For congregations
Get your church found online
Free. No budget, no web developer, no permission from us. Figures counted from this directory on .
Americans search for churches near me more than a million times a month. We counted every congregation we hold — 237,225 of 334,555 have no website at all. If yours is one of them, the four steps below cost nothing and take an afternoon between them. None requires anyone to build you a site.
70.9%
of US churches have no website
3.4%
have a verified Google profile
8.1%
of those that do hold a profile still lack a website
Want this for your own congregation first? Our free audit looks up any of the 334,555 churches we hold and tells you which of the steps below are already done and which are missing. No signup, no email address.
Read those three numbers together and the priority sorts itself. A verified Google profile is held by almost nobody, and the congregations that hold one have almost always sorted the rest out too. It is the cheapest thing on this page and the one that moves most.
1. Claim your Google Business Profile
This is the panel that appears on the right of a search result and on the map. It is what actually answers church near me. It carries your address, your phone number, your hours, and photographs. It does not require a website.
Go to google.com/business and search for your congregation. In most cases a listing already exists, generated from public records, and you are claiming it rather than creating it. Google verifies you by post, by phone, or by video.
Why it is first: only 11,363 of the 334,555 congregations in this directory hold a verified profile. Almost nobody has taken the free advantage.
2. Publish your service times somewhere permanent
A stranger deciding where to go on Sunday needs three facts: where you are, when you meet, and who to ask. Anything beyond that is a bonus.
You do not need a website to publish them. A free page on any host will do, and so will the Google profile from step one, which has fields for hours and a short description. What does not work is a social account last posted to in 2019 — a stranger reads that as a congregation that may no longer exist.
What to write on that page, in order
- The name of the congregation as people would say it aloud.
- The street address, written out. Not just a map pin.
- Service times, with the day and the hour. If there is more than one service, list them all.
- A phone number that someone answers, and the name of that someone.
- One sentence on what a visitor should expect — how long, how formal, whether there is anything for children.
- Parking and access, if either is not obvious from the street.
That is a complete church page. Six items. Everything else can wait years.
3. Claim your listing in this directory
Your congregation is probably already here. If it is, you can take control of the entry and correct it yourself — the address, the service times, the denomination, whether you have moved or closed. See how claiming works.
If it is missing, add it. If something in it is simply wrong, you do not need to claim anything to tell us — send a correction and we will verify and apply it, usually within a day or two.
Why it matters: directory entries are frequently what a search engine finds when a congregation has nothing of its own. An accurate entry is worth more than an abandoned website.
4. Name a person who answers
Every step above ends in someone making contact. A working number with a name attached outperforms a designed homepage that nobody maintains, and it is the part congregations most often leave undone.
Decide who takes the call, tell them they are the one, and put their first name next to the number. That is the whole step.
What this checklist deliberately leaves out
Nothing here involves buying a domain, hiring a developer, running advertising, or installing anything. Those can all be worthwhile later. None of them is where a congregation with no online presence should start, and treating them as the starting point is why so many congregations never start at all.
Sources
- Churches List directory, 334,555 congregational records, counted 31 July 2026.
- Seven in Ten American Churches Have No Website — the national study these figures come from, with all fifty states.
- Half of Orange County's Churches Have No Website — the same analysis at county level.