The website field looks like the dullest box in your profile. It isn’t. The page you link to appears to be the page Google reads when deciding what your profile is relevant for, so picking the best landing page URL for Google Business Profile is a ranking decision, not an admin one.
For years the standard answer was “link to your homepage”. In February 2025, Joy Hawkins at Sterling Sky, one of the agencies behind that advice, published findings that reversed part of it.
The short answer:
- Multi-location business: link each profile to that branch’s own location page.
- Single location: the homepage is still a reasonable default, unless it’s also your best organic page and has slipped since mid-2024.
- Service-area business: usually the same as a single location.
Here’s the evidence behind that, how old it is, and where it’s thin.
What Google Says the Website Link Is For
Start with the rules, because breaking them puts the profile at risk. Everything else is a judgement call.
Google’s Business Profile guidelines ask you to “provide a website that represents your individual business location” (wording checked live on 26 September 2026). Note the word “individual”. For a business with several branches it reads naturally as “each branch’s own page”, though Google doesn’t mandate that.
The same guidelines rule out “URLs that redirect or ‘refer’ users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business, including pages created on social media sites.” In plain English:
- no Facebook or Instagram page in the website field
- no directory listing
- no tracking domain that redirects people elsewhere
Social links have their own field, though Google says it’s only available in select regions for now.
Google’s “Edit your Business Profile” help adds basic hygiene: enter the full URL including https://, make sure Googlebot isn’t blocked on your site, and use Search Console to check for problems.
Google says nothing about whether a homepage or an inner page ranks better. Testing has answered that. (For the rest of the profile, see our Google Business Profile optimisation guide.)
If your link points at a social page or a redirect, fix that before anything else here.
What the Tests Show, and How Old They Are
Advice about your GBP landing page rarely comes with a date. The two tests that matter are five years apart, and the “2019 diversity update” people mention is something else.
Sterling Sky’s URL test, presented March 2020 (about six and a half years old)
Sterling Sky worked with a New York City personal injury firm whose many practitioner listings were often filtered out of local results. They switched one non-ranking listing’s link from the homepage to the firm’s bus accident page. Rankings for bus accident searches rose. They repeated it on a second listing, linked to the bicycle accident page, and saw the same result a couple of weeks later.
Their conclusion then: the linked page’s content affects local pack rankings, but for most businesses the homepage is still best because it has “the most authority, backlinks, and relevance”. The limits: two listings, one firm, and only the targeted keywords were tracked.
Sterling Sky’s “Diversity Update”, published February 2025 (effect seen from about August 2024)
Sterling Sky noticed that a page ranking well in the local pack was being demoted in organic results for the same search.
Their worked example: linking a client’s profile to its top organic page lifted map rankings “a bit”, but that page fell from #1 to around 10th organically. Switching the link back restored #1. They say they saw the same pattern across many clients over three months.
It’s a demotion, not a removal, which is how Darren Shaw of Whitespark read it on 24 February 2025. Sterling Sky add that a strong enough site can still hold both positions. Their revised advice is to link to “a page on your site that isn’t ranking organically but is still relevant to the keywords you want your GBP to target.”
Google hasn’t confirmed any of this, and it’s one agency’s data. Shaw and several respondents to Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey treat it as real, but that’s expert agreement, not an independent test.
Not to be confused with Google’s 2019 site diversity change
In June 2019, Google introduced a site diversity change to its organic results. Its ranking systems guide (checked 26 September 2026) says the system means Google “generally won’t show more than two web page listings from the same site in our top results”. That covers ordinary web listings. It doesn’t mention the map pack.
The 2025 name borrows the idea, but the mechanism Sterling Sky describe (local pack against organic) is different. The evidence is thinner than the confidence with which it’s usually repeated. Treat the rule below as a starting point you check against your own rankings.
Homepage or Location Page: A Decision Rule by Situation
| Your situation | Link your profile to | Check first |
|---|---|---|
| Several branches, one profile each | Each branch’s location page | Are the pages genuinely different? |
| One location | Homepage by default | Has the homepage slipped organically since mid-2024? |
| Service-area business | Homepage or core service page (our reading) | Same check as one location |
Multi-location business
Link each profile to that branch’s own location page. It matches Google’s “individual business location” wording and suits customers better. Miriam Ellis of Whitespark argued in April 2025 that people shouldn’t land on a corporate homepage and have to “fiddle with menus and store locators”. Sterling Sky’s reply to a reader was that a dedicated location page is “typically” the best strategy for multi-location businesses.
Best for: real branches with their own address and staff. Skip if: your location pages are thin copies with the town name swapped. Fix those first with our guide to local landing pages.
Single-location business
The homepage remains a sensible default: it’s usually your strongest page, as Sterling Sky reasoned in 2020.
The 2025 exception: if your homepage is also your top organic result for your main local search, and it has dropped organically since mid-2024 while your map ranking held, test linking your profile to your main service page instead. Say you’re a roofer in Warrington whose homepage has drifted down for “roofer Warrington” while the map listing held. That’s the pattern worth testing, and only with a page genuinely relevant to what you want the profile to rank for.
Service-area business
No published test covers service-area businesses specifically, so this is our reading, not a finding.
Google normally allows a service-area business one profile, for its central office or location. So the single-location rule applies: homepage or core service page, same check. (Our service areas guide covers the setup.)
Don’t link that one profile to a single town’s page. Say you’re based in Widnes and cover Runcorn and St Helens: a Runcorn page represents one area, not the business. Unlike a multi-location business, you have one profile and one link.
Sterling Sky observed that businesses with service-area pages ranking in towns where they have no profile may have gained from the 2025 change. That’s a reason to keep those pages working in organic search, not to link your profile to one.
Two last points
Practitioner and department listings are the one case with direct test evidence for linking to a specific service page (the 2020 test).
Change the URL once, note the date, then compare. Nobody has published evidence on whether frequent switching causes problems, so don’t flip it weekly. It’s the kind of check we run as part of our Google Business Profile management.
Make the Page You Link To Earn Its Place
Pointing your profile at a thin page is worse than leaving it on the homepage.
Darren Shaw’s commentary in Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors says the linked page needs “well-structured, optimized content” reflecting the topics you want your profile to rank for, and “lots of links TO the page, both external and internal.” That survey is the opinion of 47 local search experts, not a controlled test, but they rate the linked page’s title, headings and inbound links as meaningful.
Before you switch, make sure the page has:
- the service and the place in its title and main heading
- your business name, address and phone number, matching the profile
- local references a customer would recognise, like the areas and landmarks near you
- internal links to it from your menu and related pages
- a clear way to call or enquire
If the page can’t tick those boxes yet, leave the link on the homepage and fix the page first.
Tag the Link So You Can See What Changed
If you change the URL, you need to know whether it worked. Untagged, profile clicks blend into organic traffic in Google Analytics 4.
Add utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to the URL in your profile so GA4 reports those visits separately, then compare them with the “Website clicks” figure in your profile’s performance report. Sterling Sky say they’ve never seen Google treat a UTM-tagged URL differently from a plain one, though they know of no specific study. The full setup is in our local SEO tracking guide.
Want someone to check which page your profile should point at and track the result? Tell us what you do and where. We’ll give you a straight answer on whether we can help. If we can’t, we’ll say so.
FAQ
Can my Google Business Profile link to my Facebook page?
No. Google’s guidelines rule out website links that send people to pages other than the business’s own, and they name social media pages specifically. Use the separate social links option instead, where Google offers it in your region.
Is the “Diversity Update” an official Google update?
No. It’s Sterling Sky’s name, from February 2025, for a pattern they observed across their clients. Google hasn’t confirmed it. Google’s official site diversity system dates from June 2019 and covers organic web listings, not the map pack.
Does a URL parameter count as a different page?
No, according to a Sterling Sky reply to a reader: adding a parameter to the same page won’t avoid the overlap, because it needs to be a completely separate page. The flip side is that UTM tracking tags don’t change which page you’ve linked.