Do professors need a personal website?

Most professors already have a web page. The university gives you one. So the real question isn’t whether you need a page. It’s whether the page you have does the job for the people who are actually searching for you.

Who is searching for you?

Think about the last few people who looked you up:

A journalist on deadline, looking for an expert who can explain something in plain language and is available this week.
An event organiser comparing three possible keynote speakers and needing a bio, a photo and a way to get in touch.
A reader who finished your book and wants to know what you’re working on next.
A prospective student or collaborator trying to understand your research as a whole, not as a list of citations.
A hiring committee or award panel checking what you’ve done since your CV was last updated.

Your colleagues in the field mostly find you through papers, conferences and Google Scholar. Everyone else finds you through a search engine, or increasingly through an AI assistant, and they land on whatever ranks first for your name.

What a faculty page does well, and where it stops

A university profile is authoritative and usually ranks well. It’s the right place for your title, department, courses and office hours.

But it’s built on the university’s template, edited through the university’s system, and written for an academic audience. It typically can’t hold:

a proper page for each book, with praise, excerpts and links to buy it;
a speaking page with topics, past talks, video and an enquiry form;
a press page with a short bio, headshots and your recent commentary;
your op-eds, podcasts and media appearances in one place.

It also belongs to the university. When you move institutions or retire, it disappears, and so do the links that pointed to it.

Signs you need your own site

You probably need a personal website if any of these are true:

You have a book, or one on the way. Publishers’ author pages are thin and change when the book goes out of print.
You speak. Organisers book the speaker they can evaluate quickly. A clear speaking page with video and topics makes that easy.
You’re quoted in the press, or would like to be. Journalists need a bio, a photo and contact details in under a minute.
Your work reaches beyond academia: policy, industry, public debate.
Your search results are scattered: an old faculty page, an SSRN listing, a bookseller page and a social profile, with no single place that tells the whole story.

If none of these apply and your work is aimed only at other researchers, a well-kept faculty page and a Google Scholar profile may be enough.

What “your own site” should mean

A personal website only helps if it is:

On your own domain (for example, yourname.com), so it survives job changes and you control it.
Written for non-specialists first, with the depth available one click away.
Kept current. A site that stops at the last book signals that you have, too.
Easy for search engines and AI tools to read: clean pages, clear headings, and structured information about who you are.
Linked to your faculty page, not competing with it. The two should point to each other.

Where to start

You don’t need a large site. Most academics are well served by five pages: home and bio, research, book(s), speaking, and press. Start with the two that matter most to the people who search for you, usually the homepage and whichever of book or speaking brings the most enquiries.

If you’d like to see what those two sections could look like for you, I’ll design and write them from your published work, free, and send them by email. Request your two sample sections.