Google Business Profile posts. Short, plain and useful.

A good Google Business Profile post is short and plain, and it answers one question your customers ask. Aim for 150 to 300 characters. The limit is 1500, so you have far more room than you need. Keep hashtags, links, phone numbers and email addresses out of the text, and let the button do the work of getting the reader to act.

Treat these figures as current good practice as of October 2026: a sound basis for every post you write now, with a date attached.

Below, each part comes in the order you meet it when you write a post. First the reader, then the length, then what stays out of the text, then the button, and finally why a caption copied from social media tends to fall short.

Who reads a post, and what it's for

A post is an update on your business's own Google profile. The people who read it are searching for your business locally. They've typed your name, or your profile has come up when they looked for something nearby.

That tells you a lot about the reader. Someone who looks a business up by name usually wants something from it: an opening time, a booking, a price, an answer. They want it quickly. They've chosen to come to you, so you don't need to win their attention.

So a post has one job. It should be useful to that person at that moment, and the most useful thing it can often do is answer a question customers already put to you. The length, the wording and the button all follow from that.

How long a post should be

The character limit for a post is 1500. The best length is 150 to 300 characters.

Put those two figures side by side. 300 characters is a fifth of the limit; 150 is a tenth. In practice, 300 characters is roughly two or three short sentences.

Here's an example, written for a made-up shop that delivers:

"Do you deliver on Saturdays? Yes. We deliver across town every Saturday morning, and orders placed by Friday at 5pm arrive the next day. Tap Order to choose your items and a delivery slot."

That's 188 characters, comfortably inside the range. It answers one question and gives the detail a customer needs before ordering. It points to the button without repeating what the button does.

Treat 150 to 300 as a target to write towards. It's our recommendation, not a Google rule or a measured result. If a post needs a few more characters to answer the question properly, the limit allows it. The habit worth building is to say one thing well and stop.

A useful test for a draft that runs past 300 characters: look for a second question hiding in it. Split it off and keep it for another post. Two short posts that each answer one thing are easier to read than one long post that answers both.

What to leave out of the text

Four things stay out of the post text: hashtags, links, phone numbers and email addresses. Use no hashtags at all.

The reason given is the button: it carries the action. If you want someone to call, the Call now button does that; if you want them to read a page on your site, Learn more does that. Writing the number or the web address into the text repeats the button's job and takes space from the information the reader came for.

Hashtags are the easiest to miss, because many people add them out of habit. Read the last line of every post before it goes live, since that's where they tend to collect.

Phone numbers are the next most common, and Google says a post with a phone number in its text may be rejected if the number can't be verified as the business's. A business that takes bookings by phone will want its number in front of customers, and that's reasonable. The number goes in the button, where the reader can act on it, and the text stays free for the answer.

Choosing the button

The button options include Learn more, Book, Call now and Sign up; check the editor for the current list.

Decide the action first, then write. Pick the one thing you most want the reader to do after reading, and make the text lead to it.

Take a made-up restaurant answering a common question about group bookings:

"Can I book a table for a group of 10? Yes, for groups of up to 12. Choose a time with the Book button below and add a note about any dietary needs in your group."

That's 161 characters. The text ends where booking begins, and the button does the rest. If the post explained how a membership works, Sign up or Learn more would follow. If the reader's obvious next move is to talk to someone, Call now may suit, and the number sits in the button.

Choose by asking what the reader would do next if they were standing at your counter. A post that tries to send people in two directions usually sends them nowhere, so give each post a single next step.

Why a copied social post falls short

Posts should be written for Google, not as a cut-down social post. The reader is different. Someone on a social feed may be browsing, while someone on your Google profile is looking for you. A caption written to catch attention in a feed often does the wrong job here.

The usual mistakes come straight from copying across.

A long caption pasted in whole may fit inside 1500 characters. It will usually run far past 300, though, with the useful detail buried in the middle.

Hashtags come with the caption. People rarely notice them when they paste, and they sit at the end of the post where the reader's eye lands last.

A phone number or link gets left in the text. On some social platforms that's the only way to send people somewhere. On Google, the button is there for it.

Picture the kind of caption that often gets copied: a cheerful opening line, a few sentences about the weekend, a phone number, a web address and a row of hashtags. It might work in a feed. On a Google profile, most of it is in the way, and the reader has to dig for the one fact they wanted.

The better starting point is a question your customers already ask. You probably know these. They come up on the phone, at the counter and in your inbox; for a member organisation, they come up at events and in renewal emails. Each one is a ready-made post. Give it plain wording, the detail that matters and the right button.

If you write for several sites or clients, the same order works every time: question first, then the answer, then the button. Before any post goes out, check its length and scan the text for anything the button should be doing.

How long these figures will hold

Everything here is current good practice as of October 2026. It isn't permanent, and Google can change its limits and its advice.

So use the figures now, and keep a note of where they came from. If you're setting up a template, a style guide or a brief for a team or for clients, put the date beside the figures. When you review that document, check the figures first and update them if they've moved.

The principle behind them is less likely to date. Write for the person already looking for you, tell them one useful thing, and give them a clear way to act.