Google Business Profile posts: what to post, how often and what they really do

Google Business Profile posts are the short updates, offers and events you publish on your Business Profile. People see them when your business comes up on Google Search or Google Maps, next to your reviews, photos and opening hours. A post takes a few minutes to write, needs no followers and costs nothing.

Most people still call the product Google My Business, its name until November 2021. This guide covers posts only: which type to use, how to publish one, what Google rejects, how often to post and what posts can and cannot do for local SEO. If your profile is not set up and verified yet, start with my Google Business Profile setup guide: a post on an incomplete profile is wasted.

Posts compete for the same hours as social media, which is why my guide to the best social media for small businesses covers them too. They deserve a few of those hours, for reasons that have nothing to do with followers.

What Google Business Profile posts are, and where people see them

A post is a short message attached to your profile: a photo, a few lines of text and, if you want, a button that leads to a page of your website, a booking page or a phone call. It appears on your profile in Google Search and in Google Maps. So the people who see it are already looking at your business, or at businesses like yours nearby.

That is the big difference from a social network: nobody has to follow you, and your post does not fight friends’ holiday photos for attention. The other side of it: posts will not bring you a new audience. They only reach people who have already found your profile through a search.

Two older features have gone: the simple websites built inside profiles were switched off in March 2024, and chat ended on 31 July 2024. A post’s button now leads to your own website, a booking page or a phone call, so the page behind it matters as much as the post.

Each post also shows how long ago it went up. A latest post from last spring tells visitors that nobody looks after the profile; one from last week tells them the business is busy.

Updates, offers and events: which post type to use

Google offers three types of post. Pick the one that matches what you want the reader to do.

When in doubt, choose an update. Offers and events earn their extra fields only when there is a real date: an “offer” that never ends reads like an advert, and people scroll past adverts.

The text box takes up to 1,500 characters, but only the first lines show before the post is cut off. Put the point in the first sentence and keep the rest short.

How to publish a Google Business Profile post

These are the labels of the English interface at the time of writing (October 2026). Google moves its buttons around often, so if yours differ, look for the nearest match or check Google’s help page on posts.

1. Sign in with the Google account that owns or manages the profile, then search Google for your business name. The panel to manage your profile appears above the results.
2. Select Posts, then Add post. Some accounts still show an Add update button instead.
3. Choose Update, Offer or Event.
4. Add a photo you took yourself, then write the text, main point first.
5. For an offer, add a title and dates, then a coupon code and terms if you have them. For an event, add a title and the start and end dates and times.
6. Add a button such as Book, Learn more or Call now. Link it to the page that matches the post, not to your home page.
7. To publish later, switch on Schedule this post and choose a date and time. The Repeats menu turns it into a recurring post, weekly, monthly or on a custom rhythm, which suits a regular event.
8. Publish. Google then reviews the post: it shows as Pending while it is processed, then Live, or Not approved with the policy it breaks.

To count the visits each post brings, add tracking parameters to the button’s link:

https://www.yourbusiness.co.uk/boiler-service/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=business-profile-posts

In Google Analytics, those visits appear under the campaign business-profile-posts, separate from those that come through your profile’s website link.

What gets a post rejected

Google checks every post against its posts content policy. These are the problems I would look for first:

• A phone number in the text. Google can remove posts that contain contact details it cannot verify, such as phone numbers, email addresses or social media handles. Add the Call now button instead: it uses the verified number on your profile.
• Text unrelated to your business, such as general news or personal opinions.
• Keyword stuffing: a list of services and town names reads as spam, to Google and to customers.
• Misleading offers, such as a discount you do not really give or a price you would not honour.
• Offensive or explicit content, and anything illegal.

If a post shows Not approved, read the policy it names, fix that one thing and publish it again.

What to post: ideas for a local business

The posts that work best show the work. Here are the ideas I would use for a local business, roughly in order of usefulness:

1. A finished job, with a photo: “boiler replaced in Purley”, “air conditioning fitted in a dental practice”.
2. A seasonal reminder: boiler services before winter, air conditioning before summer, gutter clearing in autumn.
3. A new service, with the button linked to its page on your website.
4. A real offer, with dates and terms.
5. An event: an open day, a workshop, a stand at the local Christmas market.
6. An answer to a question customers often ask, in a few lines, with a link to the page that covers it in full.
7. A change customers need to know about: new premises, a new service area, a holiday closure.

Here are three examples for a fictional plumbing and heating firm in Croydon, ready to adapt:

UPDATE
Photo: the new boiler on the wall, pipework finished
Text: New combi boiler fitted in Purley this week, in a single day, old
hot water tank removed. Our diary for November boiler services is open:
book before the first cold snap fills it.
Button: Book

OFFER
Title: £15 off your boiler service in November
Dates: 1 to 30 November
Text: Book your annual boiler service in November and pay £15 less.
Gas Safe registered engineers, Croydon and Sutton.
Terms: One discount per household, Croydon and Sutton postcodes only.

EVENT
Title: Heat pump open morning
Date: Saturday 21 November, 10am to 1pm
Text: See an air-to-air heat pump running in our Croydon showroom, ask
about running costs and book a home survey.
Button: Learn more

When I build a client’s Google profile, the part that can drag is chasing the business for information. Posts need the same raw material, every month. A simple habit solves it: whoever finishes a job takes two photos before leaving and sends them with one sentence about what was done. You will not run out of posts.

How often to post on your Business Profile

The right rhythm is the one you can keep. Here is what I suggest:

• Once a week if you have something real to show every week: jobs, offers, events.
• Every two weeks as a default for most trades and shops.
• At least once a month, so your latest post never looks old.
• Offers and events whenever you have one, with real dates.

Daily posts make sense for a restaurant with a daily special, and for almost no one else.

The easiest way to keep the rhythm is to write a month of posts in one sitting and schedule them. Google’s own scheduling option is enough for one profile, so you do not need a paid tool for this. If you already use a scheduling tool for your other networks, check whether it publishes to Business Profiles: Postly does, and so does Metricool, which I also like for watching the competitors who succeed. My comparison of social media scheduling tools goes through both. Pick the one that covers the networks you already use.

Do Google Business Profile posts help local SEO?

Not directly, as far as anyone can show. Google explains that local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. It adds that nobody can request or pay for a better position, and posts appear nowhere in that explanation.

What moves you up the map is the rest of the work: a precise category, genuine reviews, a page on your website for each service and each town you really cover, and mentions on other local sites. My local SEO guide goes through each of them.

Posts work one step later, on the people who already see your profile next to two or three others:

• a recent job, with its photo, shows them that the business is active and does good work;
• an offer or an event gives them a reason to call now rather than later;
• the button sends them to the page that answers their search, and your tracking parameters tell you whether it did.

That is conversion, not ranking. For a small business it can be worth as much: more calls from the same number of people seeing your profile.

When I worked on Pilotech’s SEO, the order was pages, then content, then the Business Profile, then technical fixes. Their Teknopoint site now ranks first or second on Google, and my SEO case study on Pilotech tells the whole story. Posts come after that kind of groundwork, never instead of it.

The same logic applies to AI answers. Google removed the questions and answers section from profiles (its API stopped on 3 November 2025), and where the feature is available, Maps now answers people’s questions with AI, drawing on profile information, reviews, the business’s website and other sources. Put the answers you want repeated (services, areas, lead times, prices) in your profile and on your website first: a post can announce something, but the lasting answer belongs on a page. My guide on how to get recommended by ChatGPT covers the other assistants.

Business Profile posts or social media: where your time goes further

I am not a social media manager, and the studio does not sell social media management. I do have an opinion on where a small business’s time goes further, though.

Instagram, TikTok and Facebook turn you into an unpaid employee who has to keep begging to be seen, post after post. Even Google My Business is nicer: the people who see your posts have already searched for what you do, and a post keeps doing its job on your profile without anyone having to like or share it.

If you want a channel that keeps bringing new people for months after you post, my picks for 2026 are Pinterest and YouTube Shorts: see my guides to Pinterest for business and YouTube Shorts for business. Business Profile posts do a different job. They will not find you a new audience, but they help people who are already looking at you make up their minds.

And if you already run a profile, posts are not a new channel to learn, just a few more minutes on one you have. That suits the way I see marketing: focus on what you already run before chasing the next shiny tool.

Your monthly posting routine, and when to hand it over

1. Collect photos of finished jobs as you go: two per job, with one sentence about the work.
2. At the start of the month, write four updates, plus an offer or an event if you have one with real dates.
3. Give each post a button linked to the matching page, with tracking parameters.
4. Schedule them, one a week.
5. Check that each post went Live, fix any that was Not approved and update any offer whose price or dates have changed.
6. Once a month, look in Google Analytics at the visits from the business-profile-posts campaign, and do more of what worked.

You do not need me for this: anyone in your team who can take a sharp photo and write three clear sentences can run your posts. If your profile gets views but few calls, or does not appear for your main service in your town, the problem usually lies elsewhere: the category, the reviews or the website behind the profile. That part is SEO work, not posting.