Your website is broken.
Your customers saw it first.
Someone finds you on Google, taps Website, and gets an error instead of your menu or your phone number. Most of them don't call to tell you. They go back and tap the next business.
01 / What they see
Five screens, all found this week on local Google listings.
Every one of these was on the listing of a New Orleans-area business that is open and has good reviews. Here's what each one means.
"There has been a critical error on this website." A WordPress site that crashed, usually after a plugin, theme or server update. The site is still there underneath. WordPress emails a recovery link to the site's admin address when this happens, so if nobody reads that inbox, nobody finds out.
"Your connection is not private." The site's security certificate expired. The phone puts a warning in front of the page, and most people back out. Certificates are meant to renew themselves; when that setup breaks, nothing says so. It can also break on the www. address while the plain one still works, or the other way round.
"This site can't be reached." Nothing answers at your address. The hosting lapsed, the server is off, or the domain points nowhere. If the site's files still exist somewhere, it comes back. If not, it gets rebuilt.
"This domain is for sale." The domain registration ran out and a reseller bought it. Your listing now sends customers to someone else's sales page. The one found this week was priced at $995 to buy back. The first fix is pointing your listing at an address you control.
A password box and nothing else. The whole site is locked, usually by a site-builder setting left on during a redesign or after a plan change. With the login it's a switch. Without it, it's a call to the builder.
02 / Check yours
Ten seconds, on your phone.
03 / The price
$75 an hour to fix it. No minimum.
Send me the address. I'll tell you which of these it is and roughly how long the fix takes before any work starts.
If it's past saving, or you'd rather start clean, a new site is $1,000, built and on a domain in your name. Then $79 a month for the care plan: hosting, security, backups and small edits. Certificates and updates become my job, so it doesn't quietly break again.
04 / Questions
What owners ask first.
Will I lose my Google reviews? No. Reviews live on your Google listing, not on your website. Fixing or replacing the site doesn't touch them.
I don't have the login. Whoever built it is gone. Then the first job is finding out where the domain and the hosting are registered, and getting them into your name. That's worth doing even if the site is fine.
Can I just take the link off Google? You can, and a broken link is worse than none. But people who search for you still want a menu, a price list or a way to book, and they'll find a competitor's.
Send me the address.
I'll tell you what's wrong and what the fix takes. No sales call.