How Often Should You Update Your Website? Three Clocks, Not One
On this page
- Clock one: your facts, the same day they change
- Clock two: your pages, every few weeks, when there is something to add
- Clock three: the rebuild, rarely, and for a reason
- How to check your own site in five minutes
- What "fresh" really means to Google
- Stale sites are worse now that AI answers exist
- If keeping up is the part you will never do
- See what a current site looks like
Most answers to this question are a number. Every 30 days. Every two years. Pick one and you will be wrong in both directions at once.
A website is not one thing aging at one speed. It has three clocks running, and they have nothing to do with each other.
Clock one: your facts, the same day they change
This is the only clock with a deadline.
You changed your summer hours. You closed on a Monday you used to be open. You raised a price. You got a new number. You stopped offering something you have offered for years.
From that minute, your website is lying to people.
Being wrong here is expensive in a way the other two clocks are not. Someone drives across town to a locked door. Someone quotes last year's price back to you at the counter. Someone taps a number that rings nowhere and calls the next business on the list.
It costs twice, because Google reads the same facts you do. When your listing says one thing and your site says another, neither one looks trustworthy, and every system deciding what to say about you has to guess which version is real.
Prices go stale fastest, because they sit on the page people actually read before they book.
That is a services page with a real price next to every service. It is useful exactly as long as those numbers are true, and it is actively harmful the day after one of them changes.
Same day. Not this weekend.
Clock two: your pages, every few weeks, when there is something to add
The second clock is slower and has no deadline at all.
A website is not finished on launch day. It gets more complete, or it stops keeping up with the business.
- You added a service. That service needs a page of its own, so a search for it lands on that page instead of a homepage that mentions everything at once.
- You started taking work in a neighborhood you did not serve last year. That neighborhood deserves a page that says so.
- A customer asked the same question three times this month. That is an article, and the questions you already answer out loud are where a local blog comes from.
- New reviews came in. Those are your best writing, and they belong on the site as text.
None of this runs on a calendar. It moves when your business moves. For most local businesses that means something worth adding every few weeks, and stretches where the honest answer is nothing.
Publishing filler on a schedule does not substitute for it. Filler is a page with nothing in it, and a page with nothing in it does nothing for you.
Clock three: the rebuild, rarely, and for a reason
Owners get told to redesign every two or three years. That is a number that sells redesigns.
Rebuild when something is actually broken:
- It is hard to use on a phone, which is where nearly all of your visitors are.
- It is slow enough that people leave before it draws.
- Its facts are wrong in so many places that patching them is more work than starting over.
- You cannot change a word without paying someone and waiting a week.
- It is gone. Google shut down the free websites it built from business listings in March 2024, and plenty of owners still have a dead link sitting on their listing.
If none of those are true, a plain site with correct facts beats a beautiful one carrying last year's hours. Design is not the thing that loses you the call.
How to check your own site in five minutes
Do this on your phone, standing up, the way a customer would.
- Hours. Are they the hours you actually keep this month?
- Prices. Any number on the site you would not charge today?
- Phone. Tap it. Does it dial? An image of a phone number is not a phone number.
- Services. Anything listed that you no longer do. Anything you do now that is missing.
- Photos. Do they look like your place as it is, not as it was three renovations ago?
- Dates. Any visible date in the past. A copyright year, a holiday notice, an event that already happened.
- The real path. Search your business name, open the site from the search result, and see what a stranger sees.
Anything wrong on that list is today's job. Everything else belongs to the slow clock.
What "fresh" really means to Google
Be careful with freshness advice. Updating a page for the sake of updating it, or publishing every Tuesday because it is Tuesday, is one of the tactics owners get sold and never see a return on.
What matters is accuracy, not activity. Google is not counting your edits. It is reading your hours, your services, your area, your prices, and comparing them to your listing and to everywhere else your business is written down. Consistent and current beats busy.
Which is why the same-day clock is the one to obsess over, and the publishing clock is the one to relax about.
Stale sites are worse now that AI answers exist
There is a second reader, and it does not phone you to check.
Chat bots like ChatGPT and the AI answers on top of search results build what they say about you out of what they can read on your pages. If your page says you close at five, they will tell people you close at five, confidently, for as long as that sentence sits there.
Old brochure sites were passively out of date. A stale page today gets repeated, out loud, to someone deciding where to go tonight.
No one can promise you a place in those answers, and we do not. What you control is whether the facts they find are the right ones.
If keeping up is the part you will never do
Most owners know exactly what is wrong on their website. They also have a shop to run, and editing a website ranks below almost everything else on a Tuesday.
That is why the site we build follows your Google listing instead. Change your hours, your services or your service areas on Google, the way you already do, and the website follows the same day. New reviews land on the site as they come in. Add a service or a new area and its page gets created for you. New pages and articles arrive every few days when there is something worth adding, each one emailed to you first so you approve it with one tap.
You update your facts in one place, which is the place you were going to update anyway. It is $49.99 a month per business, hosting and your domain included, and nothing is charged until you have seen the finished site.
See what a current site looks like
Type your business name at 30secondsites.com and see the site built from your Google listing, with today's hours on it. Looking is free. No card, no login, no email until you want to keep it.
Questions
Asked about this, answered plainly
How to tell if a website is outdated?
Open it on your phone and check six things: the hours, the prices, whether tapping the phone number actually dials, whether the services list matches what you do today, whether the photos still look like your place, and whether any visible date is in the past. Wrong facts make a site outdated. An old-looking design does not, as long as everything on it is true and it works on a phone.
What are common website red flags?
For a customer: no hours, no address or service area, a phone number that is an image instead of a tappable link, prices that contradict what you say on the phone, and a contact form that never gets answered. For an owner judging their own site: you cannot change a word without paying someone, nobody has the domain login, and the site says nothing your Google listing does not already say.
Do you still need a website in 2026?
Yes, and for a newer reason than before. Your Google listing gets you found, but the website is what people check before they call, and it is what Google and chat bots like ChatGPT read when they decide what to say about your business. Google shut down the free websites it used to build from listings in March 2024, so that free stand-in no longer exists.
How often should you redesign your website?
Not on a schedule. Redesign when something is broken: it is hard to use on a phone, it loads slowly, it cannot be updated without paying someone, or its facts are wrong in too many places to patch. Every two or three years is a number that sells redesigns. A plain site with correct facts outperforms a beautiful one with last year's hours.
What are the five golden rules of a website?
For a local business, the rules that matter are short. Say what you do and where, in the first screen. Make the phone number tappable. Put your real hours and prices on the page. Give every service its own page. Keep all of it matched to your Google listing. Everything else is decoration, and decoration is not what loses you the call.