Do I need a website if I already have Instagram?
Instagram wins you customers today; a website decides whether an AI can quote you. They do different jobs, and there's concrete data on which one matters where.
The short answer
Yes you do — but probably not the one you're picturing. You don't need a big or expensive site: you need one page a machine can read.
Why Instagram isn't enough
Instagram is excellent for being discovered and for showing what your work looks like. But to a search engine or an AI assistant it's nearly opaque: the content lives inside images, the platform restricts automated access, and only a fraction gets indexed.
In our audits, the public Instagram information visible from outside is usually months out of date. If your menu, your prices and your hours exist only inside a carousel, for practical purposes they don't exist.
What even a minimal site achieves
Of the 26 sources an AI cited in our study, 5 were the business's own website. Only editorial blogs and directories rank above it.
- It's the source the AI quotes using your name and your words, not a third party's.
- It's where your menu and prices sit in readable text, not inside a photo.
- It's what Google links from your listing, joining the two halves of your presence.
- It's yours: it doesn't depend on a shifting algorithm or an account that can be suspended.
What it must contain
- Business name, address and phone in plain text (not inside an image).
- Written opening hours.
- Your menu or service list with prices, as text.
- A one or two sentence description saying what you do and in which area.
- A direct contact channel: messaging, form or phone.
- Links to your social profiles, so people arriving there can follow you.
What you don't need
Elaborate design, animations, a background video or an online store. A simple site that does its job beats a flashy half-finished one — and to an AI, a single well-written page is perfectly quotable.
Want to know where you stand today? Visquore audits your digital presence with verified Google data, compares you against your real competitors, and checks whether AI assistants recommend you.
Run my audit →Frequently asked questions
- Does a Linktree count as a website?
- For an AI, barely. A Linktree doesn't contain information about your business: it contains links. It has no menu, no prices, no description in text — which is exactly what an assistant needs to read in order to quote you.
- What about a Facebook page?
- It helps more than nothing, but far less than your own domain. You're still depending on a platform that limits automated access and decides what's visible from outside.
Keep reading
An AI assistant doesn't check Google Maps to recommend you — it quotes pages it can read. We measured which ones, category by category, and the result explains why the best businesses are usually invisible.
Most guides repeat the same advice: ask for reviews, post photos. There's something more concrete and much faster — the empty checkboxes on your listing that quietly drop you out of filtered searches.