Home(page)less? Garages lose websites as Google turns off Business Profile

1 March 2024  

Garages that have used Google Business Profiles to build their website will find that their pages will have disappeared this morning (Friday 1 March), due to Google disconnecting the service.

Visitors to a closed website will encounter a ‘page not found’ error and be redirected to the garage’s Google Business Profile.  However, This redirect is only in place until 10 June.

While the switch-off was announced by Google in January, aftermarket online expert, Jim Lang believes  many businesses will not have realised: “This will only affect businesses that have exclusively created their online presence using a Google Business Profile website. Typically, these are the websites where their domain ends with business.site. However, many businesses will have used their own .co.uk or .com domains as well.

“It’s important to reiterate, this does not affect websites created by providers that are not Google, such as Garage Services Online or any third-party website builder.”

Jim continued: “For any garage business that now finds itself without a website presence, urgent action is needed to find an alternative solution for a new website using a new domain. The new website domain should also be updated on the garage’s Google Business Profile too. Not doing so will lead to frustrated customers who’ll take their business elsewhere.

“It may seem daunting for busy garage owners, but it can be taken care of quite quickly and simply. We’ve been advising on this for a while now and are happy for any garage owner to give us a call for free advice. Going forward, I’d urge any garage owner to make sure their website is set up in the right way, with everything aligned from their social media and the integration of any online booking facility via their garage management system. This approach increases Facebook’s lead generation while making it easier for customers to book in.

Jim added: “For a garage to establish its position and take more market share, it’s imperative that it can be easily found online and is visible above and among the garage’s competitors in the search results. This comes down to having a website that accurately reflects the business and intercepts the relevant profitable online traffic for the garage which results in the work it wants.”

For more information, visit:  https://garage-services-online.co.uk/free-no-obligation-quote/