
A doctor's office, a winery, a bistro. A dentist, a painter, a realtor.
Those are just some of the small businesses in the Pittsburgh area that will lose their websites Friday when Google ends a web service it launched in 2017 to give business owners free landing pages.
For the next three months, links for the pages will route back to their owners’ profiles. After that they will return a "page not found” error, Google announced earlier this year. The tech giant encouraged small businesses to build new sites with tools like Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy.
“Due to low engagement, we are winding down websites made with Business Profiles, which previously created basic, templated websites based on Business Profile information,” Google said in a statement to the Post-Gazette. “Small business owners will continue to have access to Business Profiles, as well as ads landing pages if they don’t maintain a website, and other resources to connect with potential customers online.”
One marketing agency, Fatjoe.com, estimated that 4,000 Pennsylvania businesses will be impacted by the cut, including 445 businesses in Allegheny County.
But a look at that data reveals a slightly different story: Most of the businesses on the list have either closed or already made their own websites, separate from the Google tool.
Lifeforce Fitness Center, a gym in Pleasant Hills, made a page with tabs for each of its services. As did the Flying Locksmiths, Pittsburgh's leading provider of commercial locksmith services, according to its non-Google site.
Milestone bar has not — but the Brentwood dive’s landing page on Google search displays much of the same info, including reviews, location, hours and a phone number. Yelp is the top search result for Milestone above its Google business site. Other bars like Red’s Good News have Instagram as a top search result.
The Google sites are bare bones: a few images, a map, a handful of reviews, hours of operation and a phone number.
But for some small businesses, that was enough to get on the search engine’s radar.
Another bar, Scarpaci’s, has both the simple Google site and a new site, which is slightly more robust, with animated, scrolling images, a full menu, and event details.