Google Business Profile Link Rules: Important Changes

Google just rolled out stricter enforcement for links on your Business Profile. If you’re still linking to social media pages where your website should be, or sending booking clicks to WhatsApp, you’re about to lose traffic.

Here’s what changed, why it matters, and how to fix it before Google strips your links entirely and worst, suspends your business profile.

The New Rules Enforced

Google’s not messing around anymore. They’ve introduced daily verification checks — at most — using their GoogleOther crawler to scan every link you’ve added to your Business Profile. Unlike regular web crawling, these verification bots completely ignore your robots.txt file.

Think you can hide behind bot protection or rate limiting? Think again. Google’s official policy now states: “To enforce this policy, these business link verification crawlers don’t follow robots.txt rules.”

What does this mean practically? If your website blocks bots, uses aggressive CAPTCHA challenges, or returns anything other than a clean 200 status code to GoogleOther, your links can disappear overnight. No warnings. No appeals process. Just gone.

We’ve already seen Perth businesses lose their website links because their Cloudflare settings were too aggressive. One roofing contractor lost 40% of their Google-sourced leads when their booking link got pulled for redirecting to Facebook Messenger.

Website Link: What’s Allowed and What Gets Removed

Your primary website field has one job: take potential customers to your actual business website. Not your Facebook page. Not a link shortener. Not your LinkedIn company profile.

Google’s guidelines are crystal clear now: “Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or ‘refer’ users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business, including pages created on social media sites.”

Compliant examples:

• https://searchscope.com.au/
• https://yourrestaurant.com.au/location/perth/
• https://lawfirm.com.au/contact/

Non-compliant examples (these get removed):

• https://facebook.com/yourbusiness
• https://bit.ly/book-appointment
• https://linkedin.com/company/yourbusiness
• Any URL that redirects through multiple hops

For multi-location businesses, each profile should link to its specific location page, not the corporate homepage. A Subway in Fremantle shouldn’t link to subway.com — it should link to the Fremantle location page or the main site if that’s the only option.

Here’s the kicker: Google checks these daily. If your hosting goes down, your SSL certificate expires, or your CDN starts blocking GoogleOther, your website link vanishes until you fix it and re-add it manually.

Action Links: Bookings and Orders Must Complete On-Page

This is where most businesses are getting caught. Your “Book Now” or “Order Online” links must let customers complete that exact action on the landing page. You can’t send them to your Instagram DMs or WhatsApp for “convenience.”

Google’s policy couldn’t be clearer: “Local business links must allow customers to complete the designated action. For example, an ‘order’ link must allow the customer to complete an order.”

What’s banned outright:

• Social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
• Messaging links (WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.)
• App store links
• Link shorteners (bit.ly, tinyurl, etc.)

What works:

• Direct Calendly booking pages
• Square appointment booking
• Your own online ordering system
• Third-party booking platforms (if they complete the action)

Here’s a real example: A Perth café was using their “Order” link to send customers to their Instagram page with a “DM us your order” message. Google pulled the link within two weeks. They switched to their Square online ordering page and the link stuck.

The rules also limit you to one link per domain per transaction type, with a maximum of 20 links per transaction type. If you’re hitting these limits, you’ve probably got bigger organisational issues to sort out.

Crawlability: How to Test and What to Fix

Google’s GoogleOther crawler needs unrestricted access to verify your links. If your website security blocks it, uses rate limiting, or serves different content to bots, you’ll fail verification.

Test your links right now!

Check if GoogleOther can access your website:

bashcurl -A "GoogleOther" -I https://yourdomain.com.au/

You want to see a 200 status code. Anything else — 403 Forbidden, 404 Not Found, 500 Server Error — means trouble.

Check if your booking link works:

bashcurl -A "GoogleOther" -I https://calendly.com/yourbusiness/booking

Same deal. Clean 200 response or fix it.

Common problems we’re fixing for clients

• Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode blocking GoogleOther
• WordPress security plugins treating GoogleOther as a threat
• CDN configurations that rate-limit bot traffic
• SSL issues that only affect certain user agents

Most of these fixes take 10 minutes if you know what you’re doing. The hard part is knowing they’re broken in the first place.

Quick Fixes and Prioritised Checklist

Priority 1: Fix your website link today

1. Go to your Business Profile manager
2. Check your website URL points to your actual business site
3. Test it loads cleanly with the curl command above
4. If it redirects, make sure it’s a single hop to the right place

Priority 2: Clean up action links

1. Remove any links pointing to social media or messaging apps
2. Make sure booking/ordering links complete the action on-page
3. Test each one with GoogleOther user agent
4. Delete any link shorteners

Priority 3: Add social links properly

1. Go to Edit profile → Contact → Social profiles
2. Add your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn there
3. Don’t put social URLs in website or action link fields

Priority 4: Fix crawlability issues

1. Check your security settings aren’t blocking GoogleOther
2. Disable aggressive bot protection on landing pages
3. Make sure SSL certificates are valid and current

Most businesses need 2-3 of these fixes. The ones ignoring this will lose clicks when their links get pulled.

Common Pitfalls and Real-World Examples

The franchise trap: Chain businesses often link to corporate websites instead of location-specific pages. A Domino’s franchise linking to dominos.com.au instead of their local store page violates the dedicated landing page rule.

The social media shortcut: We’ve seen dozens of Perth businesses using their Facebook page as their website link because “everyone finds us there anyway.” Google doesn’t care about your social media strategy — they want customers to land on websites they can crawl and verify.

The WhatsApp booking system: Popular with tradies and service businesses, but completely against policy now. Your “Book Now” link can’t dump customers into WhatsApp to organise appointments. Build a proper booking system or use Calendly.

The link shortener habit: If you’re tracking clicks with bit.ly or similar services, stop. Google treats these as potentially deceptive and removes them during verification.

The SSL oversight: We found three businesses last month whose website links got removed because their SSL certificates expired. GoogleOther is stricter about security than regular browsers.

Need Help? Our GBP Audit Fixes This in 48 Hours

If you’re unsure whether your Business Profile links comply with Google’s new rules, or you’re already seeing links disappear, we can audit and fix everything within 48 hours.

Our Business Profile audit covers:

• Link compliance check and corrections
• Crawlability testing with GoogleOther simulation
• Social media link setup in the proper fields
• Ongoing monitoring to catch issues before Google does

We’ve fixed over 200 Business Profiles for Perth and Australian businesses since these rules tightened. Most clients see their missing links restored within 24-48 hours of our fixes going live.

Book a free 15-minute audit call to see what’s broken and get a priority fix list. No sales pitch — just a straight technical review of your current setup.

The businesses that fix this quickly will keep getting the Google Maps traffic everyone else is about to lose. The ones that ignore it will wonder where their leads went.

Don’t let Google pull your links while you’re figuring this out. Fix them now, or hire someone who knows how to do it properly. More on our Google Maps SEO service page!