Google Business Profiles has long operated under a different set of rules for verified businesses and their customers. If you are a business owner trying to maintain your brand online. You’ll already be familiar with the ever-tightening restrictions on what you can and can’t post via your profile.

But here’s the problem – those same restrictions don’t seem to apply to the general public uploading images to your business listing.

 

Business Posts Get Flagged Immediately

Let’s start with the obvious. Upload an image that Google’s AI thinks shows too much skin, and you’ll get the red banner of shame:

Your Post Violates Google’s Content Policy.

In this specific post case:

Content that violates our policy on sexually explicit content isn’t allowed. Sexually explicit content includes genital nudity or depictions or descriptions of sexual acts.

Sounds fair enough, right? But this policy doesn’t stop at anything remotely suggestive. In one recent example, a Spa posted a completely inoffensive image of a male client floating in a float tank.

No nudity. No sexual context. No captions even hinting at anything other than relaxation. Flagged. Removed. Post rejected.

 

 
Yes, you could run your image through Google’s own Vision AI to try to predict what the algorithm will object to.

But that’s not the point.

 

Customer Images Go Completely Unchecked

While verified business owners are being policed into submission, customer-uploaded content seems to operate in the Wild West.

Scroll through Google Maps and you’ll find:

• Photos of women in lingerie or next to nothing, tagged to luxury hotel profiles
• “Customer updates” that are spam ads for adult services
• Full WhatsApp numbers included in image captions
• Short videos of women offering “massage services” with implied extras

 

 

 

 

These aren’t hard to find. They’re right there on the front-facing business profile, in the photo gallery and sometimes even in search previews.

 

Hotels Are Prime Targets

This problem has been especially bad for hotels. As far back as 2021, I wrote about spammed “Updates from Customers” polluting hotel listings on Maps. Years later, the same problem persists, now even more graphic and more challenging to remove.

These customer-contributed images bypass all the checks that business owners are held to. They upload anything they like, and it shows up instantly, often including contact information and explicit adult service references.

Meanwhile, the business has zero control over this content unless they go through the painstaking process of reporting each image individually. Even then, results are hit and miss.

 

One Rule For Businesses, Another For Everyone Else

If Google is serious about policy enforcement, it needs to apply those policies consistently. You cannot claim to enforce a strict visual content policy for verified businesses, but then allow uncensored spam, escort ads, and soft-core images from random users to remain live on the very same platform.

Verified businesses are under constant scrutiny. Every image, word, and post must be squeaky clean. Meanwhile, unverified users can upload explicit photos, include personal contact info, and hijack a business’s online presence with zero accountability.

This isn’t just annoying. It’s damaging to brands and businesses that rely on Google to maintain an accurate and professional public profile.

 

Apply The Policy Across The Board

Either enforce your content policy properly, for everyone – or stop pretending to care. Businesses can’t be the only ones held to a higher standard, especially when they are the ones trying to keep their listings professional and spam-free.

Until Google figures this out, verified businesses will keep getting flagged for float tank photos while their customer photo gallery fills up with adult spam. And that, frankly, is a joke.

 
Online Ownership offers troubleshooting for Google Business Profiles, when you can’t get rid of those “customers” images that no one wants to see.

 

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