Google Sites for a research lab website: what it does well and when to switch

Google Sites is where many lab websites begin. It's free with a Google account, it's easy, and several universities recommend it for lab and project sites. For a small group that needs a simple page quickly, it's a reasonable start. Here's what it does well and the signs that your lab has outgrown it.

What Google Sites does well

• Free and fast. A basic site takes an hour.
• Easy editing. Anyone you add as an editor can change pages in the browser, no code needed.
• Google Workspace integration. Embed Drive folders, Docs, Calendar and Forms.
• Access control. Pages can be public or limited to your institution — handy for internal lab wikis.

Where labs hit the limits

Publications are manual. There is no publication list feature. Most labs paste a list into a text box, which goes stale with every new paper. There is no import from ORCID or PubMed, and no page per paper.

Search engines see little structure. Papers in a text block don't carry the metadata Google Scholar looks for, so your site does less to make your work findable. See Google Scholar profile vs a publication list on your lab site.

People pages are copy-and-paste. Each member is a block of text and an image you lay out by hand. Adding someone means duplicating and editing; alumni lists rarely survive.

Limited design. A handful of themes and layouts. Sites tend to look alike, and it's hard to make yours look distinctive or professional enough for recruiting.

Recruiting is clunky. You can embed a Google Form for applications, but it lives apart from the page, and files go to Drive rather than a proper inbox.

When it's time to switch

• You have more than a handful of members or publications.
• Updating the site has become one person's job.
• You're recruiting and want the site to impress applicants.
• You want your own domain and a design that fits your field — see choosing a lab website template for your field.

Alternatives

Our comparison of website builders for research labs covers the options. In brief: WordPress and Hugo Academic are more flexible but take more upkeep; a lab-specific builder handles the lab's structure for you.

Labsite gives each part of a lab — people, publications, research, news, openings — its own table, so adding a member or paper is one row. Publications update themselves, each paper gets a Scholar-ready page, and there are designs for every field.

Moving from Google Sites

You don't need to retype anything: Labsite can import an existing site by its address — people, papers, news and photos come across while you watch. Related: how to build a lab website without coding.