Google Business Profile posts are short text-and-image updates that show up directly next to your listing in Google Search and on Google Maps. They are free, need no extra software, and take a few minutes to publish. For home service businesses, the feature earns its keep when it becomes a running channel for offers, finished-job photos, and seasonal reminders instead of a one-time setup checkbox.
What a post on your profile actually is
Google supports three post types: Update, Offer, and Event. All three consist of a short text block, an optional photo or video, and a button that can link to a website, a phone number, or a booking form. Posts show up in two places: on mobile, under the “Updates” or “Overview” tab of the listing; on desktop, in the “From the owner” section. Both appear in Google Search and on Google Maps, right alongside reviews, photos, and hours.
The three post types compared
| Type | Best for | What makes it different |
|---|---|---|
| Update | General news, finished jobs, service reminders | Free-text button label, no date required |
| Offer | Discounts, seasonal pricing, time-limited services | Title plus start and end date/time required, Google auto-adds a “View offer” button |
| Event | Open house, trade show appearance, info session | Start and end date required, runs all day if no time is set |
For most home service businesses, Update covers the majority of use cases: a finished bathroom remodel, a new hire, a heads-up about after-hours emergency service. Offer and Event work best for anything with a clear expiration, like a spring gutter-cleaning discount or an open house at the shop.
How long a post stays visible
Per Google’s own help documentation, posts older than six months are automatically archived if no specific date range was set. In practice that applies mostly to Update posts published without a date. Offer and Event posts, by contrast, expire exactly on their set end date, so a time-limited discount disappears on its own once the promotion ends, no manual cleanup required.
Creating a post, step by step
- Open your listing at business.google.com.
- Under “Posts,” click “Add post.”
- Choose a post type: Update, Offer, or Event.
- Add text, a photo or video, and a button with a link if relevant.
- For Offer and Event, enter a title plus start and end dates.
- Publish immediately, or use the scheduling option to queue it for later.
One practical snag: posts that include a phone number directly in the description text can get automatically rejected. If you want to prompt a call, use the button with a linked phone number instead of typing the number into the body text.
Why the feature sometimes does not show up
If “Posts” is missing from the dashboard entirely, Google’s own FAQ says this is almost always tied to the listing’s category, not a technical glitch. Standard trade categories, electrician, roofing contractor, plumber, painting contractor, generally have posts enabled. If it is still missing, check your primary category before contacting Google support.
What makes a post worth reading
A real photo from an actual job beats a stock image even when the lighting is imperfect: customers can tell the difference between a staged scene and a real jobsite immediately. The text should say what happened in one sentence and what the reader can do about it in a second, call, request a quote, or book a slot. A post with no call to action tends to go nowhere even with a good photo. Skip discount-for-the-sake-of-posting offers with no real reason behind them, customers notice when a deal only exists to fill the activity calendar.
Examples for home service businesses
An electrician posts a photo of a finished panel upgrade with a short description and a link to the electrical services page. It takes five minutes and signals that the business is active and regularly handling larger jobs.
A roofing contractor runs a spring gutter-cleaning discount as an Offer post with a fixed start and end date. Because the Offer type expires on its own, nobody has to remember to pull the promotion down manually.
A painting contractor uses an Event post to invite people to an open house at the shop, linking to a signup page on the actual website rather than putting a phone number in the post text, where it risks getting rejected.
A plumber posts an Update in late fall pointing to emergency service availability, linking to the relevant service page. Because this post type without a set date range archives only after six months, the reminder stays visible through the entire winter without needing to be republished.
In each case the post is tied to a specific reason rather than a generic ad, and every one links back to a matching page on the business’s own website instead of only to the profile itself.
Plan ahead instead of forgetting
Google’s scheduling option lets you prepare posts weeks in advance and have them publish automatically on a set date. A simple annual calendar of recurring moments works well for trade businesses: spring maintenance reminders, fall storm-prep tips, hiring pushes before peak season, a recap after a large finished project. Planning these once a year removes the monthly scramble to think of something to post and makes hitting the recommended two to four posts a month realistic.
Posts are not social media, but they are an easier starting point
Unlike an Instagram or Facebook account, a post on your Business Profile does not need a following to be seen: it shows up directly whenever someone searches for the business or the service, regardless of whether anyone “follows” the listing. For businesses without the bandwidth to run a dedicated social channel, this is a lower-effort way into regular, visible communication than maintaining a polished feed elsewhere.
Common mistakes
The most common mistake is a listing with a single post from initial setup that has never been touched since. A visibly stale post works against the business rather than for it, since it signals nothing has happened in months. The second mistake is pure promotional text with no photo and no specifics, which most users scroll past. The third is the phone-number-in-description issue mentioned above. The fourth is using an Update post instead of an Offer for a time-limited discount: without an end date, an expired deal stays visible until someone manually removes it.
Not a ranking lever, but an activity signal
Posts are not a strong direct ranking factor. Whitespark’s Local Search Ranking Factors 2026 study ranks keywords in posts low in the overall weighting, but ties regular profile activity as a whole to stronger engagement signals like clicks and interactions. For businesses running Local Services Ads, staying active on the standard Business Profile alongside the LSA account is still worth doing, since a stale-looking profile can undercut trust even when LSA leads come through a separate flow. The real payoff is less about moving up in rank and more about an actively maintained profile earning more clicks than a listing that has looked the same for a year.
The next step
Posts do not replace a website with real service pages, they are a fast supplementary channel for moments that would otherwise have nowhere to live. Mr.Site runs several hundred business websites for home service companies and handles ongoing visibility details like this as part of managed website service. For setting up a listing from scratch, see How to Create a Google Business Profile, for picking the right category for your trade, see How to Choose the Right Google Business Profile Category, and for how the listing and your website work together, see Connect Your Google Business Profile and Website.