Google Business Profile Posts: Types, Cadence and Examples That Get Clicks

Your profile is verified, the hours are right, and the dashboard keeps suggesting you “Add update”. Most owners ignore it, or post twice, see nothing change, and stop. This guide covers what posts do and do not do for your local SEO, the three post types, where they show, how to write one that gets clicked, a 12-week calendar, six finished examples, rejection reasons and honest measurement.

Our position up front: posts are a conversion and engagement surface, not a ranking lever. They are one step in our pillar guide on how to optimize your Google Business Profile, and the free Google Business Profile Optimizer drafts ten post ideas from your public profile, as explained below.

What posts are and where they appear

A post is a photo and a short paragraph, usually with a button, published from your Business Profile dashboard. It appears on your own listing, not in a feed: on a phone, in the Updates tab of your profile in Google Maps and in the expanded Search result; on desktop, as a row of small cards labeled Updates partway down the Business Profile panel.

Posts do not appear in the local pack, so nobody sees them until they open your listing, and their layout varies by device and by whatever Google is testing that month. Occasionally Google quotes a post line under a local pack result; it is inconsistent and not something to plan around. Some categories, hotels for example, get no posts at all.

Do posts help you rank? An honest answer

Google’s page on how to improve your local ranking names relevance, distance and prominence and does not mention posts. We have never seen a run of posts move a Maps position for a competitive search on its own; what does is covered in our guide to Google Maps ranking factors: primary category, reviews and proximity.

The case for an indirect effect is that a good post gets more people to call or book, and engagement is plausibly something Google notices. That may be true; it is also unproven and small. What posts reliably do is answer the question a visitor has right now, show the profile is looked after, and give Google’s AI summaries and assistants such as ChatGPT current text about you.

The three post types, lifespan and cadence

As we write, the composer offers Update, Offer and Event. Google has added and removed types over the years (What’s New, Product posts, COVID-19 updates and Welcome offers have all come and gone), so check your own dashboard rather than an older article’s screenshot.

Type	Required	Optional	Button	Stops showing
Update	Text	Photo or video, button with link	Book, Order online, Buy, Learn more, Sign up, Call now	No end date; newest first
Offer	Title, start and end date	Text, photo, coupon code, redeem link, terms	View offer, added automatically	After the end date
Event	Title, start and end date and time	Text, photo, button with link	Same set as Update	After the event ends

Use Offer for any deal: it gets a distinct label and the coupon field lets you count redemptions. Use Event for anything on a date. Everything else is an Update. Updates never expire but sink as newer ones arrive, and Google has changed its archiving rules more than once, so assume a post has a useful life of one to three weeks. That, not any freshness signal, is why cadence matters.

Post often enough that the newest one is current: for most businesses, one every one to two weeks. We have no evidence that daily posting helps rankings, and we have watched owners abandon a daily plan by February, leaving a last post that is months old. Publish when the content is relevant: a weekend event goes up midweek.

Anatomy of a post that gets clicked

The photo. It is most of the card. Use your own: the dish, the finished patio, the team member. Google’s help lists a minimum of 400 by 300 pixels; we upload 1200 by 900 at 4:3 so nothing is cropped. Stock images and graphics covered in text trigger rejections and look like adverts. Video is allowed but short; see Google’s photo and video guidelines and our guide to Google Business Profile photos.

The first sentence. Only the first line or two shows before a tap to expand, and most people never tap. Put the whole message there: what, for whom, until when. “No joining fee if you sign up before 31 January” works; “Exciting news from the team” does not.

The body. The composer currently accepts up to 1,500 characters; Google’s own help recommends far fewer. Two or three sentences after the opener: one detail, one reason it matters, one instruction. No phone number and no pasted URL; the buttons exist for both.

The button. Match it to the next step: Book for online reservations, Order online for food, Buy for a single product, Learn more when there is a page worth reading, Sign up for a trial or class, and Call now when the next step is a phone call (it dials the profile’s number). Link to the specific page, never the homepage.

A 12-week content calendar template

Copy the column that fits and change the specifics; the rotation of offer, answer, event, proof and season is what matters.

Week	Service business	Restaurant or cafe	Clinic or practice	Retail shop
1	Seasonal offer	New seasonal menu	Check-up reminder	New arrivals, one hero item
2	FAQ: how long the job takes	Meet the chef or a supplier	FAQ: taking new patients	FAQ: returns and delivery
3	Before and after of a job	Weekday lunch offer	New treatment or equipment	Bundle or loyalty offer
4	Review quote	Event: tasting or quiz	Team introduction	Staff pick
5	Seasonal maintenance tip	Dish of the month	Seasonal health advice	Gift guide
6	Event: open day	Review quote	Holiday or extended hours	Event: launch or workshop
7	Referral offer	Family deal	FAQ: first-visit prep	Restock of a sold-out item
8	Behind the scenes	Behind the scenes	Review quote	Behind the scenes
9	New service or area	Off-peak offer	Insurance or payment update	End-of-season clearance
10	FAQ: licensed and insured	Seasonal specials	Book before the holidays	FAQ: sizing or repairs
11	Team spotlight	Private hire and catering	Community event you sponsor	Local collaboration
12	Holiday hours	Holiday bookings and hours	Holiday hours	Holiday hours, last order dates

Six example posts you can adapt

All businesses are fictional. Each puts the message in the first sentence and uses a button instead of a phone number or URL.

1. Service business offer (Offer). Title: “Free gutter clean with any roof repair booked in October”. Dates 1 to 31 October.

Book any roof repair with Ridgeway Roofing this month and we will clear and flush your gutters at no charge while we are up there. Homes in Croydon, Sutton and Bromley. Quote code GUTTER when you book.

2. Restaurant seasonal menu (Update).

Our autumn menu starts tonight: braised short rib with celeriac, roast squash risotto, and a pear and almond tart we have been testing for a month. Weekend tables are going fast.

Button: Book. Photo: the short rib, plated.

3. Clinic reminder (Update).

Flu vaccines are in stock and adults can walk in on weekday mornings before 11, no appointment needed. If you are over 65, pregnant or have a long-term condition, yours is free; bring ID.

Button: Book.

4. Retail new arrival (Update).

Our waxed jackets landed this morning in navy, olive and rust, sizes XS to XXL. Twelve of each, and last year’s run sold out before November. Try one on in the shop or order for same-day collection.

Button: Buy, to the product page.

5. Event (Event). Title: “Free beginners’ bike maintenance workshop”. Saturday 14 March, 10:00 to 11:30.

Learn to fix a puncture, adjust your brakes and index your gears on your own bike. Limited to ten people so everyone gets hands-on time. Bring your bike; we supply tools and coffee.

Button: Sign up.

6. FAQ-style update (Update).

“Do I need planning permission for a garden room?” Often not: many fall under permitted development if they are single-story, kept low near the boundary and do not take up most of the garden. Send us a photo of your garden and we will tell you which rules apply.

Button: Learn more, to your planning guide page.

Why posts get rejected

Every post is checked, mostly automatically, against the Posts content policy linked from Google’s Google Posts help page and the wider guidelines for representing your business on Google. A rejected post is not published, and the notice rarely says why. The usual triggers:

• A phone number in the text. The most common by far. Use Call now.
• Text-heavy or stock images. Graphics that are mostly words, screenshots, obvious stock.
• Restricted products. Alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms, some financial and health content.
• Misleading claims. “Cheapest in town”, fake urgency, medical before-and-after results.
• Duplicates and irrelevance. The same post republished, or content unrelated to the business.

Edit, remove the likeliest trigger, republish; the second pass usually succeeds. Do not keep resubmitting something borderline: repeated violations put the profile at risk, as our guide to Google Business Profile suspensions explains.

How the GBP Optimizer drafts ten post ideas

Run the Google Business Profile Optimizer and, alongside the score and six checks, it returns ten Google post ideas written from what Google exposes publicly about the profile: name, address, category, website, hours, rating and review count, photo count. From that it proposes offer hooks, seasonal angles for the city, common customer questions and event formats.

It does not know your prices, dates, staff or stock, so every idea is a draft. Replace the placeholders with true specifics, pick the type and button, add your own photo, publish. The ideas are good at ending the blank page and useless unedited.

How to measure whether posts work

The Performance report. Google’s Performance metrics show profile-level interactions by month: calls, messages, bookings, direction requests, website clicks. They do not attribute any of it to a particular post, and Google has removed most per-post counts over the years; use any per-post views your dashboard still shows, but do not build a plan on them. Our guide to Google Business Profile insights explains each metric.

UTM parameters on every link. Append ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp-post-oct-gutter-offer to the button URL. The visit stays in the organic channel in Google Analytics and the campaign dimension separates each post; name them consistently (gbp-post- plus month and topic).

Offline signals. Coupon codes, “mention this post” instructions, and asking at the desk are often the clearest evidence for a single location.

Common mistakes

• Treating posts as a ranking tactic. Stuffing city names and keywords into every post. It does nothing and reads badly.
• Burying the point. Scene-setting before the offer, when only the first line shows.
• No button, or the homepage as the link.
• Stock photos and text graphics. Skipped by readers, flagged by Google.
• A phone number in the body. Rejected.
• Starting strong and stopping. A last post from eighteen months ago is the most common state we find in a Google Business Profile audit, and it looks worse than no posts.

Worked example: a Leeds independent gym plans January

Meanwood Iron (fictional) is an independent gym in Meanwood, north Leeds: free weights, a small class timetable, one owner, two part-time coaches. January is when people join gyms, and the owner has never posted. The plan, built in forty minutes:

Step 1: decide what January is for. New members still coming in March. That rules out a deep discount, which attracts people who leave, and points to removing friction.

Step 2: get raw material. The Google Business Profile Optimizer returns ten ideas; three survive editing: a no-joining-fee offer, a beginners’ open morning, and an answer to “do I need to be fit already?”

Step 3: write five posts.

1. Offer, 2 to 31 January. “No joining fee for anyone who signs up in January.” What membership includes; code JAN at the desk or online. Redeem link tagged utm_campaign=gbp-post-jan-no-fee. Photo: the free-weights floor at 7am.
2. Event, Saturday 10 January, 9:00 to 12:00. “Free beginners’ open morning.” A coach walks you round, no pressure, bring a friend. Button: Sign up.
3. Update, week 2. “Do I need to be fit to start?” No; the first session is a chat and a walk-round. Button: Book.
4. Update, week 3. A quoted line from a member who joined last January and still comes. Button: Learn more, to the memberships page.
5. Update, week 4. New 6:15am strength class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from February. Button: Book.

Step 4: measure and continue. Count JAN codes at the desk, check sessions by campaign in Analytics at month end, and compare January’s direction requests and website clicks with December’s in the Performance report. A QR code from the free Google Review Link and QR Code Generator on the front desk keeps a fresh member quote coming every month.

Will this move the gym up for “gym Leeds”? Not on its own; that is decided by category, reviews and proximity. It gives anyone who opens the listing in January a reason to walk in that week.

Do this now

• Read your Updates tab in the Google Maps app as a customer and delete anything out of date.
• Run the Google Business Profile Optimizer and keep the three ideas you can make true this month, then fill in the 12-week column for your business type.
• Write the first post: your own photo at 4:3, the whole message in the first sentence, no phone number, the right button, a UTM-tagged link. Publish, then set a recurring reminder.
• Put a QR code from the Google Review Link and QR Code Generator on the counter so you always have a fresh quote to post.
• Work through the rest of the profile with our Google Business Profile checklist and keep your description consistent with your posts.