Key takeaways
- A Google Business Profile is a listing on Maps and Search. Google hosts it. You do not.
- Google’s own help says the listing can send people to your website. That only works if a website exists.
- The WordPress Basic plan is $2.99, then $7.99. The listing stays free. Those numbers buy different products.
A salon on Whalley Avenue in New Haven claimed the Google listing, filled the hours, uploaded six photos, and stopped. Calls came in. So did the same three questions, every week: do you take walk-ins on Saturday, what is the deposit, and can I see the color work that is not in those six photos. The listing had a phone button. It did not have a page.
That mix-up is easy to make. The panel looks like a homepage. It is a pin on someone else’s map.
| Google Business Profile | A website you host | |
|---|---|---|
| What you bought | A free listing on Google Maps and Search | Disk and a WordPress install on a host you pick |
| Where it lives | Google’s servers, Google’s layout | Your domain, on the host on the invoice |
| What a visitor can do | Call, get directions, read reviews, follow one link out | Read service pages, send a form, book, pay, open mail at your domain |
| Can you take it with you | The fields you typed. Not a site. | Files and the database can move to another host |
| Price we can print | Free, per Google’s help | WordPress Basic plan: $2.99, then $7.99, 10 GB |
The listing gets you found. The site is where they decide.
What Google says the listing is for
Google’s help page Get started with Google Business Profile (read October 8, 2026) says you manage how the business shows up on Maps and Search at no charge. Hours, website, phone, location. Photos. Reviews. The same page says the listing can direct customers to your website, social media, and booking links.
They recorded a one-minute clip of editing that listing on Search and Maps. The clip below is theirs. We did not rehost it.
Read that sentence about the website again. Google wrote it. The listing is a sign on their map, with a link off the sign. If the link is empty, the visitor has the phone and the pin, and nothing else you control.
What the listing cannot hold
A Business Profile is a form Google owns. You fill hours, categories, a short description, photos, and a URL. You answer reviews on their page. You do not get files. You do not get a mailbox at your domain. You do not get a form that emails the shop instead of sitting inside Google. You do not get a page for “bridal party, six chairs, Saturday deposit.”
If the Google account disappears, or Google suspends the listing, that “site” is gone. We already covered rented logins with Wix and Squarespace in you do not own that website. A Business Profile is thinner. There is nothing to export except what you typed into their fields.
Google’s own numbers are about the listing, not the website
The help page Complete your Business Profile on Google (read October 8, 2026) says customers are 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable if they find a complete profile, 70% more likely to visit, and 50% more likely to consider purchasing. Those are Google’s claims about finishing the listing. They are a reason to fill the hours and the photos. They are not a reason to skip a site.
When the listing is enough
Stay listing-only if the whole job is a phone call and a pin on the map. A one-truck plow route in January. A pop-up that lasts a season. A shop that already has more work than it can book and does not want a form filling up overnight. Google is blunt that the product is for businesses that meet people in person. Online-only shops do not get a Business Profile.
The moment someone asks for a price list, a gallery, a page in Spanish, or a form that is not Google’s, you are past the listing. Hartford County service shops hit that in the first busy month. A dentist in West Hartford cannot put post-op instructions in a Maps description. A landscaper in Manchester cannot put three package tiers and a spring calendar in the short bio Google allows.
Keep the listing anyway. Hours and the phone should match the site. Reviews stay on Google. The site is for the questions the listing keeps bouncing back to you.
What we actually host
On WordPress hosting the WordPress Basic plan starts at $2.99 a month and renews at $7.99. You get 10 GB, one WordPress site, two mailboxes, SSL, staging, and backups on the plan. That is us, on shared US infrastructure, with tickets and email answered by a person in Connecticut. We do not watch the site at 3:00 AM.
Do not pick us because $7.99 is not free. The listing is free. Pick the contract. Keep the Google listing. Put the hours and the phone in both places so they match. Put the long answers, the booking, and mail at your domain on a host you rent.
If you already have the listing and you need the site it points at, start on WordPress hosting or open the client area.
