What happens to your website and Google listing when you sell or close
Your domain, your reviews and your listing are worth something to whoever comes next. Here is how to hand them over properly, or close them down without leaving a mess.
Twenty two years of reviews. Four and a half stars, hundreds of them, built one customer at a time.
The sale closes, the keys change hands, and three months later the new owner is starting from zero on Google because nobody thought about the listing. The reviews are still out there attached to a profile nobody controls, slowly going stale, still showing the old phone number.
Nobody plans for this badly on purpose. It just sits outside the list of things a lawyer or an accountant walks you through, so it falls between the two of you.
Whether you are selling, retiring, or closing, there are four things to deal with and none of them are complicated.
If you are selling
The domain
Your domain is genuinely an asset and it should appear in the sale. It carries years of history that a new domain does not have.
Transferring it means unlocking it at the current registrar, getting an authorisation code, and giving that code to the buyer, who initiates the transfer at their end. It usually takes five to seven days.
Two things to check before you start. The domain cannot have been transferred or newly registered within the last sixty days, and it should not be about to expire. If it is close, renew it first.
Agree in writing who is responsible for the renewal from the handover date. It is twenty dollars a year and it is the kind of thing both sides assume the other is handling.
The Google Business Profile
This is the one worth most and the one most often mishandled.
Transfer it. Do not create a new one. The reviews, the photos, the years of history and the ranking all live on that profile. A new listing starts empty.
Inside the profile there is an option to add a new owner. Add the buyer as an owner, and once they accept, they can remove you. The reviews stay. The history stays.
If the business is changing name, change it after the transfer, not before, and change it once. Google handles a name change on an existing profile better than it handles a new listing appearing at the same address.
The website
Files and hosting. Give the buyer the hosting login, or export the files and let them put it wherever they want. If you are on a hosting plan in your own name, the buyer should set up their own account rather than inheriting your billing.
The odds and ends
Email addresses on the domain. Social accounts. Any directory listings. Any software running the booking or the invoicing. Make a list and go through it once rather than discovering things over the following year.
If you are closing
Different job, and the important thing is to do it properly rather than just walking away.
Mark the Google listing permanently closed. There is a specific setting for it. Do not delete the profile. A closed listing tells anybody searching that you are no longer trading, which is useful to them and honest. A deleted profile just leaves people confused and phoning a dead number.
Decide what happens to the domain. If you let it lapse, it goes back on the market and somebody else can register it. Business domains with history do get picked up, and having your former business name point at somebody else's site is a poor last impression. If the name matters to you, keep renewing it for a couple of years and point it at a single page saying you have closed and thanking people. Twenty dollars a year for a clean ending.
Put a notice on the website before you take it down. A short page saying when you closed, and who to contact if there is outstanding work.
Cancel the recurring things. Hosting, any software subscriptions, any marketing services. Easy to forget when the business is winding down and irritating to find still charging a card eight months later.
If you are buying
Ask for all four before the deal closes, not after.
- The domain, with an authorisation code
- Ownership of the Google Business Profile, transferred not recreated
- The website files and hosting access
- A list of every recurring service the business pays for
Also check who the domain is actually registered to. If it turns out to be the seller's web developer rather than the business, that is worth resolving before money changes hands, not after.
The version of this that goes wrong
The most common bad outcome we see is not malice. It is a domain in a former developer's personal account, a Google listing verified under an email address nobody can access anymore, and a seller who genuinely thought they were handing over everything.
Which is the argument for the thing we say constantly. Register your domain in your business name, on your card, and verify your Google profile under an email the business controls. Not because you are planning to sell. Because the day you do, or the day you close, or the day you fall out with whoever built it, that is what makes it simple instead of a three week recovery process.
If you are in the middle of a sale and not sure what you have or who controls it, that is something our free review covers. It usually takes about twenty minutes to establish where everything actually sits.
Call +1 506-801-9970 or email info@qhike.ca. We serve Fredericton, Moncton, Saint John and all of New Brunswick.