COVID-19: Google’s Advice for Temporarily Pausing Your Website

As stay-at-home orders keep getting extended, many businesses are having to close temporarily or find ways to limit the damage to their operations. We’ve rounded up Google’s advice on the best way to pause your business online without hurting your search rankings, both during the lockdown and once things reopen. These tips apply to any business with a web presence, and especially to those that have had to stop selling products or services online.

Limit Your Site’s Functionality

If your pause is temporary and you plan to resume selling online once restrictions lift, Google recommends simply limiting your site’s functionality.

For example, you can:

• Mark products as “out of stock.”
• Restrict or disable the shopping cart.

Google also recommends keeping certain information and features online, such as:

• Products and their descriptions
• Product reviews
• Customer testimonials
• Wish lists

These steps will have very little impact on your search rankings. What matters most is letting your website visitors know what measures you’ve taken. To do that, Google suggests displaying a banner that explains your business status, shipping delays, product availability, delivery options, and so on.

Don’t Take Your Entire Website Offline

Disabling a website should be a last resort. If you have no other choice, Google recommends taking your site down for a few days at most. Otherwise, it will have a major impact on your search rankings, even if you do it by the book. Google lists several effects of taking a site offline, including these:

• Customers won’t know what’s happening with your business if they can no longer find it online.
• Customers can’t read reviews or learn about your business, so they’re likely to turn to competitors, which hurts future sales.
• Search Console verification and reporting will lose data.
• Your rankings will struggle to return to normal once the site is back online.

Other Tips for Your Business

Google also shares ideas that relate more to your business activities outside your website. A few examples:

• Move events online, such as virtual appointments. If that isn’t possible, postpone or cancel them.
• Update your business hours on Google My Business (since renamed Google Business Profile). We covered Google My Business changes during COVID-19 in a separate article.
• Check Google’s resources for small businesses on communicating with customers and helping employees work remotely.
• Adjust your advertising campaigns.

For more ideas on staying visible while your doors are closed, see our COVID-19 marketing strategies for small businesses and our SEO tips for reopening after lockdown.

Take Care of Your Website, Yourself, and Others

We hope these tips help you manage your business through these difficult times. If you’d like more information, help updating your Google listing, or support with SEO services, Référenceur, a French-speaking digital marketing agency from Belgium and Luxembourg, works with U.S. businesses remotely. Request a free assessment.

Where things stand in 2026: Google’s article remains available on the Google Search Central blog, and its core advice still applies to any temporary closure: limit functionality rather than taking your site offline. Google My Business was renamed Google Business Profile in November 2021, and businesses now manage their hours and temporary closures directly from Google Search and Maps.