Your Business Profile gives your company a free listing on Google Search and Maps, complete with photos, reviews and the practical details customers need before they pick up the phone. Posts are the part that lets you keep saying something new. They are short updates published to your profile and shown to people who are already searching for what you do, which puts them remarkably close to the point of enquiry.
This guide covers what posts are, where they show up, what to publish and how to turn the whole thing into calls, form fills and booked work.
Posts are updates you add to your Business Profile. Google describes them as a way to share announcements, offers, updates and event details directly with your customers on Search and Maps. They sit on your listing next to your photos, reviews and opening information, giving anyone who lands there a reason to act now rather than file you away for later.
Google’s own guidance sets out three reasons to post: sharing up-to-date information and improving customer experience, promoting your sales, specials, events, news and offers, and connecting with customers through posts that include photos and videos. The Google My Business API lists news, events and offers among the categories you can create posts in, which gives a fair picture of what Google expects. Posts are not a blog. They are a noticeboard bolted to your listing.
Posts appear on your Business Profile in Google Search and Google Maps. Somebody looking for a joiner, a fabricator or a building supplies merchant in your area can read your latest update without ever setting foot on your website.
That placement explains why posts sit so close to the point of enquiry. A person searching for your service is already partway to a decision. A post telling them you have availability, that you are running an offer, or that you will be at a local event gives them a nudge at the exact moment they are weighing up who to contact. One industry write-up describes posts as a bottom-of-funnel marketing tool for precisely this reason. They are not there to build awareness from nothing. They are there to convert interest that already exists.
The categories below map onto what Google supports and what buyers actually respond to. You do not need all of them every week. You need a steady mix that matches how your customers make decisions.
Use announcements for anything that changes how you operate. New premises, a new team member, extended availability, a new accreditation, a change to lead times. These posts answer the quiet questions customers have but never ask, and they signal that the business is active and moving forward.
Offers give people a reason to choose you this week rather than eventually. Google lists sales and specials as one of the reasons to post. Keep the offer simple enough to understand at a glance: what it is, who it applies to and how to claim it. If there is a deadline, say so.
If you are exhibiting, running an open day or appearing at a trade show, an event post puts that in front of local searchers. Event posts suit construction and engineering firms well, because trade shows and supplier days are where relationships start.
Posts are a good home for product information and finished work. A photograph of a completed installation with two lines of context does more than a page of specification copy. This is also where new stock lines, new materials and new service capabilities belong.
If you are unsure which type to use, this is a reasonable starting point:
| Post type | Best used for | Keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| Announcement | New hires, new premises, changes to how you operate | Say what it means for the customer, not just what happened |
| Offer | Seasonal promotions, introductory deals, clearance | State clearly who qualifies and any deadline |
| Event | Trade shows, open days, exhibitions | Include the date and where people can find you |
| Product or project | Completed work, new stock, new capability | Add a photo or video with a short description |
A post is not the place for a full sales pitch. It is the place for a clear, specific message with an obvious next step.
The businesses that get results from posts are rarely the ones posting every day. They are the ones that post consistently and stop treating it as a special project.
Attribution in local search is never perfect, but you can get useful signals without expensive software.
Posts are one layer of a Business Profile that also depends on accurate categories, complete service information, a steady flow of reviews and a website that turns visitors into enquiries. A post can bring someone to your listing, but if the phone number is wrong or the site is slow, the enquiry still goes to a competitor. For trades and engineering businesses across Scotland, the most reliable gains usually come from getting the profile, the reviews and the website working as one system rather than treating each as a separate task. That is the work we do at Wicked Spider, a Greenock-based SEO and web design agency that specialises in the construction and engineering supply chain, and it is why we build posts into a fixed-price plan rather than selling them as a standalone extra.
Start with the categories Google supports: announcements, offers, events and product or project details. From there, pick whatever is genuinely true this month. New stock, completed work, a trade show, a change to lead times, a seasonal offer. The strongest post is a specific, useful one with a photo and a clear next step, not a general statement about caring about quality.
Posts appear on your Business Profile in Google Search and Google Maps, so anyone who finds your listing can read them without visiting your website. That includes people searching directly for your service and people browsing local businesses. Because the posts sit beside your reviews, photos and contact details, they are often read at the moment someone is deciding who to contact.
You publish a short update to your profile and it appears on your listing in Search and Maps. Google describes posts as a way to share announcements, offers, updates and event details with customers, and the Business Profile API groups them into categories including news, events and offers. Posts can include photos and videos. For the current options in your account, check Google’s official Help Centre page on creating and managing posts.
Yes. Google publishes content policies that apply to Business Profiles, and posts fall under them. If you are unsure whether an offer, image or claim is allowed, read the official Help page before publishing rather than after. When in doubt, keep the post factual, keep the imagery your own, and avoid anything that could read as misleading to a customer.
Consistency beats volume. A handful of well-made posts each month is enough for most trade and engineering businesses to keep the listing looking active and give regular searchers something new to read. Pick a rhythm you can actually keep, batch the work, and review it monthly. Posting daily for three weeks and then stopping for six months helps nobody, least of all your customers.
