Website vs Facebook Page: What's Best for Your Local Business?

Is a Facebook page enough for a local business in 2026?

No. A Facebook page alone will not get you found by most of your customers. 87% of consumers now rely specifically on Google, not social platforms, to discover local businesses, and 98% search online before they ever visit or buy. If your only presence is a page, you are invisible in the search that matters most.

This is not about Facebook being a bad platform. It works well for posting updates and talking to existing followers. The problem is treating it as your entire digital presence. A Facebook page cannot rank in Google search results the way a website can, and it was never built to.

We saw this clearly with a local baker who had built up 800 Facebook followers over several years but had no real website and no Google presence to speak of. Within six weeks of launching a proper website, that business was pulling in 120 organic visitors a month, people searching Google, not scrolling Facebook, who had never seen the page at all.

Why can't customers find my business on Google if I have a Facebook page?

Google does not index Facebook pages the way it indexes websites, so someone searching "hairdresser near me" or "plumber in Leeds" is very unlikely to land on your Facebook page from that search. You need a Google Business Profile and, ideally, a website for Google to show alongside it.

Facebook pages are also increasingly invisible even to people who follow you. Average organic engagement on business pages now sits between 0.07% and 0.15%. If you have 800 followers, that is roughly one person seeing and engaging with a typical post. Meta's algorithm prioritises content from friends and family over business pages, and that has only got more aggressive over time.

A Google Business Profile is different: it is built for exactly this. It shows your opening hours, reviews, photos and location directly in search and on Maps, whether or not the searcher has ever heard of you. We took a salon in Leeds from zero online presence to over 40 monthly calls from Google Maps within three weeks, purely by verifying and properly optimising their profile. No website was even involved at that stage, but it only worked because Google had something to show.

What's the actual difference between a Google Business Profile and a website?

A Google Business Profile gets you found in local search and Maps; a website is where people go to actually decide to book, order or buy. You need both, and they do different jobs.

Website visits make up 56% of all actions taken on Google Business Profiles, more than calls, direction requests and every other action combined. That single number tells you what customers expect: they find you on Google, then they click through to check you out properly before committing. If there is no website to click through to, that intent has nowhere to go, and a fair few of those people will simply try the next business on the list instead.

Do I really need a website if I already have a Facebook page and Google listing?

Yes. Businesses running both a website and a social media page generate roughly twice the revenue of those relying on social media alone. A website is not a nice to have alongside social media, it is the thing that converts the interest social media and Google search generate.

Think about what a website actually does that a Facebook page cannot: it lets people book or order at 11pm without waiting for a reply, it shows up in Google search results directly, and it gives you a page you fully control, no algorithm, no platform policy change, no "your page reach has changed" email.

A Manchester restaurant we worked with was relying on a PDF menu, sent out on request or linked from Facebook, forcing customers to download and squint at a document just to see what they could order. Replacing it with a live web menu, one people could browse and order from directly, produced a 34% increase in online orders within four weeks. Nothing else changed. The demand was already there; the PDF was simply losing it.

What's the risk of relying only on rented platforms like Facebook, Booksy or Yell?

You do not own the customer, the data, or the terms of the relationship, and any of it can change or disappear overnight. That is the core problem with building your business entirely on rented ground.

We see the cost of this constantly. A nail salon was paying Fresha roughly £1,800 a month in booking commission before moving to its own booking system at £35 a month, a saving of around £21,000 a year, for essentially the same function. A plumber was spending £280 a month on Yell for just three leads; after switching to a properly set up Google Business Profile plus a small £120 a month Google Ads campaign, they now get 18 to 22 enquiries a month.

In both cases the business was paying rent on infrastructure it could have owned outright. Platforms like these are useful when you're starting out and have no time to set anything up, but every month you stay on them past that point is a month of margin handed over for no lasting benefit.

Is it worth building a website if I'm not techy and don't have time to manage one?

Yes, because a simple, well-built website needs very little ongoing management, and the alternative, being unfindable to the 98% of customers who search online first, costs you far more than the site does. You do not need anything elaborate to start winning bookings.

A basic local business website needs to do four things well:

• Load quickly and work properly on a phone, since most local searches happen on mobile
• Show your services, prices or price ranges, and location clearly on the homepage
• Include a booking or enquiry option that works without a phone call, since 6.8% of visitors convert on Google Business Profiles with a booking link, against 4.1% without one
• Link cleanly to your Google Business Profile and pull reviews through, so trust signals show up in both places

A fitness coach we worked with replaced a Linktree page, essentially a list of links with no real branding or structure, with a proper branded landing page. Email sign ups grew by 180% in the first month. The content did not change much. What changed was that visitors landed somewhere that looked like a real business rather than a placeholder.

Will AI assistants like ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews recommend my business if I only have a Facebook page?

Unlikely. AI assistants pull from structured, crawlable information, primarily websites and Google Business Profiles, not social media engagement. If you want to be the plumber or salon an AI assistant suggests when someone asks it for a recommendation, you need to exist in the data these tools actually draw from.

This is a shift worth taking seriously now, not later. Being recommended by AI assistants is becoming the new local SEO, and the businesses that already have a proper website and an optimised Google Business Profile are the ones positioned to benefit as more people start asking AI tools "who's a good electrician near me" instead of typing it into Google.

So what should a local business actually do first?

Start with your Google Business Profile if you have not claimed and verified it, that alone can produce results within weeks, as it did for the Leeds salon. Then build a simple website that lets people book, order or enquire without phoning you, and stop paying rent, commission or subscription fees for infrastructure you could own outright.

Keep the Facebook page. It still has a role for updates, offers and community engagement. Just stop treating it as your website, your booking system, or your route into Google search, because it was never built to do any of those jobs, and every month spent assuming otherwise is a month of enquiries going to a competitor who showed up instead.

If you are not sure where your business is losing enquiries right now, whether that is missed calls, an invisible Google listing, or platform fees eating into your margin, Braynex Services offers a free audit at braynexservices.com. We will show you exactly what is costing you and what fixing it would look like.