Cloud giant Google is now offering businesses the opportunity to develop a basic website. The company has a history of providing website and hosting for businesses, first introducing it in 2005. However, over the last few years the company had seriously restricted users’ ability to develop and host basic websites.
The renewed service has been added to Google’s
Google My Business (GMB) service, which allows businesses to “get on Google for free” and “be found in searches and on maps”. A “Websites” tab has been added to GMB which provides access to a site builder.
The site builder offers a number of customized designs for website layouts. Images and text can be added with limited formatting: Description, Headline, Summary Header and Summary Body. The result is a single page, responsive website that provides a business with the basic information required for its customers to find it on the internet. It is reminiscent of ‘Page Creator’ – a former Google website builder which morphed into ‘Google Sites’.
It is not possible to add meta descriptions or title tags to sites, and it also appears impossible to add links from pages. The interface doesn’t currently show how a site will be integrated with Google Maps. The news is a precursor to Google offering a mobile website tool in India later in 2017.
Are you tempted by Google My Business’ website function? Let us know the details. Add your comments below.
