How to connect your custom domain to Google Sites

How to connect your custom domain to Google Sites is a common question. Here's my simple guide to show you how.

How to connect your custom domain to Google Sites

If you're using Google Sites for a personal blog, business website or online brand, you'll likely want to use your own domain, rather than use the https://sites.google.com/ .... address. Here's a simple guide to help you do that. Please follow these instructions carefully!

Tip: I use Porkbun for domains, and connecting Porkbun domains to Google Sites is lemon squeezy. (I'm not an affiliate - I only suggest products or services I use myself). It seems to be the most straightforward and reliable to setup, in my experience.

A basic summary of what you need to do

To connect your domain (e.g., www.example.com) to your Google Sites website, you need to do three things:

Publish your Google Sites and make it Public so everyone can see it
Verify the domain you want to use with your Google Site, and then
Configure your domain to point to your published Google Site.

These steps are fairly straightforward, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist. I'm going to use other resources that I've found really useful, rather than reinventing the wheel.

Note that some of these changes can take time to 'propagate' over the Internet, so it can take up to 48 hours but I've found it's usually sorted in an hour or two so be patient if it doesn't work immediately.

Step 1: Publish your Google Site to the Internet

This is the first step, to actually get your Google Site onto the Internet. Here's how you publish your site:

On your computer, open your site in new Google Sites.
At the top, click the Publish button.
Enter the web address for your site. (This will be something like https://sites.google.com/youruniquesitename, like in the image opposite - not the custom domain name)
Edit the 'Who can view my site'. Make sure you set the 'Published site' attribute to Public, otherwise you'll be presented with a login challenge when you view the website
Click Publish.

Now visit the published website to confirm you can see it on the Internet. (On the Publish button at the top right, click the down arrow and select 'View published site'; that's what the rest of the world can see.

See it OK? Good. We're done with step 1.

Publishing your Google Site

Setting your Google Site to public visibility

Step 2: Tell Google Sites which custom domain you want to use

In your Google Site, click the gear icon and select 'Custom domains'. You'll see something like this (except where it says 'googlesites.dev' yours will probably be blank:

Enter your domain name into the 'Connected domains' box, and click 'Add'.

You may have to follow some steps to verify your domain. If you are, follow step 4 in Porkbun's instructions.

Set your custom domain* in Google Sites

*Can't see the 'Custom domain' option in the Settings panel?

Make sure you're the Owner of the Google Site (and not just an Editor). It seems that only the Google Site Owner can set up the connection to a custom domain. However once the owner completes that step, an Editor can publish Site updates to the custom domain.

If you have a Google Workspace account make sure you have the correct Sites permissions to configure a domain.

Step 3: Configure your domain/DNS to point to your Google Site

This is where the screen you'll see will depend on which domain registrar you use. I use Porkbun, and they've written some useful info, follow step 8 in this guide. In short, what you have to do is:

Create a CNAME record for the 'www' version of your website, using the value 'ghs.googlehosted.com.' Here's a screenshot of mine:

CNAME record for Google Sites custom domain mapping

2. You now need to set up URL forwarding on your domain so that people who don't type the 'www' can still get to your site (e.g., "example.com" instead of "www.example.com"). In your domain control panel look for 'URL forwarding' and set the non-www version of your domain to point to the www version. (See screenshot below, but yours may look different).

NB#1 - make sure you forward to the https: version of your domain and not http:NB#2 - if you're not sure whether to use the Temporary or Permanent forwarding rule read this article to understand the difference between 301 and 302 redirect.NB#3 - Get the www version working BEFORE setting up any redirect or forwarding rulesNB#4 - Not all domain registrars support forwarding (for some reason - come people its 2025!) in which case you will need to use a 3rd party redirect service. See "pitfalls and troublshooting" below

Forward the non-www version of your domain to the www version

If you're interested, there's a good article here on the different types of DNS records you might find in your domain control panel.

Some useful reference stuffs

Google has written a simple guide on how to use a custom domain with your Google Sites, which is worth reading. It's here.

I'm also going to use a couple of acronyms in this article, so a primer on DNS is a useful read too. Don't worry, you don't need to remember this, and there won't be a test 😉.

Pitfalls and troubleshooting

Editing your domain control panel can be a little daunting. Some domain registrars automatically create 'A records' to point your domain at a website (e.g., GoDaddy defaults to a 'coming soon' page), so you might see something like this in your settings:

Example DNS A records

My guidance would be to take a screenshot or write these down, as they may not be required. If your domain does not point to your Google Site after 24-48 hours, remove all the other 'A records'. The CNAME record you've created should suffice.

If your domain registrar doesn't support forwarding

Bummer! But it's OK, we can use a free 3rd party service like the two below.

Wwwizer offers a free redirect and all you need to do is add an A record to your DNS settings
Redirect.pizza is also free, but you need to create an account and add an A record to your DNS

If Hostinger is your domain registrar

Hostinger provide instructions on how to connect your Hostinger domain to Google Sites. From personal experience, I have found the following needs to be considered:

Hostinger create 4 'A' records by default - you don't actually need these. I replaced these with a single CNAME record
Hostinger don't currently support pointing the non-www version of your domain to the www version. However they suggest using a 3rd party service like Cloudflare to point the 'naked' (e.g., non-www version) of your domain to the fully qualified (e.g., www version) one.
I have written an article on how to use Cloudflare to point your naked domain to your domain but I do think www.wizer.com has a simpler option.

If GoDaddy is your domain registrar

There's a useful tutorial on Reddit on how to connect your GoDaddy domain to Google Sites, but some key points to consider:

GoDaddy appear to create some 'A' records by default - you don't actually need these. I replaced these with a single CNAME record
GoDaddy does support the redirect feature, for pointing non-www to www. Just follow the steps above, it's fairly straightforward.