Guides
What we found out, and where we read it.
Notes on Google reviews, written from Google's own documentation with the date we read it. Where something is one person's unverified claim, it says so, and where we have not tested something we say that too.
Managing a Business Profile
What Google documents about claiming, verifying and editing a profile.
Adding and removing Business Profile access, and what each role can actually do
Google documents two roles, owner and manager, plus one primary owner. Adding and removing users is an owner's job, with one exception: a manager can remove themselves. Removing a person is not the same act as removing the profile.
Merging duplicate Business Profiles
Google documents two different fixes for two listings, merging and removing, and one sentence about what merging does to your review replies. That sentence is hedged, and no guide should un-hedge it for you.
Claiming a Business Profile that already exists
Google documents three different procedures for a business that is already on Search or Maps: add, claim an unverified profile, or request ownership of a verified one. Which one applies depends on whether anyone has verified it, and guessing is how duplicates get made.
Creating a Business Profile, and the parts that decide whether it survives
Google's setup flow is four steps long. What decides whether the profile lasts is the values you type into four of its fields: the address, the name, the category and the phone number, which are the four its guidelines write hard rules for.
Deleting a Google Business Profile, and what deleting does not remove
Removing your management of a profile, marking the business permanently closed and asking Google to remove the listing are different actions with different outcomes. Google documents what happens to the reviews in one sentence.
Editing a Business Profile, the edits Google reviews, and when editing is switched off
You edit a Business Profile from Search or Maps, and almost nothing publishes on save. Google reviews edits first, shows three statuses while it does, changes your profile from sources that are not you, and publishes two API values for a profile whose owner has lost the ability to edit it at all.
Getting access to the Business Profile API, and the 60-day rule
The Business Profile APIs are not public. Google requires a profile verified and active for 60+ days plus a website on it, says requests are reviewed within 14 days, and grants all seven APIs at once.
Business Profile attributes, including the WhatsApp one
An attribute is a typed field Google decides your location may have, not a tag you invent. Google documents the value types and the kinds, and publishes no complete list, because the set is fetched per location. Quoted from Google, read on 19 September 2026.
Choosing a Business Profile category, and what the category controls
A Business Profile category is a permission, not a label. Google's own API publishes a rejection reason that says a category cannot edit business hours, and three fields on the API are documented as varying by category.
Opening hours, special hours, and why an hours edit does not stick
Google documents three separate hours settings, a closure boundary at about a week, a pipeline that can change your published hours without you, and one rejection reason that blames your business category. Here is each of them in Google's words.
What Business Profile performance data actually reports
Google defines each performance metric in one sentence, and the definitions are narrower than the labels. The panel and the Performance API return different lists, and one metric was withdrawn when chat was turned off.
Keywords in a Business Profile: what the fields do and do not accept
A Business Profile has no keywords field. It has a name Google requires to be your real-world name, a category you pick from Google's list rather than write, a description with a published character limit, and a services editor.
Transferring primary ownership of a Business Profile
Only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership, and only to someone already on the profile. Here is Google's documented flow, the 7 days the new owner waits, and what stays published after you leave.
Business Profile image sizes, from Google's own specification
Google publishes four lines of photo specification and three lines for video. It publishes no logo size, no cover photo size and no post image size, so this page prints none of those.
Business Profile posts: what they are for and what gets them rejected
Google documents three post types and three moderation statuses, plus one rule that is easy to get backwards: an offer is expressly permitted in a post and prohibited in your listing.
The products section, and which profiles get it
Google gates the products section by store type, country and barcode, never by a published category list. Two of its own help pages do not name the same eligible countries, and the product form's fields are not documented anywhere.
Business Profile QR codes and the marketing kit Google gives you free
Google generates the review QR code itself, inside your profile, for nothing. It is desktop-only, it arrives as a right-clicked image with no documented dimensions, and the marketing kit people remember has no current Google page.
Service areas, and hiding your address without losing the profile
Google documents up to 20 service areas, defined by city or postal code and never by a radius, and tells service-area businesses to hide the address outright. Two of its pages disagree on how many profiles you get.
Listing services on a Business Profile, and which categories get the field
Google publishes two shapes for a service, a 300 character limit on structured descriptions, and automatic rejection for custom names that break policy. What it does not publish is the list of categories that get the editor at all.
The Business Profile short link, and where to find your place id
Three things get called the Business Profile URL. The short name is closed to new creation, the place id is documented with a finder you can use today, and Google publishes exactly one URL shape that points at a named place.
What a Google Business Profile is, and what it stopped being in 2024
Google's own pages define it as a free listing on Search and Maps carrying location, contact info, hours, photos and reviews. The chat and call history features were removed on 31 July 2024, and parts of Google's documentation still describe them.
Adding a WhatsApp link to a Google Business Profile
A claimed and verified profile can add a WhatsApp or text option, in the Contact section or through one URL attribute in the API. Set both and only the text option is shown. Quoted from Google, read on 19 September 2026.
WhatsApp and Meta policy
Meta's published rules, rate card and terms, quoted with the date we read them.
Meta's own AI agent in the WhatsApp Business app, and what it does not cover
Meta ships a first-party AI agent on WhatsApp that becomes the primary responder. What its published eligibility list excludes, which controls you do not get, and why a third-party reply is billed on a second meter.
Unofficial WhatsApp APIs and QR-code logins: the documented ban risk
Meta's terms bar unauthorised access, bulk and automated messaging and scraping in several separate clauses. Here is the contract text, the consequences Meta actually publishes, and the ban folklore we could not verify.
The WhatsApp 24-hour customer service window, precisely
Meta gives a business 24 hours from the customer's last message to reply in its own words. Outside that window only a pre-approved template is allowed. Quoted from Meta's own pages, with what changes on 1 October 2026.
Meta's AI Providers clause, and what it bars
Meta's WhatsApp Business Solution Terms bar AI providers from the platform when AI is the primary functionality, and bar training any model on the data. Quoted from the live terms, which Meta replaces on 23 September 2026.
WhatsApp Business app or Cloud API: what changes when you move
The Business app is software you log into. The Cloud API is an interface something else has to drive. Meta documents what you lose in each direction, including which route destroys your chat history.
WhatsApp display name rules, and why yours was rejected
Meta reviews the name customers see, and its webhook returns a coded reason when the name fails. Here are the codes, the states the name can be in, and what a change costs you.
The businesses WhatsApp will not carry
Meta publishes its WhatsApp exclusions across separate policies, and conflating them is the standard error. Who may not be on the platform at all, what may not be messaged, what may not be sold, quoted from Meta's own pages read on 19 September 2026.
The WhatsApp green tick: what it is, and what it is not available for
The green tick is Official Business Account status, and Meta's own documentation calls it a blue checkmark. Meta publishes five eligibility criteria, and excludes WhatsApp Business app numbers from the badge by name.
Moving a number from the WhatsApp Business app to the Cloud API
Two routes exist, and only one keeps your chat history. Meta documents the prerequisites, the order of the steps, the 24-hour synchronisation window, and what deregistering does and does not undo.
Opt-out on WhatsApp: what Meta requires and what it does not
Meta requires opt-in permission before you message anyone and requires you to honour any request to stop, made on WhatsApp or off it. It does not mandate a keyword. Quoted from Meta's own pages.
WhatsApp quality rating and messaging limits, in Meta's terms
Meta scores a business phone number on how recipients reacted over the past seven days. Quoted from Meta's developer documentation, including what the score stopped controlling in October 2025 and the thresholds Meta does not publish.
Meta's WhatsApp rates by market, and the countries it does not name
Meta's pricing page prints no prices. The rates ship as downloadable files, the United States is not a market on the card, and the recipient's calling code is not always enough to tell you which market you are in. Read on 19 September 2026.
What changes for WhatsApp business messaging on 1 October 2026
Service messages stop being free by default on 1 October 2026, past a monthly allowance and outside a free entry point window. What Meta will charge, why there is no volume discount at any scale, how the 1,000-delivery allowance is spent, and the delivery stop that hits accounts with no payment method. Quoted from Meta's own pricing pages.
Service, utility, marketing and authentication: what WhatsApp actually charges for
WhatsApp has three template categories plus one non-template category, and the category decides two separate things: the price, and whether you are permitted to send at all. Mapped from Meta's own pages, read on 19 September 2026.
Your WhatsApp template was rejected. The reasons Meta publishes
Meta publishes two rejection lists for WhatsApp templates: a prose list of common reasons on its Template review page, and an eight-value reason enum on the status webhook. They do not match. Quoted from Meta's own pages, read on 19 September 2026.
Using one WhatsApp business number on more than one device
Meta prints two different device counts for the WhatsApp Business app, on two pages, with two framings. The browser client is one of those devices rather than an account of its own. On the Cloud API the number is not installed on a phone at all, so the answer changes shape.
Profile restrictions and suspensions
What Google restricts, what it says about why, and what it does not publish.
GEOGRAPHIC_LOCATION_CHANGE: moving premises without a suspension
Google documents that reviews follow a moved business automatically, and separately that location edits are rejected for restaurants, hotels and venues. It publishes both, and never reconciles them.
IDENTITY_CHANGE: renaming a business without losing the profile
IDENTITY_CHANGE is Google's published rejection reason for a name change it reads as a different business. Google documents one eligible kind of rename, and tells you to close the profile for every other kind.
BUSINESS_INELIGIBLE: the businesses Google will not list
Google's own words are that your business is not eligible for a Business Profile. This is the one rejection reason where no appeal helps, because the finding is about the business rather than about the listing.
OWNERSHIP_REVOKED: someone else claimed your Business Profile
Google's wording is that another Google Account has claimed the profile and you can no longer manage it. Here are the five reasons Google documents for revoking ownership, the request flow it publishes, and what happens when the current owner does not reply.
PO_BOX: why a mailing address suspends a Business Profile
Google's own rejection reason says the address can't be a PO box. The fix is rarely a different address, because the owner who used one usually has no premises, and Google documents a service-area profile for that.
Google says verification is required. It is several gates, not one
LOCATION_VERIFICATION_REQUIRED is a rejection reason on a review reply, and its whole description is that the profile is not verified. Replying needs a verified business. API access needs verified and active for 60+ days.
Video verification for a Business Profile, and what Google says it checks
Google's video verification asks for three things on camera, you do not get to choose the method, and the published answer to a rejected video is another video rather than an appeal.
Reinstating a suspended Business Profile with the Google appeals tool
There is one published route back from a suspension: an appeal through Google's appeals tool. Here is the sequence, the documents Google asks for, the 60 minute limit on attaching them, and the five problems the tool cannot reach.
Your Google Business Profile is suspended. What the API calls it, and what to do
Google exposes suspension as a policy reason on a rejected review reply. LOCATION_SUSPENDED is a published enum value, and fourteen of the forty-three reasons describe your account rather than your wording.
Review reply moderation
The reply states the API exposes, and the rules a rejected reply broke.
Putting a discount code in a review reply is advertising, and Google rejects it
Google's ADVERTISING_AND_SOLICITATION rejection reason is one sentence long. The policy behind it has one rule for customers and another for merchants, and neither one is written about replies.
Who signs a Google review reply, when Google shows only your business name
Google posts your reply as the business and states that your personal name is not shown on it, which decides who should sign one. A signature adds a claim Google left out, so it should be true or absent.
Your Google review reply is not showing. The order worth checking
A missing review reply has at least six causes, and the Business Profile interface tells them apart in none of them. The four moderation states are published in an API instead. Here is what Google says about each cause, checked in the order that costs you least.
Google's policy lists a last name as personal information, and its reply tips ask you to use the reviewer's name
Google's PERSONAL_INFO rejection reason names credit cards and medical records. The policy behind it names a last name, while Google's own tips page asks you to address the reviewer by name. It never reconciles the two.
Why the same reply under thirty reviews gets flagged, and what the repetition values mean
Google publishes three rejection reasons for repeated or unclear review replies. One of them counts repetition across more than one account, which is the published argument against templates and reply generators.
Your Google review reply can be rejected. The API says why, the dashboard does not
Google's Business Profile API returns a state and a policy reason for a rejected review reply. Its dashboard shows neither, and its appeal tool is for profiles rather than replies. Here are the 43 reasons it publishes, and what the names do and do not mean.
Writing review replies
What you may write back, from the policy that governs it.
Asking customers for reviews: what Google permits and what it prohibits
Google permits the ask and documents the link and the QR code. What it prohibits sits in two adjacent sections of one policy page: incentives, gating, pressuring customers on the premises, requesting specific content, and asking people whose experience was not genuine.
Sixty unanswered reviews: the order to clear them in
A procedure for clearing a review backlog in which every constraint comes from something Google published: the repetition rule, a moderation window stated as up to 30 days, and a rejection nobody shows you.
Getting a direct link to leave you a Google review
Google generates your review link for you, inside the profile, next to the reviews. What Google never publishes is the URL format, which is why most recipes for this are reverse-engineered.
Google's review content policy, read end to end
The policy is a 16-page help section, not a page. Which of its 21 sections carry a merchant-specific clause, how enforcement and appeals are described, and what it never mentions: your reply.
How to respond to Google reviews without tripping its moderation
Google documents where a review reply is written, who is allowed to write it, and what happens after you submit one. Here is that page in Google's own words, plus the places where common advice contradicts it.
Replying to a positive review without sounding automated
Worked examples and the slot they fill, the two published rejection reasons that catch replies to good reviews, and the two Google pages that disagree about signing one.
Review gating: filtering out unhappy customers is against Google's policy
Google's published policy never uses the word gating. It prohibits the practice in one bullet under Rating Manipulation, and the clause it really breaks is the condition attached to the permission to ask at all.
What review response generators actually do, and where the output gets rejected
We opened three free review response generators, read Google's published rules for replies, and found that none of the three pages mentions the one sentence their output has to survive.
How to respond to a negative review, when you cannot remove it
A method rather than a template, plus the four things that get a reply silently rejected by Google's moderation before anyone reads it.
Removal and fake reviews
What Google will and will not remove, and what reporting actually gets you.
There is no official fake review checker. What Google actually publishes
Google ships no tool that tells you whether a review is fake, and no signal in your profile that hints at it. Here is what it does publish, quoted from the policy and the API.
A customer left a review and it is not showing on your profile
Google publishes one page about missing reviews and five reasons on it. Here they are in the order worth checking, including the removal Google says it does not reverse, the one it tells you to take to support, and the one you may have caused by asking.
What review removal services can do that you cannot, which is less than advertised
The report on your dashboard is the removal route Google documents, and a vendor's own page shows policy and law are two different arguments. Here is how to tell a specialist from a success fee, and what the claims actually mean.
Can you remove a bad Google review? Mostly no, and here is what actually works
A business owner cannot delete a review about them. You can flag it, and you can reply. Here is the honest boundary between the two, and what a reply is actually for.
How to report a fake Google review, check the status, and what to do while you wait
Fake reviews are one of the few categories Google will actually remove. The process is a report, not a deletion. Here is how to file it, where Google publishes the status and the one appeal, and what to do in the meantime.
Category roundups
What the software in this category publishes about itself, on a recorded date.
Why star ratings in search results are not something you can mark up yourself
Google's review snippet documentation has one eligibility rule ahead of every technical detail: if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews, the page does not qualify. Here is Google's own wording for it.
The free tools Google and Meta already give you, before you buy anything
Google and Meta both ship first-party features that overlap what this category sells, including one we can never match. We quote each from the vendor's own page and name the narrow line past which paying anybody starts to make sense.
Review management software, priced from sixteen vendors' own pages, read twice
We read sixteen review tool pricing pages on one day, first as HTML and then in a browser. Nine of the fifteen vendors publish a price to anyone who looks, two print a dollar sign with no number after it, and none of the eleven vendor pages we searched says whether your reply survived Google's moderation.
Auto reply and other channels
Automatic replies elsewhere, and where the platform rules differ.
Auto reply messages that do not read as auto replies
A fixed auto reply has only two variables: what it promises and whether the promise is true. Worked examples for four kinds of business, with the method rather than the wording as the part to copy, and the Business app rules kept separate from the Cloud API ones.
Instagram auto reply, and what Meta's own tools already cover
We do not support Instagram. Here is what Meta already ships free inside the Instagram app on the help pages we read, what those features cannot do, and what its messaging APIs add. Quoted from Meta's own pages, with the pages we could not read named.
SMS auto reply, and why it is a different compliance problem
mesej does not send SMS. The phone-level auto reply this search usually means is Apple's Driving Focus, which we can quote. The business version is a regulatory problem, not a technical one, and we are not going to summarise the regulation.
WhatsApp away messages: what the free feature does, and where it stops
The away message is already in the WhatsApp Business app, free, and it may be the whole answer for you. Here is what Meta documents it doing, and three limits we could not find written down anywhere else, quoted from Meta's own pages.
What this product cannot do
The limits of reply-only, written as limits rather than as features.
After-hours enquiries, and the narrow version that actually works
An enquiry that arrives at 11pm opens a 24-hour window on WhatsApp, so a reply at 8am is still a free-form reply and not a pre-approved template. Quoted from Meta's own pages, including the version of this problem we cannot solve.
An answering service answers the phone. This does not
A telephone answering service picks up a ringing line, takes a message and transfers the call. A message-answering product cannot do any of that, and the platform rules explain why. Quoted from the vendors' own pages and from WhatsApp, Telegram and Google.
What an AI receptionist cannot do, including ours
An AI receptionist on a messaging channel is structurally a responder, not a receptionist: Telegram forbids a bot's first message and WhatsApp permits free-form replies only inside a 24-hour window. mesej cannot answer a phone either, you carry what it says, and the objections about bans and repeated replies are answered from Meta's and Google's own pages.
Should you tell customers a reply was written by AI
Instagram requires an automated chat to disclose itself where law requires it, and names three moments. WhatsApp's policy requires nothing of the kind, and Google's asks for no label at all. Quoted from each.
Appointment reminders are outbound, and what that means for compliance
An appointment reminder on WhatsApp is a message to somebody outside an open conversation, so it needs a template Meta approved in advance, in a category Meta assigns and can change. Quoted from Meta's own pages, read on 19 September 2026.
Google turned off Business Profile chat on 31 July 2024, and guides still tell you to switch it on
Google's own help page says the chat and call history features are no longer available in your Business Profile. Two guides we read on 19 September 2026 still walk you through turning chat on.
Missed call text back, and why we will never build it
A missed call text back writes to somebody who never wrote to you, which puts it on the outbound side of WhatsApp's rules. Meta's four pages on the subject do not agree about whether a call opens a window, quoted here as they stand on 19 September 2026.
Reply-only: what it forbids, and where the constraint actually lives
Reply-only means the system never messages anyone first. What that forbids, where the constraint lives in code rather than in a policy page, how much of that code exists today, and why both platforms already work this way.
Who is responsible when an AI answers your customer wrongly
The platform contracts allocate this, and Meta's terms put a provider's acts and omissions on the business rather than on the provider. What six published documents say, where they are silent, and our own position marked as ours.
Why we will never answer your phone, and what to use if calls are the problem
A considered refusal rather than a roadmap gap: what a voice agent would actually require, why a reply-only architecture cannot absorb it, and what to demand of a voice vendor we have not tested and will not name.
Telegram
What Telegram's own Bot API documentation says a bot may do.
What a Telegram bot can actually do for a business that answers messages
Commands, the two kinds of keyboard, the t.me entry link, groups versus private chats, and file and location handling, quoted from Telegram's own bot documentation, with the parts that still need a person.
Telegram bots cannot start a conversation. The platform enforces it
Telegram's own developer documentation states that a bot cannot start a conversation with a user. Quoted exactly, with where the rule is and is not written, the routes by which a user does authorise messaging, and how WhatsApp's 24-hour window differs.