Google My Business has Banned Politics, Social Commentary, and Personal Rants from GMB Posts

Google has updated the Google My Business Content Policy which governs Posts to a profile on the platform by adding a new line which reads:

“Google My Business 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 comes at a time when many American businesses are fighting local and state ordinances around wearing face masks and other things to help curb the tide of the Coronavirus pandemic and as the U.S. has been gripped in a summer of protests, riots, and looting where participants have burned businesses to the ground, caused damage through vandalism, and cleaned out store shelves of sought after and expensive goods. In turn business owners have sought to speak their mind via social media platforms. It is clear Google My Business doesn’t want those kind of conversations happening on the platform.

You can see the entire text under “Relevant content” in the guidelines here: https://bit.ly/gmb-posts-content-policy

And in the screenshot below
gmb content policy for posts no politics no social commentary no personal rants

The full text of the “Relevant content” section of this policy currently reads (as of publication time):
“Published content should be relevant to the business that the author’s posting on behalf of and help users better understand the business. Content that’s irrelevant to the business or has no clear association with the business isn’t allowed. Refer to our overall guidelines for representing your business on Google. Google My Business 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.”

The change was first spotted by Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky on June 24th