or emergency callouts, point the listing at that page rather than the homepage, and put the price and the next step on it.
Google also requires the link to be your own site: not a page that redirects elsewhere, and not a social media profile standing in for a website.
Reviews on the listing, examples on your site
Reviews are written by customers on the listing. Google lets you create a link you can send and ask directly. What it does not allow is asking with a discount, a gift, or a screen on the counter offering a five-star tap; reviews that break those policies get removed.
Your site holds the material that lasts. Photograph finished work, which taking photos with your phone covers, and quote reviews you genuinely received, with the customer's agreement. Never write one yourself, and never tidy a real review into something the person did not say.
An hour's work you can do today
- Claim or create your listing if you are eligible for one, and check your real name is the name on it.
- Set your regular hours, then any holiday or closure dates.
- Add the website link and correct the phone number.
- Write three plain lines for the description. No links, no prices.
- Check your contact page and your listing agree on the four details above.
- If you work from home, decide your service area and hide the address.
None of that needs a developer or any code. It is an hour with two browser tabs, worth doing whether your site exists yet or not.
Sitewright is not built yet: there is nothing here to sign up for and no date promised. The waitlist on the home page is the only thing open, and it is where you will hear when there is something to try.