Seven things Google changed on your listing since July

What changed, in one table.

Reviews may pause for a few days. That is Google, not you.

Since late September, Google has been emailing owners under the subject line “Protecting your Business Profile from spam reviews.” The email says Google found a burst of spam reviews, removed them so they do not touch your rating, and has temporarily paused new ratings and reviews while it sorts the rest out (Search Engine Roundtable, 22 Sept 2026).

Google says the pause usually lifts within a few days and that no action is needed. If real reviews went missing with the spam, the email has a link to ask for a second look.

The practical point is what a burst looks like from Google's side. A dozen reviews in one afternoon after a counter card or a text to your customer list can look like an attack, even when every one is genuine. Spread requests out over a few weeks. The article on asking for reviews has a rhythm that works.

You get four days to say no to a stranger's edit.

Anyone on Google Maps can suggest a change to your listing: your hours, your phone number, your category, even that you have closed for good. Google has always applied some of those suggestions on its own. Now it is emailing owners first.

The email is headed “Does this look right to you?” It shows the suggested change and two buttons, correct or incorrect, and asks you to answer within four days (Search Engine Roundtable, 8 Sept 2026).

Four days is short if the profile's email is the one your web designer set up in 2019. Open your profile, check which address it notifies, and make it one somebody reads every day. That single check is the most useful thing in this article.

Do not type your phone number into a post.

Posts are the short updates and offers on your profile. Google's help page for them now says it may remove posts with unverified contact information, and it names phone numbers, email addresses and social media handles. A second page says a post with a phone number in it might be rejected if the number cannot be verified as belonging to the business (Search Engine Roundtable, 25 Sept 2026).

Google has not said what “verified” means in practice. The safe reading is that the number on your profile is verified and anything else is not. So write the offer, and let the Call, Book and Learn more buttons carry the contact details. They use the profile's own number and link.

The same goes for an Instagram handle. Put the link in the profile's website or social fields, not in the text of a post. If posting is a chore, the post pack article is about doing it in one sitting a month.

One name, one language.

In August Google added a line to its rules for business names. Repeating the same name in two scripts or languages is no longer allowed, “even if it appears this way on physical storefront signage” (Search Engine Roundtable, 10 Aug 2026). Google's own example is a café named once in Latin letters and once in Japanese.

This lands hardest where the sign really does say it twice: a bakery in Hindi and English, a shop with its Irish name over its English one, a bar with a local name and an English one for visitors. A listing that breaks the name rules can be suspended, and a suspension takes the listing off Maps until the appeal is done.

Pick the name customers say out loud, and put the other in the business description, where it still helps people searching in that language. On your own website you can use both freely. The rule is about the profile's name field.

Report a fake review once, with evidence.

On 29 September Google added a policy called “Misuse of support channels.” It covers false or misleading reports, reports made in bad faith, and flooding support with invalid requests. The line that matters: repeated unfounded submissions “can result in rejection of all further complaints without assessment” (Search Engine Roundtable, 29 Sept 2026).

So the old advice of reporting a fake review every day until it goes is now a way to get your account ignored. Report it once. Say who you think wrote it and why, and attach what you have, such as a booking record showing the person was never a customer. Then wait. The same applies to reporting a competitor's listing: do it only when you are sure.

There is good news on the appeals side. Since July, if your listing is suspended, the appeal form lets you upload your proof in the same step. The old flow sent a separate form afterwards and gave you sixty minutes to find the documents (Search Engine Roundtable, 8 July 2026).

Get the folder ready before you need it. Business registration or trade licence, a recent utility bill in the business name at the listed address, and a photograph of the sign on the building. That is what Google’s appeal guidance asks for, and now it can all go in at once.

The results page is changing around your listing.

Two changes are not to the profile itself but to where it appears. Since late August, for some searches, Google's AI Overview expands into a full AI Mode answer without anyone clicking Show more, with an “Ask anything” box loaded underneath. That pushes the map and the ordinary results further down the page. Google's line was that it happens “for topics where our systems determine it's most useful for people” (Search Engine Roundtable, 28 Aug 2026).

A plain “plumber near me” still shows the map. A question such as “how much does a boiler service cost” increasingly gets Google's own answer, built from profiles, reviews and websites it trusts. Being one of the businesses named inside that answer is covered in the AI Overviews article.

One more change sits beside the listing rather than in it. In the United States, Google can now ring a business to confirm its details or to ask about availability on a customer’s behalf, and the profile has a switch for it. When Google rings your business covers what it asks and where the switch is.

The second change lets you see whether that is happening. Since 31 August, Search Console shows every site how often it appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode (Search Engine Journal, Aug 2026). The same screen has a switch to keep your site out of those AI answers, and Google says using it does not affect ranking elsewhere in Search (Google Search Central, June 2026). Leave it alone. A local business wants to be in the answer.

One thing did not change. There has been no Google core update since May; the only ranking updates on Google’s own status page since then are spam updates, in June, August and September (Google Search Status Dashboard). The September one, still rolling out as this is written, is a spam update aimed at scraped content and bulk AI pages (Search Engine Roundtable, 24 Sept 2026). If someone offers to fix your “core update drop,” there was no core update to drop from.

Before October: check the padlock.

This one is about your website rather than your listing, but it is the same month and the same customers. With Chrome 154 in October 2026, Chrome turns on “Always Use Secure Connections” for everyone. Before opening any public site that does not use https, it will show a warning and ask the visitor whether to continue (Google, Oct 2025).

Most sites built in the last few years are fine. The ones that are not tend to be older, on a cheap host, or set up so that www works and the bare domain does not. Chrome only warns on a first or rare visit, so the visitor who sees it is exactly the new customer who found you on the map.

Type your address four ways into a browser: with http, with https, with www and without. All four should end on the https version with a padlock. If one does not, whoever hosts the site can fix it, usually the same day.

Everything to check, in one list.

• The email address on the Business Profile is one somebody reads every day.
• Any “Does this look right to you?” email from the last month has been answered.
• The listing's hours and phone number match the sign and the website.
• Posts carry the offer, and the Call and Book buttons carry the contact details.
• The business name on the profile appears once, in one language.
• Registration, a utility bill and a photograph of the sign are in one folder.
• The website opens on https with and without www, and http redirects to it.
• Review requests go out a few at a time, not all at once.

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A few common questions.