Do I need a website if I already have a Google Business Profile?
Yes, but not because a Google Business Profile is useless without one. A well-tended profile can win map-pack calls on its own, especially in less competitive trades. The problem is the ceiling: Google cross-references your profile against your website to decide how much to trust you, so profiles with no site (or a thin one) consistently lose pack positions to competitors whose sites confirm their services and service area. And AI assistants like ChatGPT have almost nothing to quote about a business with no site. A profile alone gets you found sometimes; a profile plus a real site is what holds the position.
What a profile genuinely does well on its own
Credit where due: the Google Business Profile is the single highest-leverage free asset in local marketing. It puts you in the map pack, collects your reviews, shows your photos and hours, and gives people a call button. For a solo operator just getting started, a complete, active profile with steady reviews beats a bad website with no profile. No contest. If you can only do one thing this month, do the profile.
Where the ceiling is
Google decides pack rankings partly on relevance and prominence, and your website feeds both. A site with a page for each service and each city you serve tells Google exactly which searches you belong in; a profile alone gives it a business name, a category, and hope. When two profiles look similar, the one backed by a fast site with real content about roofing in Sanford wins 'roofer sanford.' We see this constantly across Seminole County: the pack leader is almost never a profile floating on its own.
There's also the growing slice of customers who never touch the map at all: they ask ChatGPT or hit an AI Overview. Those systems assemble answers from crawlable web pages. No website means there is close to nothing for them to read, quote, or recommend.
The part nobody mentions: you don't own your profile
Google suspends business profiles all the time: sometimes for real violations, often by mistake, and reinstatement can take weeks with no phone number to call. If the profile is your entire online presence, a suspension turns your business invisible overnight. A website is the one piece of your visibility you actually own. Treat the profile as your best free channel, and the site as the asset that can't be taken away.
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