Do You Still Need a Website When Google Answers for You?

Say your roof starts leaking the week before the long rains.

You pick up your phone and type roof repair Nairobi into Google. A map appears with a few names, their star ratings, their opening hours and a call button. You read two reviews, tap call, and someone is coming on Saturday.

Or you ask an AI assistant instead: Who are good roofers in Nairobi, and what does a repair usually cost? It gives you three names, a rough price range and a short summary of what customers say about each.

Either way, you got your answer without opening a single business website.

That’s a fair reason to ask whether websites still matter for being found. The answer is more interesting than yes or no.

Searching is different from scrolling

Most of the time, people meet businesses by accident. A post appears while they’re scrolling, a friend shares something, an ad interrupts a video.

Searching is different. When someone types roof repair Nairobi, they already have the problem and they’re looking for someone to fix it. That’s why search has always mattered so much to businesses. The person searching is closer to buying than anyone scrolling past a post.

For about two decades, being found in search meant one thing: your website appeared in the results, and the person clicked through to it. That’s the part that has changed.

More searches now end on Google’s own page

Google has been answering more questions directly on its results page for years. Maps with phone numbers, opening hours, quick answers at the top of the page. Each one means fewer people need to click through to anyone’s website.

The numbers show how far this has gone. In a 2024 study of Google searches in the United States, 58.5% ended without a click to any result, and only about 37% led to a website outside Google. In the European Union the figure was slightly higher, at 59.7%. Estimates vary depending on how they’re counted, but the direction is clear, and it isn’t new: by 2019, over half of Google searches already ended without a click, long before AI answers appeared.

AI summaries have pushed this further. In a 2025 study, Pew Research found that people who saw an AI summary at the top of their Google results clicked on a regular result in 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary. They were also more likely to stop searching altogether.

Most of this research comes from the US and Europe. But it’s the same Google here, with the same maps, the same quick answers and the same AI summaries.

The answer has to come from somewhere

Go back to the roof. The map showed opening hours and reviews. The AI assistant gave you a price range and a summary of what customers say.

None of that appeared from nowhere. Google and AI assistants build their answers by reading what’s published about a business: its Google Business Profile, directories that list it, review sites, and its own website.

So the question changes. It’s no longer only will people visit my website? It’s also when Google or an AI describes my business, what is it reading?

Without a website, the answer is pieced together from separate places: your Google Business Profile, directory listings and reviews. Some of that you control, like the details on your profile, but a profile only has room for what Google’s fields allow. The rest, the directories and reviews, others write for you.

If you have a website that Google has indexed, meaning it has found and read your pages, you can spell out the rest in your own words: what you do, where you work, what affects the price and how you work, in as much detail as a customer needs.

What AI actually reads is still being worked out

Website companies like to say AI tools cite websites. The research is more mixed than that, and it’s worth being honest about it.

• A study of local AI answers by BrightLocal found Google Business Profiles made up 28.5% of all citations, the single biggest source.
• Another study found business websites made up 59.9% of the local sources Google’s Gemini cited.
• For home-services questions, one analysis found Gemini pointed to contractors’ own websites 80.7% of the time, while ChatGPT split almost evenly: 48.8% to business websites and 44.7% to directories and review sites.
• In one audit of AI answers about a London clinic, the assistants relied on a medical directory 69 times, more than on the clinic’s own website.

So it depends on which assistant someone uses, and on your industry. What every study agrees on is that the answers are built from things businesses can keep up to date: their profile, their listings and their website.

Two places worth keeping right

This leaves a business with two jobs, and they work together.

Your Google Business Profile is often the answer itself, especially for quick local searches. Your hours, phone number, location, photos and reviews need to be complete and current. For a business that people find on a map and call, this may do most of the work.

Your website is where the detail lives. It’s what Google and AI assistants can read when they need more than your hours: what you actually do, where you work, what affects the price, what past customers got. It’s also where people go when the short answer isn’t enough to decide. Someone choosing between three roofers for a KSh 80,000 job may want to see past work and understand the process before calling.

The profile gets you into the answer. The website shapes what the answer says, and catches the people who need more than a summary.

Where a website fits

For simple questions, more people will get their answer straight from Google, and that trend is likely to continue. That’s why what Google and AI read about you matters more than ever.

Which sources each AI assistant trusts keeps shifting, and directories carry a lot of weight in some industries. Keeping both your profile and your website current gives you the best chance of being part of the answer.

What a website does is make sure that when Google or an AI describes your business, some of what it reads is written by you.