Google Business Profile now bans prices and offers in your listing. Here is what to change

Google has changed the rules for what businesses can write on their Google Business Profile, the listing that shows your business in Google Search and Google Maps. Your listing should no longer contain prices, time-limited promotions or direct calls to action such as "call now for a free quote". Offers are still allowed, but only in posts, and posts must not include phone numbers, email addresses or links that Google cannot connect to your business.

Google did not announce the change. Search Engine Roundtable reported it on 6 October 2026 after small business consultant Hiroko Imai spotted the new wording. If you are a plumber, café owner or garden room builder who wrote your profile years ago and has not looked at it since, it is worth a ten-minute check this week.

What changed in the Google Business Profile policy

The update sits in the advertising and solicitation section of Google's prohibited and restricted content policy for Maps and Business Profiles. That section now opens by saying contributions to Maps should "reflect genuine experiences or define a business's permanent identity". In plain English, your listing should describe who you are, not sell this week's deal.

A new "For merchants" part sets out two rules:

• In the listing: no promotional or commercial content that includes time-bound promotions, pricing or direct calls to action.
• In posts: no email addresses, phone numbers, social media links or links to other websites that are not related to your business. Offers and updates that read as promotional are still allowed in posts.

The British English version of the policy carries the same merchant rules, so this applies to UK businesses now.

It follows a related change in late September. Google rewrote its posts content policy to say it may remove posts with unverified contact details, including phone numbers, email addresses and social media handles. Search Engine Roundtable covered that on 25 September. Google's suggested alternative is to attach a Call now button to the post, which uses the verified number on your profile.

What was already banned and what is new

Part of this is not new. Google's guidelines for representing your business have long said your business description should not focus on promotions, prices or sales, and should contain no links at all. The UK version even gives 'Best butties in town for £5!' as an example of what not to write.

What is new:

• Calls to action are named for the first time. Lines such as "call today", "book now" or "message us for a quote" written into your listing text now fall outside the rules.
• The rule covers the whole listing, not just the description box.
• Offers in posts are now clearly allowed. The old blanket wording technically covered them. The new wording gives them a proper home.
• Email addresses and social handles in posts are named, alongside phone numbers.

What Google has not said

There are gaps, and it is better to be honest about them than to guess:

• No enforcement date has been given.
• Google has not said whether it will review old descriptions and posts.
• Google has not defined a "direct call to action" or listed which fields count as "the listing".
• It is not clear whether the prices in your Products, Services or Menu sections are affected. Google built those fields to hold prices, so our reading is that the rule targets promotional copy you write yourself, not those structured fields.

The new rules do not name a penalty either. Google's wider policy says it can stop content from showing or restrict access to a profile, and repeated breaches can lead to suspension. A suspended profile in a busy month is not worth the risk for the sake of one sale line.

Archived copies of the policy page, checked by M-ADS, suggest the new wording went live between 16 and 19 September 2026. So the rules have quietly been in place for about a month.

What this means for your business

For most small businesses this is a small text edit, not a crisis. The risk sits in old copy that nobody has read in years. Here is the order we would work through it.

1. Read your listing as a stranger would

Open your Business Profile and read the description and any other free-text fields. Look for:

• Prices, such as "from £49" or "call-out fee £60".
• Dated offers, such as "10% off until Friday" or "this month only".
• Calls to action, such as "call now", "book today" or "WhatsApp us for a quote".

Rewrite the description around what you do, where you work and what makes you different. That is the permanent identity Google is asking for, and it is also what customers and AI assistants use to decide whether you are a good fit. It ties in with what we found in our post on how customers use AI to find a local business and then check you out.

2. Move offers into posts

If you run a seasonal offer, put it in an Offer post instead. Google lets you add a title, start and end dates and a button. Hotels are the exception, as they cannot create offer posts at all.

3. Take contact details out of post text

Remove phone numbers, email addresses and social handles from the body of your posts. Use the Call now button, or a button that links to a page on your own website. If Google removes a post, fix the cause before posting again.

4. Let your website do the selling

This is the bigger lesson. Google wants your profile to say who you are, and it wants the selling to happen somewhere else. That somewhere should be your own website, where you control the prices, the offers and the calls to action.

It is the same pattern we have seen on social media this year, with Facebook charging for link posts and Instagram charging for clickable links. Platforms keep changing what you can say and where you can say it. Your website is the one place where the rules are yours.

That means a clear prices page, an offers section that is easy to update, and a contact form or booking page that works well on a phone. If the website button on your profile points to a homepage that buries all of that, you will lose more enquiries to a poor landing page than to the policy itself. Good website design and development fixes that, and our SEO and GEO services cover how your profile and your website support each other in local search.

A ten-minute checklist

1. Open your Google Business Profile and read the description out loud.
2. Delete any price, dated offer or "call now" style line.
3. Rewrite it around your services, your area and your experience.
4. Check your live posts for phone numbers, emails and social handles.
5. Move any current offer into an Offer post with dates.
6. Make sure the website button leads to a page with your prices and a working contact form.
7. Check the status of each post. Any marked "Not approved" will not show on Search or Maps.

FAQ

Can I still post offers on Google Business Profile?

Yes. Google's policy says offers and updates that may be seen as promotional are still allowed in posts. They are no longer allowed in the listing itself. Hotels cannot create offer posts.

Can I put prices on my Google Business Profile?

Not in your description or other free-text listing copy. Google has not said whether the price fields in the Products, Services or Menu sections are affected, so we would keep using those as intended and keep promotional prices out of the listing text.

Can I include my phone number in a Google Business Profile post?

Google may remove a post if it cannot verify that a phone number, email address or social handle belongs to your business. The safest option is the Call now button, which uses the verified number on your profile.

Will my Google Business Profile be suspended?

Google has not named a penalty for the new rules. Its general policy allows it to hide content or restrict a profile, and repeated breaches can lead to suspension, so it is worth tidying up now.

Next step

If you are not sure what your listing and your website say to a new customer, our free website offer is an easy first step. We will look at your site, how it connects with your Google Business Profile and what would make the biggest difference, with no hard sell. You can also see what our packages cost or browse our work for small UK businesses.