Guide · Local search

Google Business Profile rule changes: what to fix this autumn

For a local trade, the Google Business Profile often brings in more calls than the website does. Over a few weeks in September and October Google quietly rewrote several of its rules, with no announcement and no dates on the pages. We checked each reported change against Google's own wording. Here is what is confirmed, what is only a sighting, and the handful of things to tidy up.

By Elliot · Published 26 October 2026 · 8 min read

The changes that need action

You now have four days to answer a suggested edit, or Google may publish it.
Typed phone numbers and emails in posts can get the post removed. Use the Call now button.
No prices, offers or “call today” in your name or description. Offers belong in posts.
Your website is the evidence Google checks edits against, so keep the two matching.

What changed

Six changes Google has written into its own pages

Almost every report of these changes traces back to one source, Search Engine Roundtable, which watches Google's help pages and spotted each edit. We went to the help pages themselves. The six below are now in Google's own wording. None of the pages shows a “last updated” date, so the dates are when each change was first reported.

The suggested-edits rule matters most. Anyone can suggest a change to your profile, and Google gathers information from around the web too. The new wording gives you a four-day window to respond once notified, after which Google may publish the change if other public information supports it. That makes your own website the tiebreaker.

Google Business Profile changes, September and October 2026
Change	Status	Date
Four days to accept or reject a suggested edit before Google may publish it	Confirmed	Reported 23 September
Posts with unverified phone numbers, emails or social handles may be removed	Confirmed	Reported 25 September
Agencies that file repeated unfounded complaints may have all future ones ignored	Confirmed	Reported 29 September
No time-limited promotions, prices or direct calls to action in the listing	Confirmed	Reported 6 October
September 2026 spam update, a web search ranking update	Confirmed	24 September to 8 October
Reviews paused, and the owner emailed, after a sudden spike in fake reviews	Confirmed feature	Emails reported 22 September

The listing rule

Where offers, prices and phone numbers may go now

The 6 October wording mostly restates older rules, with two new edges.

4 days

to accept or reject a suggested edit once Google notifies you

Source: Google Business Profile Help

13.7 days

the September spam update took to roll out, a web search update

Source: Google Search Status Dashboard

10%

of global turnover, the most the CMA can fine for fake reviews

Source: CMA, April 2025

Google's older guidelines already banned taglines, phone numbers and web addresses in the business name, and links, prices and special offers in the description. The October change adds direct calls to action, like “Book today”, and words the rule as covering the listing as a whole rather than named fields. Google gave no enforcement date and said nothing about removing existing content, but there is no reason to wait.

Posts are treated differently. Google says offers and updates are still permitted there, so an Offer post with dates and a price remains the right home for a sale. The catch is contact details. One Google page says posts with unverified phone numbers, emails or social handles may be removed; another bans contact details unrelated to your business. The safe reading of both is simple: no typed contact details in posts at all, and let the Call now button do the work.

Seen, not confirmed

The rest of the autumn's headlines

Spotted by local search watchers, with no word from Google. Worth knowing, not worth acting on.

WhatsApp button in the local panel

Spotted on 7 October, with no announcement. The setting behind it is real: Edit profile, Contact, Chat lets a verified profile offer WhatsApp or text messages, in select regions. Only switch it on if someone will actually answer.

Sign in to read every review

Some Maps users were asked to sign in before seeing all reviews or sorting them, from 30 September. Google has not commented, and a similar wall appeared and was reversed earlier in 2026. Nothing for an owner to do.

Ad phone numbers hidden until hover

Local Services Ads were seen hiding the phone number until a mouse hovers over the ad. The person who reported it was not sure it was new. If you run those ads, watch your call volumes rather than reacting to a screenshot.

Opening hours written by AI

One screenshot shows a test where an owner describes their hours in a sentence and Google turns it into a timetable. It is a single sighting. Keep setting your hours by hand under Edit profile, Hours, including bank holidays.

Questions and answers

Google shut down the Q&A programming interface on 3 November 2025, and its help page now says owners can answer questions only for select business categories and regions. Do not plan your profile around Q&A in the UK.

The spam update and the map pack

The September spam update ran for nearly 14 days, but Google lists it as a web search ranking update and says nothing about Maps or Business Profiles. If your map-pack position moved, look for another cause first.

What to do

A half-hour tidy-up for your profile

Do these in order. The first one decides whether you ever see the notices the second relies on.

Make sure Google's emails reach a person

The four-day clock on suggested edits starts with an email or a notice in your profile. Check which address owns the profile, and that someone reads it. If it is an old employee's inbox or a web designer who has moved on, fix the ownership before anything else.

Review suggested edits within four days

Open your profile (search for your business name while signed in, or use the Business tab in the Maps app) and choose Edit profile. Google's changes appear as a notice at the top, with altered values shown in blue. Accept the right ones, reject the wrong ones. If you say nothing, Google may publish an edit that other public information, such as your website, supports.

Make your website agree with your profile

That last point is the important one. Google uses your website as evidence when it decides whether to accept an edit. If your site still shows an old address or last year's hours, it can work against you. Same name, address, phone, hours and services in both places.

Take contact details out of post text

Remove phone numbers, email addresses and social handles typed into your posts. Use the post's Call now button instead, which uses your verified number. Extra numbers belong in the profile itself under Edit profile, Contact. If a post shows “Not approved”, the question mark beside it names the rule it broke.

Strip offers and prices out of the listing

Look through your business name, description and services for things like “10% off”, “from £49” or “Call today!”. Move them into an Offer or Update post, where Google explicitly still allows them. The business name itself should be your real-world name and nothing else.

Read a review-pause email calmly

If Google writes to say it has paused reviews after a spike in spam, that protects you; it is not a penalty. The email may not say which location, so check each one's reviews. Only act if genuine reviews vanished. Never pay anyone who threatens bad reviews: report them to Google and keep the evidence.

The UK angle

Reviews are now a legal matter, not just a Google one

The review changes land in a UK where fake reviews are already against the law. Since 6 April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has banned writing or commissioning a fake review, hiding that a review was incentivised, and presenting reviews misleadingly, for example by only showing the good ones. The CMA enforces it and can fine up to 10% of global turnover.

Google also gave the CMA formal undertakings in January 2025. UK businesses found boosting their ratings with fake reviews get a warning on their profile and are blocked from new reviews, repeat offenders can lose all their reviews for six months or more, and Google reports to the CMA on how it is doing. The spam-spike pauses described above are the protective side of the same machinery.

The honest route is also the effective one: ask every customer, every time, and make it easy. Every one of our own clients gets the same check-in a month after launch, the review links are there for all of them, and we never offer anything in return for a review. You will see claims about what share of UK businesses use a Business Profile; none we found has a published method, so we have left them out.

FAQ

Business Profile questions, answered

What changed on Google Business Profile in autumn 2026?

Between late September and early October 2026 Google's help pages changed in four ways: owners have four days to accept or reject suggested edits, posts with unverified contact details may be removed, agencies that file repeated unfounded complaints can be ignored, and listings must not contain time-limited promotions, prices or direct calls to action. A September spam update also ran from 24 September to 8 October, but it was a web search update.

What happens if I ignore a suggested edit on my Business Profile?

Google's help page says that once you are notified you have four days to accept or reject the suggestion. If you do not respond, Google may publish the edit when other public information, such as your website, supports it. Google can also apply some edits without waiting for your review where its policies require.

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

It is safest not to. Google's content policy says posts with unverified contact information, including phone numbers, email addresses and social handles, may be removed, and its prohibited content policy bans contact details unrelated to your business. Use the post's Call now button, which uses your verified profile number, and add extra numbers in the profile's contact settings.

Can I still advertise offers on Google Business Profile?

Yes, in posts. Google's 6 October 2026 policy wording bans time-limited promotions, pricing and direct calls to action in the listing itself, such as the business name and description, but says offers and updates are otherwise permitted in posts. An Offer post with dates and a price is the right place for a sale.

Did the September 2026 spam update affect Google Maps rankings?

Google has not said so. Its Search Status Dashboard lists the September 2026 spam update as a global web search ranking update that ran from 24 September to 8 October 2026, and says nothing about Maps, local results or Business Profiles. Google has not said what it targeted.

Is Google Business Profile Q&A still available in the UK?

Not reliably. Google shut down the Q&A programming interface on 3 November 2025, and its help page now says owners can answer questions in the Q&A section only for select business categories and regions, and that this may change. Put common questions and answers on your website and in your profile description instead.

Is it illegal to buy or fake Google reviews in the UK?

Yes. Since 6 April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has banned submitting or commissioning fake reviews, concealing incentivised ones, and presenting reviews misleadingly. The CMA can fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover. Separately, Google agreed with the CMA in January 2025 to put warnings on UK businesses caught boosting their ratings and to block them from new reviews.

References