Google Business Profile Post Rules: Sizes, Limits and What Gets Rejected

Sources: Google photo guidelines and Google posts content policy. Google changes these pages without warning, so check them once a year.

This matters because people spend real time exporting images to a size that was never a rule. Here is what is actually true.

That is the part worth acting on. Whatever size you choose, keep faces, logos and text in the middle of the picture. The edges can and do get cut off depending on where the post is shown.

If a guide tells you to create a Product post, it is out of date and you will go looking for a button that is not there.

1. A phone number in the text

Google bans this outright. Their policy calls it “phone stuffing” and says post content may not include a phone number. Attach a Call now button instead, which uses the verified number already on your profile.

2. You are a hotel posting an offer

Google’s policy says hotels cannot create Offer posts, or any post that mentions or links to deals, promotions, special offers or discounts. Google does this so people are not confused about where to find prices on a hotel listing.

3. The usual suspects

• An image under 250 x 250 pixels, or over 5 MB. Both are hard limits.
• ALL CAPS or too much punctuation. Allowed only when it is a genuine abbreviation.
• A link that does not match the post. If the post is about a deal, the link should go to that deal, not your homepage.
• Anything covered by Google’s prohibited content rules. Adult content, dangerous products, offensive material, misleading claims.
• Heavily filtered or altered images. Google asks that the picture represents reality.

This is worth knowing because it changes your whole approach. A lot of guides still tell you to post every week or your post will vanish. That was true once. It is not now.

Most people never click Read more. So the opening line has to work on its own, like an advert rather than an introduction.

• Lead with the thing itself. The offer, the date, the news. Not a greeting.
• Do not repeat your business name. It is already displayed right above the post.
• Write like a person. Short sentences beat marketing language on a listing.
• One idea per post. If you have two things to say, that is two posts.
• Length does not equal performance. Do not pad a post to fill 1,500 characters.

Here is what is reliable and what is not.

• The Google Business Profile API does not support video uploads for posts. So if you use any scheduling tool, including ours, video is not available for posts.
• Video uploaded to your profile goes into Photos and Videos. That works, and it is still worth doing.
• Commonly quoted limits are up to 30 seconds and around 75 MB, at 720p or better. Treat these as a guide rather than a rule, because Google does not publish them the way it publishes photo specs.

Posting daily with thin content does worse than posting weekly with something worth reading. There is no prize for volume.

• They take up more space on your listing. A profile with a live post occupies more of the screen than one without.
• They give people a reason to click. An offer with a deadline converts better than a static listing.
• They show the business is active. A profile whose last post was two years ago looks abandoned to a customer, whatever Google thinks.
• They let you answer objections early. Parking, opening times, whether you cover an area.

So treat posts as a conversion tool first. If there is a ranking benefit, take it as a bonus rather than the reason.

Add tags to the link behind your button. Then the traffic shows up properly in Google Analytics instead of being lumped in with everything else.

• utm_source=google tells you where it came from
• utm_medium=organic keeps it out of your paid reporting
• utm_campaign is the bit you change per post, so name it something you will recognise later

What usually happens is that posting starts well, then slips, then stops. Nobody decides to stop. It just becomes the task that never gets done.

• Write once, publish to many. The same post to selected locations or all of them in one action.
• Schedule ahead. A month of posts written in one sitting beats good intentions every week.
• Automate the rhythm. Set how often posts go out and let them publish without anyone logging in.

That is what the post scheduler and auto posting are for. If you manage profiles for clients, multi-location management handles the whole set from one screen.

Sources: Business Profile photos and videos policy and posts content policy and Manage your Business Profile photos and videos, both checked August 2026.