Business Profile posts: what they are for and what gets them rejected

A Business Profile post is a dated update that publishes on the listing Google shows for your business in Search and Maps, and Google documents three kinds: updates, offers and events. Every one is moderated before it appears. The rule worth knowing first is that a promotional offer is expressly permitted in a post and prohibited in your listing, which is the opposite way round from the assumption that promotion is banned everywhere on a profile.

What Google says a post is

You can post updates on your Business Profile to share announcements, offers, updates, and event details directly with your customers on Search and Maps.

A post surfaces in more than one place:

Where it appears	Google’s wording
Mobile, Search and Maps	“The “Updates” or “Overview” tabs of the Business Profile on mobile on Search and Maps.”
Desktop, Search and Maps	“The “From the owner” section of the Business Profile on your computer on Search and Maps.”
Featured, mobile only	“Featured posts that are added directly to your Business Profile on mobile.”

They are also not permanent: “Posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set.”

The three types, and what each one demands

Type	Google’s description
Updates	“Share info about your business.”
Offers	“Provide promotional sales or deals from your business.”
Events	“Promote an event at your business.”

The differences are in the required fields. An update takes “a description, photo, video, and an action button with a link”. An offer is the most structured:

It requires a title, dates, and time. This automatically includes a “View Offer” button on the post. You can also include a description, photo, video, coupon code, link, and terms and conditions.

An event needs “a title, start and end dates, and times”, and with no times set “the event shows as lasting 24 hours on the event dates”. Note the coupon code field. That is the next section.

The rule that runs the other way

Google’s Maps user generated content policy prohibits advertising and solicitation, with one list for users and another for merchants. The merchant list is scoped to two named surfaces, governed in opposite directions:

In the listing: Promotional or commercial content that contains any of the following: Time-bound promotions, pricing, or direct calls-to-action.

In posts: Email addresses, phone numbers, social media links, or links to other websites in your posts that are not related to your business. Offers and updates that may be seen as promotional or commercial content are otherwise permitted in posts.

A time-bound promotion with a price and a call to action is exactly what the listing rule forbids, and exactly what the Offers post type is built to carry, complete with dates, a coupon code field and an automatic button.

The merchant half of the policy contains only those two surfaces. A review reply is neither the listing nor a post, which is why a discount code in a reply gets rejected under a category whose own text never mentions replies. The map is: prohibited in the listing, permitted in posts, unaddressed in replies.

The link between the two pages is not guesswork. Google’s Business Profile posts content policy opens by saying its prohibited and restricted content policies apply to anything you submit, and that phrase links to the Maps policy page carrying the “In posts” carve-out.

The two published exceptions

The permission has two carve-outs. Hotels are excluded outright:

Hotels can’t create “offer” posts, or any post that mentions or includes links to deals, promotions, special offers, or discounts. This ensures that customers don’t get confused about where to navigate on the hotel placesheet to find organic and ad prices.

Regulated industries can post but cannot post about the goods: “You can use posts if you offer products or services in a regulated industry, but do not include content about the products.” The Maps policy names the two ingredients of an offer post: content “may not feature calls to action or offers for the sale of products or services that are subject to local legal regulations.”

Contact details are a verification rule, not a ban

The policy line on phone numbers and email addresses in posts is scoped to details “that are not related to your business”. In practice that is a verification problem:

Posts that include a phone number in the post description might get rejected if they cannot be verified as being connected to the business on which they are posted.

To avoid fraud or abuse, we may remove posts with unverified contact information. This includes phone numbers, email addresses, and social media handles.

Google names the workaround itself:

Alternatively, attach a Call now button to your post. This uses your verified Business Profile phone number so customers can contact you.

So the typed number is the risk. The button that reads it off your verified profile is not. Links are policed by mechanism rather than by policy: “The system doesn’t allow links that lead to malware, viruses, phishing, or pornographic material.”

Three statuses, and what Not approved means

Moderation is prior review, not after the fact: “After you publish your post, Google reviews it to make sure it meets our posts content policy.” That is the same shape as the review your profile edits go through, down to the three statuses.

Status	Google’s wording
Live	“The post is public and shows on Search and Maps.”
Pending	“The post doesn’t show on Search or Maps. It’s either in the upload stage, the processing stage, or your profile is unverified.”
Not approved	“The post doesn’t show on Search or Maps. The question mark next to the status indicates which content policy the post violates.”

Two rows matter. Pending includes an unverified profile, so an unverified business can write posts that will never publish, and verification is the last of the four steps in setting the profile up. And Not approved names the policy you broke, which is more than review reply moderation gives you.

The Maps side is described with the same honesty:

You may be informed when content is removed or rejected for a policy violation.

Not will be, may be. What happens to the content is also documented:

If removed or rejected for a policy violation, your content may still be available in your Google Maps profile, but may be marked as “Not posted,” “Private,” “Not Accepted,” or similar.

And the escalation: “Multiple or severe violations may result in feature access restrictions.” A rejected post is not only a lost post, and a restriction that reaches the profile itself is a different state again.

It is appealable, listed by Google as “Restricted media (post, photo, video)”. Businesses in the UK or the European Economic Area use the appeals tool, everywhere else a support form. Either way, “Appeal reviews and decisions can take up to 5 business days.”

What Google does not publish

Two numbers circulate in advice about posts: a character limit for the description, and a pixel size for the post image. Neither is on any Google page cited here. What Google publishes about post imagery is qualitative, on the Maps media page the posts content policy points to for the “additional criteria” photos and videos must meet: “Avoid adding elements such as borders, text, or collaged images.”

That sits awkwardly beside a permitted offer, since a promotional graphic can be text on an image, and the only reconciliation is a relevance test: “Promotional content should be relevant to the place that the media is posted for.” We will not print a limit Google does not publish.

The short version

Posts are the one surface on your profile where Google has written down that a promotional offer is allowed, with a post type built to carry it. The prohibition you have read about applies to your listing, and says nothing about replies. What gets a post rejected is narrower than promotion: an unverifiable phone number in the body, a hotel offer, a regulated product, an untrusted link. The tone advice for replying to a negative review does not transfer here, and neither does the assumption that review management tooling reads the same rulebook.