Google’s Search Relations group was requested straight whether or not you continue to want an internet site in 2026. They didn’t give a one-size-fits-all reply.
The dialog stayed centered on trade-offs between proudly owning an internet site and counting on platforms akin to social networks or app shops.
In a brand new episode of the Search Off the Document podcast, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt spent about 28 minutes exploring the query and repeatedly landed on the identical conclusion: it relies upon.
What Was Stated
Illyes and Splitt acknowledged that web sites nonetheless provide distinct benefits, together with information sovereignty, management over monetization, the flexibility to host providers akin to calculators or instruments, and freedom from platform content material moderation.
Each Googlers additionally emphasised conditions the place an internet site is probably not vital.
Illyes referenced a Google person research performed in Indonesia round 2015-2016 the place companies ran completely on social networks with no web sites. He described their outcomes as having “unbelievable gross sales, unbelievable person journeys and retention.”
Illyes additionally described cell video games that, in his telling, grew to become multi-million-dollar and in some circumstances “billion-dollar” companies and not using a significant web site past authorized pages.
Illyes supplied a private instance:
“I do know that I’ve a couple of neighborhood teams in WhatsApp as an example as a result of that’s the place the individuals I need to attain are and I can attain them reliably by there. I might arrange an internet site however I by no means even thought of as a result of why? To do what?”
Splitt addressed belief and presentation, saying:
“I’d quite have a properly curated social media presence that exudes trustworthiness than an internet site that’s not properly finished.”
When pressed for a definitive reply, Illyes supplied the closest factor to a place, saying that if you wish to make info or providers accessible to as many individuals as doable, an internet site might be nonetheless the best way to go in 2026. However he framed it as a private opinion, not a suggestion.
Why This Issues
Google Search is constructed round crawling and indexing internet content material, however the hosts nonetheless body “needing an internet site” as a enterprise resolution that will depend on your objectives and viewers.
Neither made a case that web sites are important for each enterprise in 2026. Neither argued that the open internet affords one thing irreplaceable. The strongest endorsement was that web sites present a low barrier of entry for sharing info and that the net “isn’t useless.”
That is in step with the fragmented discovery panorama that SEJ has been protecting, the place person journeys now span AI chatbots, social feeds, and neighborhood platforms alongside conventional search.
Wanting Forward
The Search Off the Document podcast has traditionally supplied behind-the-scenes views from the Search Relations group that typically run forward of official positions.
This episode didn’t introduce new coverage or steering. However the Search Relations group’s willingness to validate social-only enterprise fashions and app-only distribution displays how the function of internet sites is altering in a multi-platform discovery atmosphere.
The query is value sitting with. If the Search Relations group frames web site possession as situational quite than important, the worth proposition rests on the particular use case, not on the idea that each enterprise wants one.
Featured Picture: Diki Prayogo/Shutterstock