Are Google Business Profile posts worth it for a trade?

Every few weeks someone tells a trade owner they should be “posting on Google”. Often it’s a marketing firm selling a posting package, or a piece of software that writes the posts for you. So you start to wonder whether the firms above you on Maps are there because they post, and whether you’re missing a trick.

Here’s the straight answer, from Google’s own help pages, read on 2 October 2026. Posts are a small, useful extra. They are not what decides where you sit on the map, and Google doesn’t claim they are.

What Google Business Profile posts are

Posts are short updates you put on your Google listing, with a photo or video and usually a button. Google describes them like this: “You can post updates on your Business Profile to share announcements, offers, updates and event details directly with your customers on Search and Maps.”

Google’s help page gives three kinds:

Type	What Google says it’s for	What it needs
Update	“Share info about your business”	A description, plus optional photo, video and a button with a link
Offer	“Provide promotional sales or deals from your business”	“A title, dates and time”. It adds a “View offer” button, and you can add a coupon code and terms
Event	“Promote an event at your business”	A title, start and end dates. With no times, “the event shows as lasting 24 hours”

You’ll see them on a phone in “The ‘Updates’ or ‘Overview’ tabs of the Business Profile on mobile on Search and Maps”, and on a computer in “The ‘From the owner’ section”.

Google also mentions “featured posts” that can be pulled in from Facebook and Instagram. Don’t plan around those: Google says the feature is “currently available in English for single-location food and drink businesses”. That’s cafés and takeaways, not trades.

What Google says posts do

Google’s case for posts is about the customer who has already found you: “When customers find your latest business updates on your Business Profile, it helps them decide to visit your business.” It lists three reasons to post: to share up-to-date information, to promote “sales, specials, events, news and offers”, and to “Connect with your customers through posts with photos and videos.”

That’s fair. Someone choosing between three tree surgeons looks at each profile for a few seconds. A recent photo of a clean job with a line about it shows you’re active and real, which can tip the choice.

What Google doesn’t say posts do

Google has a help page called “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google”. Its list of things to do is:

1. Verify your business
2. Keep your business information up to date
3. Respond to reviews
4. Add photos and videos
5. Add in-store products (for shops only)

Posts aren’t on it. The same page explains what local results are based on: relevance (“how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for”), distance (“how far each business is from the customer who’s searching”) and prominence (“how well-known a business is”), which it says is “based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have”. Posts aren’t mentioned there either. And Google says plainly: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”

So if someone sells you posts as a ranking fix, ask them to show you where Google says that. We couldn’t find it.

There’s one more thing Google doesn’t give you: a count for your posts. The Performance screen (calls, website clicks, directions and so on) does include “Offers: The number of times customers viewed and clicked on offers”. In Google’s list of metrics, read on 2 October 2026, there’s no separate line for updates or events. So for most trade posts, you can’t see whether anyone read them.

The rules that catch trades out

After you publish, “Google reviews it to make sure that it meets our posts content policy”. A post can be Live, Pending (it “doesn’t show on Search or Maps”), or Not approved. The things that most often trip trades up:

• Your phone number in the text. Google says “Posts that include a phone number in the post description might get rejected if they cannot be verified as being connected to the business”. Its content policy adds that it may remove posts with unverified contact details, including “phone numbers, email addresses and social media handles”. The fix is the button: Google suggests you “attach a Call now button to your post”, which uses your verified profile number.
• Filler. Google’s tips ask you to avoid “misspelled words, extra characters, text that adds no value and auto-generated or distracting content”. Keyword-stuffed posts (“Best roofer Swindon roofing Swindon roof repairs Swindon”) are exactly that.
• Old posts disappear. “Posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set.” So a burst of posting last spring leaves nothing on your profile by the autumn.
• Regulated work. If your work falls under a regulated category, Google says you can post but “do not include content about the products”. For most trades this won’t apply.

What a trade should actually post

The best posts are the same thing a customer would want to see if they rang a friend about you: real work, near them, recently.

A finished job (an Update). One good photo, ideally a before and after, and two or three plain lines.

Crown reduction on a big sycamore in Wroughton this week. Cut back from the house and the neighbour’s garage, everything chipped and taken away, drive swept. Free quotes across Swindon and the villages.

Add a “Call now” button. No phone number in the text.

A real offer, if you have one (an Offer). Only if it’s genuine and time-limited, such as a quiet-month price on gutter clearing. Set real dates. Don’t invent a sale to have something to post.

Something customers need to know (an Update). Booking up for spring, a new service, a new van covering a new area, Christmas closing dates. Useful, short, done.

What not to post: stock photos, generic tips copied from somewhere else, “Happy Friday”, or anything written by software that doesn’t know your jobs. If a post wouldn’t help a customer choose you, it isn’t worth the ten minutes.

How often to post

Google doesn’t say how often to post, and nobody outside Google can tell you an amount that moves your ranking. Here’s what we’d suggest for a busy trade:

• One post every two weeks, from a real job. That keeps something current on the profile, well inside the six-month archive.
• Take the photo on the job, the same day you ask for the review. Then the post takes five minutes in the evening.
• Use scheduling if it helps. Google lets you “Schedule this post” for a later date, and set posts to repeat “weekly, monthly or a custom schedule”. Be careful with repeats: the same post every week looks automated, because it is.

If a fortnight goes by and you were too busy to post, that’s fine. A missed post costs you very little. A missed review request or an unanswered call costs you a lot more.

Where your time does more good

If you’ve got thirty minutes a week for your Google listing, here’s a rough order for that half hour, based on what Google’s own ranking page lists:

1. Ask every customer for a review, the day you finish. Google says “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” Our guide on how to get more Google reviews has the exact text to send.
2. Reply to your reviews. Google says replies show “that you value their feedback”.
3. Check your primary category is your main trade. See which Google Business Profile category to pick.
4. Add real photos from your jobs. Google lists photos and videos as a ranking tip.
5. Then post, using one of those same photos.

Notice how one good photo serves two of those. That’s the efficient way to do posts: as a by-product of jobs you’re already photographing, not as a separate marketing task.

What we have seen

Benny’s Barbershop in Swindon, whose Google listing we took over on 28 September 2026, had 5.0 stars from 141 Google reviews that day. His Performance screen, captured that day before we changed anything, showed about 260 clicks a month from his listing to his website over the six months to September 2026. He’s a barber, not a trade. Read his case study.

We use Benny’s example because it shows what a listing does on its own when the basics are strong: people found him, read his reviews and clicked through, month after month. A post can add a recent photo to that profile. It can’t stand in for the 141 reviews.

So, are posts worth it?

Yes, as a light habit. No, as a strategy.

• Worth doing: a post every couple of weeks from a real job, with a real photo and a Call now button. It shows customers you’re active and gives them one more reason to ring.
• Not worth paying extra for: a posting package sold as a way to climb Google Maps. Google’s ranking page doesn’t mention posts, and its Performance screen can’t show you whether most posts were seen.
• Not a substitute for: reviews, the right category, accurate details and a website that backs the listing up. Those are the things Google names.

If you’re not showing on Maps at all, posts won’t fix it. Start with why your business isn’t showing on Google Maps, then how to rank higher on Google Maps. And if you want to know whether your listing is bringing in work at all, see how to tell which jobs came from Google.

How we do it, and why it works

Posting is a small part of the “found” work we do for a trade, and we keep it in proportion.

• Found: your Google listing set up and worked every week (category, service area, photos from your jobs, and posts when there’s real work to show), a review asked for after every job, and a website built to be called. More on that on our Google Business Profile page.
• Answered: calls ring you, as always. A missed call from a mobile gets a text back in your name, every form and message is replied to in your name, and every quote is chased to a yes or a no.
• Counted: after each enquiry a text asks whether you won it and for how much, and once a month you get one page: what came in, what you won, what it was worth.

Why it works: posts and photos help a customer who is already looking at you, so they’re only worth anything if the listing is being found and every enquiry gets a reply. We don’t promise positions, because Google says there’s no way to request or pay for one. We show you where you stand and change what can be changed. You pay nothing until you’ve won £500 of work through us.

The free check shows the firms Google lists for your trade in your town, where you sit among them, and whether your town is still free.