Appearance
Content Policy & Suspension Risk
Anything the platform writes to a Google Business Profile — a post, a review reply, a photo description, a business description — is subject to Google's content rules. Content that breaks them gets rejected, and a pattern of it puts the listing at risk of restriction or suspension.
The platform screens automatically before writing. This page explains what it screens, what it does not, and the practices that keep a listing out of trouble.
When you are not sure whether Google allows something, check Google's Guidelines — our living mirror of Google's own pages — and the source page itself. Google's policies change and vary by category and country. The platform's screening is a safety net, not a substitute for the policy.
What the platform screens, by surface
The rules are deliberately different per surface, because Google treats them differently.
| Surface | Contact info (phone / URL / email) | Also screened |
|---|---|---|
| Business description, service names & descriptions | None allowed at all — not even the business's own | length, restricted categories, promo language, superlatives |
| Review replies | Allowed only if it is the business's own phone or website | hate/harassment, restricted categories, promo language, superlatives |
| Post text | None allowed — not even the business's own; held for review | hate/harassment, restricted categories, promo language, superlatives, length |
| Photos | Description text is screened; the image itself is not inspected | same lexicon rules as above |
What each screen does
- Hate, sexual or harassing language — blocks the write outright. Never published.
- Restricted categories — routed to a human for review rather than blocked, because context matters.
- Contact stuffing — on review replies, sharing your own phone or website is legitimate service recovery and is explicitly allowed. A third party's contact details are flagged for review.
- Excessive promotional language / misleading superlatives ("best in the world", "guaranteed #1") — soft flags. On automated writes they route to review; on writes you make yourself they are allowed through with the flag recorded.
- Length — post bodies are checked against Google's limit before publishing.
Automated writes (auto review replies, scheduled posts, paced photo adds) are held to a stricter standard than writes you make by hand: a soft flag that would let your own post through will route an unattended one to review instead.
Contact details in posts
Two Google policies bar them, and the second is broader than the first:
- The posts content policy: "we do not allow your post content to include a phone number." Use the Call now button instead, which uses the verified Business Profile number.
- Prohibited & restricted content, under Advertising & solicitation: promotional or commercial content is prohibited, as is posting "email addresses, phone numbers, social media links, or links to other websites."
So it is not just phone numbers — email addresses, social links and outbound URLs are barred on the same footing. See Google's Guidelines.
Note this is stricter than the general content guidelines, which do let a business share its own contact details in some profile content. That permission does not carry over to Posts — generalising from it is the most common way to get this wrong.
What we enforce: post text is screened for phone numbers, URLs, bare domains and email addresses, with no exception for the business's own — the one place the platform is deliberately stricter on posts than on review replies. A scheduled or AI-generated post carrying contact details is held for a person rather than published. A post you write yourself is not refused: the phone-shape test accepts seven digits around a separator, so dates like 2026-09-01 and price ranges like 1,200-1,500 can read as phone-shaped, and blocking on that would be worse than the thing it prevents.
Links belong in the post's link button, not the body — the button is a separate field and is not screened by this rule.
The same applies to images: never put a phone number, URL or sales copy as text on top of an image. Google strips these.
Practices that put a listing at risk
Each of these traces to a rule in Google's Guidelines; the named section is where to check the current wording.
- Keyword-stuffed business names. The name must be the real-world business name. "Joe's Plumbing — Emergency Plumber Dallas 24/7" is a name violation, and name violations are among the fastest routes to a suspension. (Guidelines → Name.) The platform lints profile names and warns you.
- Contact details in profile fields. Never in the description or service fields — the platform blocks these outright, which is stricter than Google requires. (Guidelines → Content guidelines.)
- Republishing rejected content unchanged, or posting the same thing repeatedly. Google prohibits repetitive content — the same content posted multiple times, from one account or several. Fix the content rather than retrying it. (Guidelines → Unclear and repetitive content.)
- Incentivised reviews. Content posted because a business offered an incentive is prohibited outright, as are patterns that indicate rating manipulation. Never offer anything in exchange for a review, and don't solicit one in a reply. (Guidelines → Fake & misleading content.)
- Categories that do not match what the business does. Use Google's own test: the category completes "this business IS a…", not "this business HAS a…". Choose the closest true category, not the one with the best search volume. (Guidelines → Categories.)
- Service areas that are too large. Google says a service area should not extend beyond roughly two hours' driving time from the business. (Guidelines → Service-area businesses.)
If a post or photo is rejected
Rejections surface in Profile → Posts and Profile → Photos with Google's reason, and the platform emails you (see Profile Monitoring). Treat a rejection as a signal to fix the content, not to retry it — republishing the same content is itself a pattern Google notices.
If the profile is restricted or suspended, see Google Business Profile for the reinstatement path.