Sen. Joe Manchin is announcing a partnership with Google’s Let’s Put our Cities on the Map program in the Northern Panhandle that will help drive economic growth by giving Northern Panhandle businesses the tools and resources to get their business online, find new customers and grow their business. Increasing the online presence of small businesses will help to expand the region’s economy.
Let’s Put Our Cities on the Map is a program that empowers communities to support their local businesses and encourage them to get online where the majority of people are going to find goods and services. Google is partnering with StartLogic to provide its popular website offerings for free including an easy-to-build website, a customized domain name and web-hosting for one year. Participating Northern Panhandle businesses can go to GYBO.com to get a free website as well as free tools, training and resources to help their businesses succeed online.
“I’m proud to participate in this important seminar that will help provide our small business owners, non-profits and local agencies with the tools they need to get online and increase awareness of their organizations,” Sen. Manchin said. “This partnership between Google and the Discover the Real West Virginia Foundation will spur economic development and will help share the good things that the Mountain State is doing to get and keep our people working.”
Small businesses need to be online because their customers are: 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find information about local businesses, but less than half of US small businesses have a website (45 percent) and only 37 percent have claimed or updated their business information on a search engine. Complete business information helps generate economic value to individual communities. In small communities, this could be worth up to $300,000 a year.
“The perception that getting online is complex, costly and time-consuming has prevented many Northern Panhandle small businesses from taking the first step,” said Emily Harris, Marketing Manager for Google’s Let’s Put Our Cities on the Map program. “This program makes it fast, easy and free for businesses to get online.”
