Short answer: Google Posts will not lift you from tenth to first on their own, but they keep your profile active, occupy space competitors leave empty, and give searchers a reason to choose you. Post weekly, keep it concrete and local, and treat it as a habit rather than a campaign.
What Google Posts actually do
Posts appear on your Business Profile in search and Maps. They expire — most after seven days, events when they end, offers on their end date.
They serve three purposes, in order of practical value:
- Occupying attention. A profile with a current post looks alive; one without looks abandoned. When two similar businesses sit side by side, that difference affects who gets called.
- Signalling activity. Actively managed profiles tend to be favoured over dormant ones.
- Answering questions early. A post about bank holiday availability or a current lead time removes a reason to hesitate.
What they do not do is directly rewrite your ranking. Anyone selling posting as a ranking silver bullet is overstating it.
How often
Weekly is the sensible target. Posts expire after seven days, so weekly means you are never showing an empty slot.
More than weekly rarely adds much. Less than fortnightly and the profile starts looking neglected. Consistency matters considerably more than volume — a business posting once a week for a year is in a far better position than one that posted daily for a fortnight and stopped.
What to actually post
The most common failure is posting nothing because nothing feels post-worthy. Almost anything concrete beats silence.
| Post type | Example |
|---|---|
| Completed job | “Finished a full rewire on a 1930s semi in Moseley this week” |
| Seasonal advice | “Three things worth checking on your heating before the first frost” |
| Availability | “Currently booking installations for early March” |
| Common question | “How long does a bathroom refit actually take?” |
| Local relevance | “Storm damage callouts across Solihull this week — we have emergency slots” |
| Behind the scenes | “New van, same team” |
Notice what these have in common: they are specific, they mention places, and they sound like a person wrote them. Generic marketing copy — “quality service you can trust” — is worse than nothing.
Format that works
- Photo every time. Posts without images get substantially less attention. A phone photo of real work beats stock imagery.
- First sentence carries it. Posts truncate — the opening line is often all anyone reads.
- One idea per post. Do not stack three announcements.
- Use the button. Call, Book, Learn More — give the reader somewhere to go.
- Mention the town naturally where it genuinely applies.
What not to do
- Keyword stuffing. “Plumber Birmingham plumber near me emergency plumber Birmingham” reads as spam to humans and is not rewarded by Google.
- Recycling the same post repeatedly.
- Posting only offers. A stream of discounts trains people to wait for the next one.
- Long essays. Posts are a glance, not an article.
- Going quiet for three months then posting six times in a day.
The realistic problem: nobody does it
Weekly posting is not difficult. It is simply the sort of task that loses to a busy week, every week, until three months have passed.
The businesses that sustain it either build it into an existing routine — a Friday afternoon habit, tied to invoicing — or hand it off entirely. Both are valid. What does not work is intending to do it.
If you photograph one job a week on your phone, you already have the raw material for a year of posts. The bottleneck is the five minutes of writing and uploading, which is exactly the kind of small recurring task worth delegating or automating.
Measuring whether it is working
Google Business Profile shows post views and interactions. Do not over-read the numbers — post views are modest by nature and are not a direct proxy for value.
Better signals to watch over a quarter: total profile views, calls, direction requests and website clicks. If those trend up while you are posting consistently, the routine is contributing. Judging a single post’s performance is largely noise.
Frequently asked questions
Do Google Posts improve rankings?
Not directly and not dramatically. They support an active-profile signal and improve conversion. Treat ranking gains as a secondary benefit, not the goal.
How long do posts stay visible?
Standard posts typically last seven days. Events and offers remain until their end date.
Can I schedule them in advance?
Not natively in the Google interface, but scheduling is possible through management tools, which is how most businesses sustain a weekly rhythm.
Should I post the same thing to Facebook and Instagram?
You can reuse the photo and the idea, but rewrite for each platform. A straight copy-paste tends to read awkwardly and performs worse everywhere.
Weekly Google Posts are included in every plan we run — written, scheduled and published for UK local businesses so it never becomes the thing that slips. See what that costs or book a free audit.
Related reading: How to get more calls from your profile · Google Maps ranking factors