Is your website on the pages that mention you?

Every page that mentions your business should send people to your website, and most of them have a field for it that's easy to miss. Your Google Business Profile, your social media profiles, and the directories and listings that name you can all carry your address, and filling them in takes an afternoon at most. It's worth doing because when someone, or an AI assistant, finds one of those pages first, the website field is their route to you.

Our interest

We sell AI search visibility work, which includes putting a business's details right on the pages that mention it, so we have an interest in you doing this. Everything below is free, and you can do all of it yourself.

Why the website field matters

People and assistants often meet your business somewhere other than your website: a Facebook Page someone shared, a Google listing, a directory entry, a profile that turned up in a search. If that page doesn't say where your website is, there's nothing to lead anyone from it to you, and an assistant has to describe you from whatever it found instead. Our piece on whether ChatGPT is recommending your competitors shows how to see what an assistant says about you at the moment.

Microsoft says it plainly in its guidelines for websites: "Use clear and consistent naming for people, organizations, products, and locations", because "Clear entity definition improves grounding visibility and citation accuracy." Grounding is how an AI assistant checks its answer against current web pages. Google asks for the same consistency in its guidelines for Business Profiles: your name "should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your shopfront, website, stationery and as known to customers."

LinkedIn makes the same point about its own Pages: its help page on editing your Page says Pages with a logo, a description and a website are more discoverable, and can potentially get 30% more weekly views.

So the job has two halves. Put your website on every page that mentions you and that you can edit, and make the name, area and description on each one match what your website says. If you can't yet say what you do in a sentence that would work on all of them, start with how to explain what you do in one sentence.

Where each page keeps the field

• Google Business Profile. Google's help page on editing your Business Profile says you can share your website there, and asks you to "Enter the full URL, which includes 'http://' or 'https://'." In some regions the same page lets you add your social profiles too, one per platform, which links them back the other way. Our step-by-step Google Business Profile guide covers the rest of the profile.
  What good looks like

  Your Business Profile shows your website's full address, starting https://, and it opens your homepage when you tap it.

  Takes five minutes. Covered in Google Business Profile: how to set one up properly, in the right order.

• Facebook Page. Facebook's help page on adding information to your Page lists "Links: Links to your websites" among the sections you can edit. Switch to your Page, tap Edit, then tap next to the field you want to change. The same page notes that the feature "is not yet available to everyone", so if you can't see it, check again later.
  What good looks like

  Your Page's links section shows your website, and the name, area and description match your homepage.

  Takes five minutes.

• Instagram. Instagram's help page on adding a website to your profile says you can add up to five, and that "Anyone, on or off Instagram, can see your websites." In the app, go to your profile, tap Edit profile, then Links, then Add external link. It can't be done on a computer.
  What good looks like

  Your website is the first link on your profile, and the bio says what you do and where.

  Takes five minutes. Covered in Website, or is Instagram enough?.

• LinkedIn Page. LinkedIn's help page on editing your Page says Pages "with information such as logo, description, and website URL are more discoverable and potentially receive 30% more weekly views." Go to your Page's admin view, click Edit page in the left menu, and fill in your website on the tab that holds your Page's details.
  What good looks like

  Your LinkedIn Page shows your website, logo and a description that matches your homepage.

  Takes ten minutes.

• X. X's help page on customising your profile lists Website among the fields you can change. Go to your profile, click or tap Edit profile, fill in the website and save.
  What good looks like

  Your X profile shows your website, and the bio matches the way you describe yourself everywhere else.

  Takes five minutes.

• Every other listing that names you. Directories, your Bing listing, trade bodies, local business groups and the sites of anyone you've worked with. Search for your business name and work down the first two pages of results. Our guide to getting your business on Bing covers Bing Places, and the local SEO checklist covers the listings that matter for a local business.
  What good looks like

  Every listing you control shows the same name, area and website, and you've asked the owners of the rest to update theirs.

  Takes an hour or two, once. Covered in Get your business on Bing.

What you can't fix this way

Some pages that mention you aren't yours: a company register entry, a news story, someone else's business with a similar name. You can't add your website to those, and you don't need to. The fix there is to make your own pages say clearly who you are, so that nobody, person or assistant, mistakes the other page for you.

If you'd like this done for you, with every page that mentions you checked and put right, that's part of our AI search visibility work.