Google Business Profile Posts: What to Post, How Often, and Whether They Rank

Three questions get asked about Google Business Profile posts, and they are usually answered on three different pages: what to post, how often, and whether any of it moves you up the rankings. They are one question, because the answer to the third one decides how much effort the first two are worth.

So, the short version. Posting is not a ranking factor. Google has never said it is, and the people who study local search do not find it acting like one. What posting does is fill the part of your profile a searcher actually reads before choosing who to call. That is a smaller claim than "post to rank" and it is the one that survives contact with evidence.

Do posts affect your rankings?

Not directly. A profile that posts weekly does not outrank an identical profile that never posts, and no amount of posting compensates for wrong categories, a thin review profile or listings that disagree about your address.

What posts do is change behaviour on the profile, and behaviour is where the second-order effects live:

• They occupy space in the panel. A profile with a current post shows something a competitor's does not, at the moment someone is deciding between you.
• They send traffic. A post with a real call to action is a click to your site or a phone call, and those are the outcomes you wanted rankings for in the first place.
• They keep the profile complete. Completeness is something Google does weigh, and an actively posted profile is rarely the one missing hours, services and photos.
• They give AI answers something to quote. A large share of local searches now return a generated summary built partly from what your profile currently says. A profile that has been quiet for a month gives that summary nothing recent to work with.

Treat posting as merchandising rather than as SEO. It works on the person, not the algorithm, and it is worth doing for exactly that reason.

Your posts expire after about seven days

This is the fact that decides cadence, and most business owners have never been told it.

A "What's New" post stops being prominently displayed after roughly seven days. It does not vanish, it drops off the front of your profile, where nobody goes looking. So a profile posted to once a month is an empty profile three weeks out of four.

There are exceptions, and they are useful ones:

• Offer posts stay up for the duration of the offer you set.
• Event posts stay up until the event has passed.
• Product posts persist on the profile rather than expiring on a timer.

If you are only going to post occasionally, an Offer or Event post buys you more visible days per post than a "What's New" update does.

How often to post

Once a week is the floor. Two or three times a week is the point past which more effort stops paying you back.

Once a week is the floor because of the seven-day expiry: post less often than that and there are stretches where your profile has nothing current on it. Two or three times a week covers the week comfortably and gives you room to miss one without going dark.

Above three, the returns flatten. Nobody is checking your profile daily, and a fourth post in a week competes with your own third one for the same small space. The businesses that win here are not the ones posting most; they are the ones that have never gone quiet.

If once a week is all you can manage

Then post once a week, on the same day, and use post types that outlive the seven-day window. An Offer running to the end of the month, or an Event dated three weeks out, keeps something current on the profile while you get on with the job. A reliable weekly post beats an ambitious schedule abandoned in March, and abandoning it is the common outcome.

The four post types, and what each is for

• What's New — general updates, recent work, team news. The default, and the one that expires fastest.
• Offer — a discount or promotion, with a start and end date. Shows a coupon-style block and stays up for the run of the offer.
• Event — something happening on a specific date. Stays up until the date passes.
• Product — a specific product or service, shown in its own section of the profile rather than in the post stream.

Choosing the type is not a formality. It changes where the post appears and how long it lasts, which for a business posting once a week is the difference between a profile that always has something on it and one that usually does not.

What actually performs

Four things separate a post someone acts on from one they scroll past.

A real photograph, not a stock image. Posts with images get looked at, and posts with your own van, your own crew or your own finished work get believed. A stock photo of a smiling stranger in a hard hat does the opposite of what you wanted.

The point in the first line. Only the first 60 to 100 characters show before the post is truncated, so whatever matters has to be in front of the fold. "We are offering 15% off drain cleaning through October" survives truncation. "Here at Acme Plumbing we are always looking for ways to serve our community" does not.

One instruction. Call now, book online, get the quote. A post that asks for nothing gets nothing, and a post that asks for three things gets the same.

Something specific. A price, a date, a street name, a real job you finished. Specificity is the whole difference between a post that reads as a business talking and one that reads as filler written to satisfy a schedule.

Character limits and image sizes

Google does not publish a hard limit that throws an error, but the practical constraints are firm:

• Visible before truncation: roughly the first 60 to 100 characters. Treat this as your headline.
• Practical body length: up to about 1,500 characters, though almost nothing benefits from using all of it.
• Images: landscape, at least 720 by 540 pixels. Anything smaller is upscaled and looks it.
• Call-to-action buttons: pick one from the list Google offers rather than writing the instruction into the text and hoping.

What to post when nothing has happened

This is the real reason posting schedules collapse. Most weeks contain no news. The way through it is to stop looking for news and start looking at the work you already did.

• A job you finished. One photo, one sentence about what the problem was, the suburb it was in. This is the single most reusable post a service business has.
• A question you answered this week. If one customer asked it, several searched it.
• A seasonal reminder. Gutters before autumn, boilers before winter, irrigation before summer. These write themselves a year in advance.
• Something you do that people assume you do not. Most service businesses lose work to the belief they do not cover a service or an area.
• A price or a range. Uncomfortable, and it filters out the enquiries you were going to lose anyway.

None of these require anything to have happened. They require ten minutes and the photos already on your phone.

Knowing whether it is working

Because posting is not a ranking lever, do not measure it with rankings. The numbers that answer the question are in the profile's own performance view: calls, direction requests, website clicks, and the searches you appeared for. Look at them monthly rather than weekly — a single post moves nothing you can detect, and a quarter of consistent posting usually does.

If three months of steady posting has not moved calls at all, the constraint is somewhere else, and it is almost always categories, reviews or listings that disagree with each other. Posting harder will not fix any of those.

The short version

• Posts are not a ranking factor. They are merchandising, and they work on the person choosing.
• "What's New" posts fade after about seven days, which is why once a week is the floor.
• Two to three times a week is where the effort stops paying back.
• Offer, Event and Product posts last longer, so they suit a business posting once a week.
• Put the point in the first 60 to 100 characters, use your own photographs, and ask for one thing.
• Measure calls and clicks over a quarter, not positions over a week.