Google has recently rolled out important updates to its Google Business Profiles link policies and guidelines. These changes introduce new rules around dedicated landing pages, direct action completion, social media site links, and a brand-new policy focused on the crawlability of business links.

If you manage a business profile, understanding these updates is crucial to ensure your listings stay compliant and perform at their best.

These updates build upon the July 2025 version, significantly expanding the guidelines.

Google now routinely reviews business links submitted by users to ensure they meet policy standards, automatically removing any links that don’t comply. This move underscores Google’s commitment to maintaining trustworthy and accurate business profiles.

New sections have been added, starting with Dedicated Landing Pages. Now, links on your local business profile need to point to a specific page just for your business. If you have multiple locations, each action link should take visitors to the exact location’s website—not a general homepage or a different branch’s page. This helps customers find the right information quickly and improves your profile’s accuracy.

Direct Action Completion is another key update. Links on your local business profile should let customers finish the action you’re promoting. For instance, if you have an “order” button, clicking it should allow the customer to place an order right away. However, certain types of links are no longer allowed, including:

  • Social media pages
  • Messaging apps or chat links
  • App store downloads
  • URL shorteners

This ensures that customers have a smooth, straightforward experience when interacting with your business online.

Business Links Crawlability Policy is designed to keep your business information on Google accurate and reliable. Google uses automated systems that check the links on your Business Profile—usually once a day—to make sure they lead to real, relevant pages. If these systems can’t access your links, they won’t be able to verify them, and those links might be removed. This policy helps you understand how to keep your links easy for Google’s systems to find and check.

Definitions

  • Link Crawlability: This means how easily Google’s automated systems—like crawlers or bots—can visit and access everything on a webpage. It includes being able to follow redirects and load all parts of the page, such as images, scripts, and styles.
  • Automated Bot Protection: These are tools or methods websites use to block or limit access from automated systems. They help stop harmful activity, data scraping, or overload on the server. Examples include:
    • Using robots.txt files to block certain pages
    • Limiting the number of requests from the same source
    • Adding CAPTCHA tests or other checks
    • Blocking specific IP addresses
    • Restricting access based on the user-agent
    • Showing different content to bots than to real users
  • User-Agent: This is a label that tells a website what type of device or program (like a browser or bot) is visiting.
  • HTTP Status Codes: These are numbers a server sends back to show the result of a page request. For example, 404 means the page wasn’t found, and 500 means there was a server error.

Crawlability Requirements

Important: Google’s business link verification crawlers don’t follow the usual robots.txt rules when checking your links.

To make sure your business links work smoothly on your Google Business Profile, they need to meet these key standards:

  • Open Access: Your links must be easy for Google’s crawlers to visit without any blocks. This means your site should NOT:
    • Block traffic from Google’s crawlers identified as GoogleOther. (There are ways to recognize this crawler traffic.)
    • Use rate limits or slow down requests that stop crawlers from reaching your content.
    • Require CAPTCHA, logins, or other checks to let crawlers in.
    • Block IP addresses that Google’s crawlers use.
    • Show different content to crawlers than to real users (no “content cloaking”).
  • Working Links: Every link must lead to a live webpage that responds properly. It should return a successful status like 200 OK. Avoid links that give errors, such as:
    • 404 Not Found
    • 403 Forbidden
    • 500 Internal Server Error
    • 503 Service Unavailable
  • Full Page Load: Google’s crawlers need to load the entire page, including all images, styles (CSS), and scripts (JavaScript).
  • No Geo-blocking: Your page shouldn’t block visitors based on their location through DNS or other geo-based restrictions.

Following these rules helps keep your business profile accurate and ensures customers can always find the right information.

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