Google has drawn a line through the middle of your Business Profile. On one side is the listing, which is meant to say who you are. On the other side are posts, which is where selling is allowed. A lot of profiles have adverts on the wrong side of that line.
The change is in the advertising and solicitation section of Google’s Maps content policy, and Search Engine Roundtable reported it in early October. Here’s what it says, what I’d check, and how long it takes.
What the policy now says
The section opens with the reason:
Contributions to Google Maps should reflect genuine experiences or define a business’s permanent identity. This helps users discover listings and ensures the platform remains reliable rather than a marketplace.
Then there’s a new “For merchants” part with two rules.
For the listing, Google bans “promotional or commercial content that contains any of the following: time-bound promotions, pricing, or direct calls-to-action.”
For posts, it bans “email addresses, phone numbers, social media links, or links to other websites in your posts that are not related to your business.” It then adds that offers and updates that might look promotional “are otherwise permitted in posts”.
So offers aren’t banned. They’ve just been given a place to live, and it isn’t your description.
What counts as “the listing”?
The policy doesn’t list fields, which is annoying. My reading is that the listing is everything on your profile that isn’t a post. That’s your business name, your description and the other details that describe the business itself.
If you’re unsure about a sentence, ask whether it would still be true in six months. “Family-run plumbers in Leeds since 2009” passes. “Boiler services from £69 this October” doesn’t, on two counts: it has a price and a date.
The ten-minute check
- Read your description out loud. Look for anything with a deadline (“this month”, “until Friday”, “spring sale”), any price or discount (“from £49”, “20% off”, “free survey worth £99”), and anything that tells the reader to act (“call now”, “book today”, “get your quote”). If in doubt, take it out.
- Rewrite it as identity. What you do, where, for whom, and one fact that proves it, like years trading or an accreditation you actually hold. It’s the same test I use for homepages: could someone understand the business from this text alone? I wrote about why that matters for AI assistants here.
- Move the offers into posts. Posts are where Google says offers are allowed, and posts are dated anyway, so they suit things that expire.
- Check your existing posts. Any phone number, email or link in a post has to relate to your business. A link to your own booking page is fine. A link to a partner’s site or a random social profile is not.
- Check how you ask for reviews. The same policy bans reviewers from posting phone numbers, email addresses and links in reviews. If your review request says “mention our number so others can find us”, change it.
That’s it. For most businesses it’s one rewritten paragraph and a couple of new posts.
What happens if you don’t
The policy page doesn’t spell out a penalty for each rule. It does say that when behaviour breaks the rules, Google may take actions that “range from suspending the account privileges to account termination”. A price in your description probably won’t get you suspended tomorrow. But your profile is one of the few things that turns up for “near me” searches, and it’s not worth risking over a line of sales copy.
Why I think this is a good change
It forces the listing to do its real job. Google’s own local ranking help says results are based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help. Not one of those depends on a discount in your description.
A description that clearly says what you do and where helps with relevance. Reviews and mentions elsewhere help with prominence. The offer was never doing the ranking work, it was just taking up the space where a clear description should be.
If you want the bigger picture on how maps and local results get picked, it’s on the search map.
When did you last read your own Business Profile description?
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