Many users have their Google Business Profile (ex Google My Business) Posts rejected, especially posts with Images and Videos. In this article, I am going through all the possible issues.

Why Your Google Business Profile( ex Google My Business) Posts are Rejected:

• Images/Videos not following Images/Video Criteria
• Not allowed content in your text and/or images
• Violating the Post policy
• User/Profile Flagged
• New Google AI Update or bug
• Duplicate Content (Text, Photos, Logo)

Images/Videos not following Video Criteria

Photos and Videos are subject to the following criteria:

• Google Post AI does not like much these types of images:
  • Screenshots
  • Stock photos
  • GIFs
  • other manually created imagery or imagery taken by other parties
• Bad Quality or excessive use of Filters:
  • Excessively dark or blurry images
  • Out of focus, shaky, or has bad exposure
  • Minimal Stylistic Filters are allowed
• Excessive edits and text in the image can cause rejection:
  • Superimposed content cannot take up more than 10% of the image or video, and must be limited to a single edge.
  • Distracting superimposed text or graphics must be relevant and not distracting.
• Not following guidelines:
  • Images: JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, minimum resolution: 250 px tall, 250 px wide.
  • Videos: MP4, Up to 30 seconds long, Up to 75 MB, 720p or higher

Not allowed content in your text and/or images

• Phone numbers
• Links/URLs
• Addresses
• Hashtags
• Some Special characters
• All Caps
• Inappropriate words, e.g swear words, medical procedures, etc

Check Post Policies as it could be violating one of them

Examples of such content that is not allowed includes:

• Alcohol, guns, tobacco products, gambling, financial services, pharmaceuticals and unapproved supplements, or health/medical devices.
• Misspellings, gimmicky character use, gibberish, or automated or distracting content (such as blurry or poor image/video quality or unrecognizable content)
• Images, videos, or links that negatively distract user attention
• Links to malware, viruses, or other harmful software
• Links to sites irrelevant to the business
• Phishing scams
• Harassing, bullying, or hateful content.
• Content that contains obscene, profane, or offensive language or gestures.
• Content that promotes or encourages violence, or that graphically depicts injuries, abuse of humans or animals, or violent acts.

User/Account Flagged

Your user account or the profile can be flagged, meaning any new or old GBP posts are rejected or not published.

If your previous posts or photos were found to be against the policy previously by Google AI or a Google Human agent, Google can block your user or profile from publish Posts/Photos and, unfortunately, only GBP support can help reinstate the photos/posts.

New Google AI Update or bug

If Google releases a new update to its AI, it is normally to be more strict and catch more posts violating the rules, but sometimes the updates create bugs where they reject complaint posts.

This issue has already happened a few times in the last few months. If it is an update, Google may refine it to be less strict.

Duplicate Content (Text, Photos, Logo)

Google added this reason to the policy on July 22, so if you create a new post with the same content as a previous post, Google can reject the post.

Why did Google didn’t reject my posts previously? And why previous posts are now tagged rejected.

Many people ask me “I have been posting like this for clients for years and it’s never been a problem until now” and I say because it’s Google’s AI that identifies and rejects posts, so an algorithm…

As we know algorithms are far from perfect, in the case of posts, the Algorithm can wrongly reject compliant posts but the majority of the time it does not catch all infringing posts. That’s why your previous posts that weren’t compliant with Google’s guidelines were not rejected.

Other Updates

Google Business Profile Posts Policy Update

“Google Business Profile is not meant to be a forum for general political, social commentary, or personal rants. Content that does not meet this standard will be removed.” – This is the new text in the Google Business Profile Post Content Policy‘s page under “Off-topic/irrelevant” header.