Does a Google My Business Website Count as a Link?

There are many ways to get backlinks for your website, but is your Google My Business website one of them?

Video transcript:

Tricia: So, open that in a new tab.

Youssef: And another domain of yours?

Tricia: Okay. So, this is something for people wanting a tip on their Google Business Profile. So, there’s a thing in your Google Business Profile that says, create a website, a Google website. But you don’t want it to show up as your main link. So, this is not my website. My website is yourbizwatchdog.com. So, you go in and put in whatever.business.site. So, I put in yourbizwatchdog.business.site. And so, this is basically coming up as a link. And it’s Google. So, Google has high authority. Hello? So, it’s something that you can do for free on your Google Business Profile and get you that link.

David: Does this duplicate your homepage, though?

Tricia: Not my homepage. This is like all of my curated stuff for my Google Business Profile.

David: So, this is unique?

Tricia: Yeah. So, this is whatever I’ve got on Google. So, it has reviews, and it has pictures, stuff like that. Yeah. So basically, this doesn’t have what I have on my website. So, you know, it’s just got the different things that I have on my Google Business Profile.

David: So, do you get a link to your website from this?

Tricia:  So, let’s see. I think on make appointment. Yes, that contact.

David: Youssef? We need to check that.

Youssef: Yeah. I found another one, too.

David: Oh, hold on. Before you go, go back to that element on that link.

Tricia: Make appointment?

David: Yeah, inspect element. Okay. There’s a lot of HTML there.

Youssef: Yeah.

David: I’m looking at it. If you hover over the A target… There you go. Okay. So that’s the link.

Youssef: I don’t see a no-follow.

David: Yep. So, that is a link from a website. So, from a Google perspective, this is a link from a website called yourbizwatchdog.business.site. So, they count the link from a subdomain perspective. You’re not getting the benefit of business.site. This link is only as good as the links to yourbizwatchdog.business.site.

Youssef: It’s like an internal link?

David: So, unless there are links to yourbizwatchdog.business.site, this link has no authority to pass. So, he’s going to go to Majestic, which is our preferred link-building tool. He’s going to check to see…

Youssef: Nothing.

Tricia: Okay.

David: Go to Summary on that tab. We want subdomain.

Youssef: Nothing.

David: Yeah. So, technically it is a link. And from at least Majestic’s perspective, they have not discovered that link yet.

Youssef: Yeah. It’s not indexed.

David: It’s not indexed by Majestic. That doesn’t mean Google hasn’t indexed it. So, we can check Google by going to the Google search bar.

Youssef: Okay.

David: And then type in cache:https://yourbizwatchdog.business.site/  Very good. Hit enter. Okay. Google has a copy of this page.

Youssef: But Majestic doesn’t.

David: Majestic doesn’t. So, the fact that it came up when we did a search for Tricia’s name also confirms that Google has a copy of it. But just because it came from Google, and this is a Google product, doesn’t mean it bears Google’s link authority.

Tricia: Yeah. Okay.

David: Right. So, I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying the link is not quite as valuable as we might think because it’s a Google property. Yeah. Now go back to Majestic for a second, Youssef. Now change subdomain to domain. Root domain. Okay. So here is all the link authority for all websites on business.site so we can look at the link graph there.

Youssef: This feels like heaven for a link-builder.

David: But look at the link graph. Look at all of these links going into the business.site. That’s probably all the different profiles created linking to this site.

Tricia: Yeah.

David: But you’ll notice it goes one way.

Tricia:  It goes in but not out.

David: So, business.site is benefiting. But each site is not benefiting. And you’re starting to see all the people who are using this service.

Youssef: Yeah. All different categories.

David: So, I’m just saying no, from a strictly link-building perspective, that’s probably not as valuable. But there could be reasons within Google My Business to do it. Right? It might be that Google would give you a benefit. Google likes to reward you for using its products.

Tricia: I don’t know that there’s really anything, but I do like that when you’re doing a branded name search, that it comes up. You’re getting as many of those as you can. When you do a branded search, you really want to have only your name come up and not others.

Youssef: It’s like, what some brands do, which is buy so many domains. Was it subdomains? Yeah, so they buy most of these, so whenever someone searches for them, they will come up.

David: Right.