Do You Still Need a Website in 2026? Google’s Search Team Weighs In

Does Your Business Actually Need a Website Anymore? It’s a question that would’ve sounded like heresy just a few years ago. But in a recent episode of the Search Off the Record podcast, Google’s own Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt spent nearly half an hour chewing over whether a website is still a “must-have” in 2026.

You might expect the team responsible for Search—a system that lives on crawling and indexing—to give a resounding “yes.” Instead, they landed on a much more nuanced, and perhaps surprising, conclusion: it depends.

The Perks of Actually Owning Your Space

The conversation wasn’t about the death of the internet. Far from it. It was more of a cold, hard look at the trade-offs of the modern digital landscape. On one hand, you have the distinct perks of a website:

• You own the data.
• You control how you make money.
• You don’t have to worry about a social media platform’s content moderation deleting your life’s work on a whim.

If you’ve got a specific tool to host—think a calculator or some custom software—a website is still the gold standard. This is especially true for founders who have moved past the “social-only” phase and are ready to scale. For instance, if you’ve reached the point where you’re vetting high-level app marketing partners to handle a massive user base, a centralized “home base” website becomes your most professional calling card.

The Rise of the “Social-Only” Success Story

But then, Gary Illyes brought up some pretty striking examples that make you stop and think. He pointed back to a Google user study from Indonesia where businesses were absolutely killing it—incredible sales, great user journeys—using nothing but social media. No homepage. No “About Us” page. Just a profile where the customers already were.

He even mentioned mobile games that have turned into multi-million or even “billion-dollar” businesses with nothing more than a few legally required pages on a bare-bones site.

Why Bother with a Domain?

It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If the people you want to reach are all hanging out in a WhatsApp group, why go through the headache of building a site? Illyes admitted he uses WhatsApp groups for his own communities because that’s where the people are.

“I could set up a website but I never even considered because why? To do what?”

Trust, Presentation, and the “Personal Opinion”

Martin Splitt raised a point that hits home for anyone who has ever clicked a broken link. He’d much rather see a solid, well-kept social media presence that feels reliable than a website that’s just falling apart. It’s a fair point; a bad website can actually hurt your reputation more than having no website at all.

When pressed for a definitive answer, Illyes did admit that if your goal is to make information or services available to as many people as possible, a website is likely still your best bet. It’s the lowest barrier to entry for the “open web.” But he was very careful to frame that as his personal opinion, not an official Google recommendation or policy.

So, what’s the real takeaway here? We are living in a fragmented discovery landscape. Between AI chatbots, social feeds, and community platforms, the user journey isn’t a straight line to a URL anymore. Google’s team isn’t saying the web is dead—they specifically said it “isn’t dead”—but they are validating that social-only or app-only models are legitimate business choices in 2026.

The bottom line is that owning a website has become a situational choice rather than a default requirement. It’s about where your audience lives and how much control you’re willing to trade for convenience.

What do you think? Could you run your entire operation through a social platform, or do you feel “off the grid” without a domain name to call your own? Drop a comment below and let’s talk about it. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, X (Twitter), or LinkedIn for more updates on how the search world is shifting!

Sources:

• www.searchenginemodel.com/google-search-relations-debate-website-necessity-2026/
• www.search-off-the-record.libsyn.com/