How Far Can You Go with a Free Google Website? The Real Limitations Businesses Face

There's a question I hear more and more often: "Can you really build a website for free with Google?" I like answering directly: yes, you really can — and it does more than many people expect.

Imagine a municipality setting up free market stalls for vendors. You get your shop name posted on the entrance board so people walking past can find you, and you get a blank stall space to arrange however you like. Both things genuinely work — they're not a waste of time. But it's still a space the municipality controls the layout of. Want to add a roof extension, run extra electrical lines, or change your permanent location? You can't do that yourself.

Google offers two free things that work almost exactly like this. First: Google Business Profile — your business's information card on Google Maps and Google Search, showing up instantly when someone types your name. Second: Google Sites — a free website builder where you can drag and drop without writing a single line of code. In this article I'll walk through what both can genuinely do — no holding back — and then look at where they stop working as your business starts to grow seriously.

A Quick Three-Minute Self-Check Before Reading On

Open Google and type your business name. If an information card comes up — with photos, opening hours, a directions button, and reviews — you already have a Business Profile. Sometimes someone else created it when they left a review, without you even knowing. If you don't have one yet, go to google.com/business to register and verify your business. Takes under ten minutes.

Anyone wanting to see what Google Sites looks like: go to sites.google.com and create a new site for free. No credit card needed. That's the real thing we'll be talking about from here on.

What Google Business Profile Actually Does

Business Profile is not a website. It's an information card that appears on Google Maps and in search results. But this card does more work than most people realize.

What It Can Actually Do

You can post business updates, promotions, or events. Each post can include an image or video with one call-to-action button — "Book Now" or "Learn More" — as described in Google's own guide. You can also add unlimited photos of your shop, products, and team. Customers can leave reviews and message you directly from the profile. If your business takes appointments, you can link an external booking system to display as a button.

The Performance tab is genuinely useful too — it shows how many times your profile was seen, how many times someone called directly from it, how many asked for directions, and how many clicked through to your website. Google explains clearly what these numbers measure — only actions taken on the Google page itself.

Limitations to Know in Advance

The Performance tab data stops at "clicked to website." It has no visibility into whether those people actually made a purchase, how long they spent on any page, or how many added something to cart and abandoned. This is not real analytics — it's visibility statistics on Google's own platform.

The design is fixed too. Every profile looks the same, built on Google's template. You cannot adjust colors, fonts, or layout. And most critically: Business Profile has no built-in commerce system — no cart, no payment processing. It can only point people elsewhere through buttons.

Google Once Gave Free Websites from Business Profile — Then Shut Them Down in 2024

Many people may not know this, but it's highly relevant to what we're discussing.

Previously, Google offered a feature that automatically created a basic website from your Business Profile information, using a business.site domain. In January 2024, Google announced they were shutting down this feature, and it went offline on March 5, 2024. Google's explanation to media was: "Due to low engagement, we're gradually sunsetting websites made from Business Profiles," as reported by Search Engine Land. The millions of sites that had existed were redirected to profile pages through June of that year, then became "page not found" errors permanently.

I'm not telling this to alarm you — but to illustrate that Google's free offerings carry no guarantee of permanence. Even Google itself wasn't confident enough in free ready-made websites as a primary option for businesses. What they now recommend instead is building your own site with other tools — one of which is Google Sites, which we'll discuss next.

What Google Sites Actually Does

This is different from Business Profile in that it's a genuine website. You can create multiple pages, add content however you like, using drag-and-drop tools that automatically adapt page layout for mobile screens — no need to manually check whether small screens distort your content.

What It Can Actually Do

Embed YouTube, Google Maps, appointment calendars, or even Docs, Sheets, or Forms files directly into the page. For more complex interactions, there's an "embed code" block that accepts HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — meaning even with this free drag-and-drop tool, you can still inject external functionality like a Stripe or PayPal purchase button via an embedded link.

Finished websites can be edited collaboratively by multiple people simultaneously, just like Google Docs. There's a revision history for rolling back changes. And importantly: you can connect your own domain — like jaipeng.co.th instead of sites.google.com/view/jaipeng. But there's a condition many people don't know about.

Limitations to Know in Advance

That condition: Google no longer sells domains themselves. Since selling Google Domains to Squarespace in 2023, Google Sites' current documentation will direct you to purchase a domain from a third-party provider first, then return to configure DNS to connect it to your site. Not difficult, but not the single-button experience people might expect from a free Google tool.

There are also three content limitations that affect real businesses. First: new Google Sites pages have no field for per-page meta descriptions — unlike standard websites where you can customize the summary text shown in search results. Google will automatically extract text from the page instead. Second: there's no built-in blog system with post dates, categories, or RSS. If you want to write a growing library of articles for Google and AI Search to reference — the way I described in the AEO for SMEs article — you'd need to manually create a new page for each post and link them together yourself. This becomes difficult to maintain structure as article count grows. Third: no built-in commerce system, same as Business Profile. You need external services embedded in as described above.

"Customers Are Still Messaging Normally" — Is This Enough?

I hear this phrase often, and every word of it is true. Plenty of businesses with only a Business Profile and a Facebook page still sell well. I don't argue with that at all.

The only thing worth thinking about is: which type of business can Google Sites and Business Profile still carry forward, versus which has quietly already hit a ceiling? A shop selling a single product with no multiple services to choose from, no need to collect customer data for future marketing — Business Profile and Google Sites are genuinely sufficient. But the moment a business has more than one service, wants customers to book and pay in one place without leaving the page, or wants to know which page customers spend longest on before deciding to buy — these two free tools will start to fall short.

Why Starting with Free Tools Now Still Makes Sense — Even Knowing the Ceiling Exists

Some of what accumulates through Business Profile keeps compounding. Reviews build up. Response history builds. Visibility grows over time with profile age. These things go with you wherever you go — even after you eventually have a full website, the original profile keeps running alongside it. Nothing gets thrown away.

Google Sites is better suited to experimentation. Try out your service page layout. Try writing prices. See which questions customers repeat most often. Once you know what your business actually needs, moving to a website with full control becomes much easier. The data you gathered during this phase becomes the blueprint that makes the next step much faster — no starting from zero.

When a Growing Business Should Take the Next Step

The ceilings most businesses actually hit tend to be: needing separate pages per service that answer each customer group's specific questions, needing a booking or purchase system that completes entirely within one site without sending customers to another platform, needing to see real customer behavior to adjust marketing, or needing a distinctive look that stands out in the same market. This goes further than what I wrote about why online stores need their own website, because it applies to service businesses too — not just product sellers. And it's a different kind of risk from what I described in the article about relying solely on Facebook.

This is where a custom-coded website comes in. Our team at TumWebSME writes code specifically for each business — no ready-made templates. Pricing starts at 79,000 THB, paid once. Our labor cost is higher than a template site — being direct about that — but it means full control over everything: page structure, backend systems, and customer data that belongs entirely to the business. I've explained this in more detail in the business website article as well.

But before reaching that point, I'd encourage getting the most out of the free tools first — because they help you understand what your business actually needs before you invest.

If You're Starting This Month, What to Do First

• Week 1 — Verify on Business Profile. If you don't have one, go to google.com/business and register, then wait for Google to verify your location. If you already have one, check that your opening hours, phone number, and address are accurate.

• Week 2 — Build your first Google Sites version. It doesn't need to be perfect. A homepage, service page, rough pricing page, and contact page is enough to start. Add a FAQ page using questions customers frequently ask in chat.

• Week 3 — Connect everything consistently. Add your new website link in your Business Profile, Facebook page, and LINE. Make sure the business name, address, and phone number are spelled identically everywhere.

• Week 4 — Note where free tools start to fall short. Observe whether there are questions you can't answer on the free site, or steps you wish customers could complete themselves within the site but can't. That list is what you'll bring to a web team when the time comes.

How to Know When It's Time to Move Up

Don't measure by feel. Three things I recommend: check the Performance tab in Business Profile monthly — look at how far "clicked to website" and "called directly" numbers are from each other. If many people click to the website but there's nothing to do when they arrive, that's lost opportunity. Second: count repeated questions you manually type answers to in chat every day. If it's over 10 questions per day, the website should already be answering for you. Third: ask every new customer how they found you. When you start hearing "I checked your website for pricing first" more often, that's the signal your website is doing increasingly important work.

Closing Thoughts

Back to the market stall from the beginning. The municipality gave free space — genuinely. No one was being misled. But that space isn't a building you own. No matter how much you extend it, you're still working within the boundary they set.

Google Sites and Business Profile work the same way. Genuinely usable, genuinely free, and an excellent starting point for businesses just beginning or testing the market. But the day your business grows to need more than what Google's framework allows — that's the day you should have a website that's truly your own.

If you've tried the free tools and feel like you're hitting a ceiling, feel free to reach out. We'll help you see where your business is on this journey.

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