Part 1 of Marketing myths, checked
Do you still need a website, or is Instagram enough?
Instagram on its own can work, for a while. If you're testing an idea, or your customers already find you there and book by message, a profile and a link-in-bio page can genuinely be enough. For most businesses, though, it's a risky place to keep everything. You don't own the account, Instagram decides who sees each post, and the bots most AI assistants use to find businesses are told to stay out.
This is the first of the twelve claims in our series Marketing myths, checked, where you can guess each verdict before you see ours. Part of this one is right, so we'll start there.
Our interest, stated first. Before running oXo full-time, I worked in-house at Google (2018 to 2020) and at Meta (2024 to 2026). Much of this series rests on those companies' own documentation, so bear that in mind as you weigh it. We also build websites, which is the thing this piece concludes you need.
When Instagram really is enough
You're testing an idea. A profile needs no domain, no hosting and no designer, so it's a quick way to find out whether anybody wants what you're selling. If you don't know that yet, spending weeks and money on a website first is doing things in the wrong order.
Your customers already find you there. If you sell on looks and personality, as a cake maker, a florist, a hairdresser or a tattoo artist does, the profile is the portfolio, and people often book by message. For younger buyers, a visible social presence is one of the checks they make: in a YouGov survey of 2,119 adults in Great Britain, carried out on 29 and 30 December 2025, 23% said they look for an active social media presence before buying from an unfamiliar online store, rising to 40% of 18 to 24 year olds.
Your trade is local and walk-in. For a café or a shop, a complete Google Business Profile, with hours, photos, reviews and a pin on the map, may do more work than a website, and our local SEO checklist shows you how to fill one in. A profile doesn't need a website to exist: when Google turned off the free websites it used to build from Business Profiles, the profiles themselves carried on. Google also says a Business Profile can help a business appear in its AI responses as well as in ordinary results.
A link-in-bio page is a fine signpost. It's a sensible way to point people from your profile to wherever they can book, buy or read more. The mistake is treating it as the destination.
Where it falls apart
You rent the account, and the landlord can lock the door
Instagram's terms of use say Meta "can refuse to provide or stop providing all or part of the Service to you", including by terminating or disabling your access, and breaking its terms or policies is one of the reasons it gives.
People who say they broke nothing get caught too. Appeals Centre Europe, an independent body that hears EU users' disputes with platforms, says in its transparency report for April 2025 to March 2026 that it received more than 4,600 eligible Facebook and Instagram account suspension disputes, and that Meta handed over the content in fewer than 100 of them.
The BBC reported those figures in May 2026 and added two of its own. More than 500 people had contacted the BBC in the previous year to say their Instagram and Facebook accounts had been banned, with no way to appeal and nobody at Meta to speak to. And Meta frequently overturned those bans once the BBC raised the case.
Accounts get stolen, too. Action Fraud received 35,434 reports of hacked social media and email accounts in 2024, up from 22,530 in 2023, according to the warning it issued with Meta in March 2025.
Nor do you decide who sees your posts. Meta says what people see in their Instagram Feed is "selected, ranked and delivered to you by an artificial intelligence (AI) system". Your followers are an audience Instagram lets you reach, on Instagram's terms.
A website can be hacked too, and a hosting company can let you down. The difference is that a domain registered to your business is yours to move. For .uk addresses, Nominet, which runs the register, makes it a policy principle that whoever registers a domain "must be able to move between Registrars". So if something goes wrong, you take the address somewhere else and carry on. Nobody can do that with an Instagram handle.
Search engines see less of you than your followers do
Instagram does let search engines show some posts. Its help centre says it allows search engines to index photos and videos from public posts and reels uploaded from 1 January 2020 onwards, from accounts that are public, professional and held by someone over 18.
A post isn't built to answer a search, though. Somebody typing "wedding florist near Epsom prices" wants a page that says what you do, where you do it and roughly what it costs. A grid of photographs rarely puts any of that into words a search engine can match.
Most AI assistants' search crawlers are told to keep out
This is where things have changed most, and the "just use Instagram" advice was written before they did.
Every website publishes a small file called robots.txt, telling bots what they may read. As of 26 September 2026, Instagram's shut out the bots that ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity use, including the ones that find websites for their search answers, while letting Google's and Bing's into much of the site.
It isn't a complete wall. When somebody asks an assistant to look at a particular page, the visit is made on their behalf, and the companies say those visits may not follow robots.txt: OpenAI says "robots.txt rules may not apply" there, and Perplexity says its equivalent "generally ignores robots.txt rules". Assistants drawing on Google's or Bing's results may pick up public posts too. What you can't count on is an assistant finding and describing you when somebody asks for a recommendation. Your own website is the one source you control that these bots are allowed to read.
Link-in-bio services vary. Linktree's robots.txt, for one, lets those bots in, but a page of links says almost nothing about what you do, so there's very little for an assistant to quote.
Free and hosted things change without asking you
Google used to offer free websites built from your Business Profile. Its own help page says that from 5 March 2024 those sites were "no longer available". Visitors were sent to the Business Profile until 10 June 2024, and after that they got a "Page not found" error. Any business relying on one had to build something else, quickly.
None of that means a platform is about to vanish. It means anything you don't own can change on somebody else's timetable.
What we would do instead
Keep Instagram, if that's where your customers are, and add the smallest thing you own outright.
- Register a domain in your business's own name. Even if the site is one page for now, the address is yours, and it can grow.
- Build one page that answers a buyer's first questions: what you do, who for, where, a price or a price band, how to get in touch, and a link to your Instagram. That page is what search engines and assistants can read and quote.
- Complete your Google Business Profile, and your Bing Places listing, with the same name, description and contact details as the page.
- Point your link-in-bio at your own site first, then at the booking or shop links.
- Protect the accounts you do rely on. Turn on two-step verification, as Action Fraud advises, and make sure more than one trusted person can get into the business's accounts.
A single page on a website builder costs you a subscription and a domain. For anything bigger, it helps to know how much a website costs and what drives the price. And if you'd rather have one page planned and built properly around the one thing you want visitors to do, that's our landing page sprint.
If what you want is someone to run your Instagram itself, that isn't us: social media management isn't a service we offer. We work with trusted partner agencies and can introduce you to the right one, and our guide to choosing a social media agency sets out what to ask any agency before you sign.
A quick way to decide
The more of these that are true, the more a website of your own matters.
People who do not follow us search for what we sell.
How to tell
Ask your last few new customers how they first found you. If any searched Google or Maps for what you sell rather than coming through Instagram, this is true.
Customers compare a few options before choosing.
How to tell
This is true if customers regularly mention other suppliers they looked at, ask for a quote before deciding, or take more than a day or two to choose.
We sell to other businesses, or what we sell costs enough that people research first.
How to tell
This is true if your customers are businesses, or if a typical sale is large enough that people read about you, check reviews or ask around before they buy.
We would lose real income if our Instagram account disappeared for a month.
How to tell
Look at how many of last month's sales began with an Instagram message or post. If losing that for a month would hurt, and you would have no other way to reach those people, this is true.
We want AI assistants to describe us accurately when asked for a recommendation.
How to tell
Ask ChatGPT or another assistant to recommend a business like yours in your area, and see whether you appear and whether the description is right. If you want to be in that answer, this is true.
We want people to find our prices and details without having to message us first.
How to tell
This is true if you regularly answer the same questions by message, such as prices, areas covered or availability, and you would rather people could read the answers before getting in touch.
If none of them is true yet, Instagram and a Google Business Profile may be all you need for now. Come back to the list when one of them becomes true.
What we couldn't find
We looked for good UK evidence on how many customers refuse to buy from a business with no website, and didn't find any we would rely on. The figures we found came from surveys commissioned by companies that sell websites or hosting. The YouGov figures above are about unfamiliar online stores, not every business.
It's also often said that having a website helps a Google Business Profile rank in the map results. Google's own local ranking guidance lists relevance, distance and prominence, and says prominence takes in how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. It doesn't say you need a website of your own, so we wouldn't claim it.
Nor could we find anything published by OpenAI, Anthropic or Perplexity on how often their assistants use Instagram content they reach by other routes. That's why we say you can't count on it, rather than that it never happens.
Questions people ask
Do I need a website if I have an Instagram account?
Not always. If you're testing an idea, or your customers already find you on Instagram and book by message, Instagram with a Google Business Profile can be enough for a while. But you don't own the account, Instagram decides who sees each post, and the search crawlers most AI assistants use are told to keep out of Instagram. A one-page site on a domain you own is cheap insurance against all three.
Is a link-in-bio page the same as a website?
No. A link-in-bio page is a list of links on someone else's domain. It's a useful signpost from your Instagram profile, but it says very little about what you do, where, for whom or at what price, which is what search engines, AI assistants and buyers are looking for.
Can Instagram posts appear in Google?
Yes, in some cases. Instagram lets search engines index photos and videos from public posts and reels uploaded since 1 January 2020, from public professional accounts whose holder is over 18. A post is not built to answer a search, though, so it rarely replaces a page that does.
Can ChatGPT see my Instagram?
Not through its search crawler. On 26 September 2026, Instagram's robots.txt told OpenAI's, Anthropic's and Perplexity's search crawlers to keep out, while letting Google's and Bing's in. An assistant fetching a page because someone asked for it may not follow robots.txt, and assistants that draw on Google or Bing results may pick up public posts, but you can't rely on either.
Can you run our Instagram for us?
No. Social media management isn't a service we offer. We work with trusted partner agencies and can introduce you to the right one for your business. What we can do is build the website or single page your Instagram points to.
I founded oXo Creatives, an independent marketing agency and consultancy, in 2013 and run it full-time. Until 2026 I ran it alongside senior in-house marketing roles at Google, PlayStation and King, partner management at Meta, and digital product at NatWest.
Want help with websites?
New sites, landing pages and fixes to the pages you have, so more visitors get in touch. A few weeks, depending on how many pages and whether a developer is involved.
