The short answer: once a week
Pick one day. Post one update on that day. That is the whole plan.
Once a week is enough to keep your profile looking like a business that is open and paying attention. It is also slow enough that you can actually keep it up in a busy month, which matters more than any schedule you abandon in March.
If once a week is too much, go monthly. A real post every 30 days beats a burst of five posts and then six months of nothing. The owners who get the most out of this are not the ones who post the most. They are the ones who never stop.
What Google actually says about posts
It helps to know the real rules, because a lot of advice online is guesswork. Here is what Google's own help page on Business Profile posts says:
- There are three kinds of post: an Update, an Offer, and an Event.
- Posts show on Google Search and Google Maps. On a phone they appear under the Updates or Overview tab. On a computer they show in the From the owner section.
- Posts older than six months are archived unless you set a date range.
- You can turn on Schedule this post and pick a date and time, and there is a Repeats setting for weekly, monthly, or a custom schedule.
- A post sits as Pending until it is approved. Pending and Not approved posts do not show to customers.
- A phone number in the post description might get the post rejected if Google cannot confirm the number belongs to the business.
Notice what is not there. Google's page says nothing about how often to post, and nothing about posting changing where you rank. Anyone who tells you Google requires a post every week is making that up.
What to put in a weekly post
The best post is the smallest true thing that happened at your business this week. You are not writing an ad. You are showing a person who is deciding between you and two other names that you are real and you were there on Tuesday.
Four that always work:
- A job you just finished. One photo, two sentences, the neighborhood or town named in plain words.
- A question you answered twice this week. If two customers asked it, a hundred searchers are wondering it.
- Something seasonal and specific. First freeze, back to school, holiday hours.
- A new thing you added. A service, a truck, a technician, a Saturday slot.
Add one real photo from your phone. Not a stock image. A slightly crooked photo of your own van outperforms a polished picture of somebody else's, because the person reading it is checking whether you exist.
Batch a month in one sitting
Nobody sticks to a weekly task they have to remember weekly. So do not. Sit down once a month with the photos already on your phone and write four posts in 20 minutes.
The simple version:
- Scroll your camera roll and pick four job photos.
- Write two sentences under each one. Name the town.
- Load all four into the post editor and schedule them a week apart.
- Put a 20 minute hold on your calendar for the same day next month.
That is four weeks of an active profile for one coffee's worth of time. If you want the whole thing running on rails, including the review requests, that is what our automations guide walks through.
Posting is not the engine. Your customers are.
Here is the part most people get backwards. Posts are the cheapest signal on your profile, and they are also the weakest.
In our experience across 2,300+ profiles, the thing that moves a business in the map is not the owner talking. It is customers talking. Reviews with real detail in them. Photos customers upload themselves. Questions asked and answered. That is the Local Guide Method in one line: your customers do your SEO for you.
So posts are the maintenance, not the strategy. Keep the weekly post because an active profile looks like a business worth clicking. Then spend the rest of your effort on the much harder, much more valuable job of getting customers to leave something behind. If you are not sure where your profile stands right now, run a free profile audit and start from the facts.
Three mistakes that waste the effort
Posting the same offer every week. Four identical posts read like a sign in a dusty window. Vary the thing you are talking about.
Writing for Google instead of a person. Stuffing your town name and service into every sentence makes a post nobody reads. Write the sentence you would say out loud to a customer.
Posting and never looking back. Check which posts got clicks. Two or three months in you will see a pattern, and then you will know what your customers actually care about instead of guessing.
One post. One day a week. Real photos. That is it.
Idea spark: Chris Koerner and guest Nico Moreno on The Koerner Office podcast.
Quick answers
- Does posting on Google Business Profile help you rank?
- Google does not say that posting changes your ranking. In our experience across 2,300+ profiles, the profiles that stay active also tend to be the ones collecting reviews and photos, and those are the signals customers and Google both respond to.
- How often should I post if I am busy?
- Once a month is fine if you can hold it. A real post every 30 days beats three posts in one week and then silence for a season.
- Do Google Business Profile posts disappear?
- Google says posts older than six months are archived unless you set a date range. Offers and events run on the dates you give them.
- Can I schedule Google Business Profile posts ahead of time?
- Yes. Google's post editor has a Schedule this post option and a Repeats setting for weekly, monthly, or a custom schedule.