Google Business Profile Character Limit: 750 for Descriptions, and the Services Field That Just Got Cut

Google Business Profile's headline numbers — 750 characters for the description, 1,500 for a post — are generous by most standards. What's easy to miss is that both fields truncate hard well before reaching those limits, and a separate, smaller field just had its own limit cut dramatically.

The Business Description: 750 Allowed, 250 Actually Seen

Google's own Help Center confirms the description field caps at 750 characters, but only the first roughly 250 display in search results before a "Read more" link appears. Since the description functions as a business's evergreen, permanent summary — distinct from time-limited posts — those opening 250 characters need to work as a genuinely complete pitch on their own: category, core services, location, and what actually differentiates the business, since most viewers never click through to see the rest.

Posts Truncate Even Harder, and Differently by Surface

A Google Business Profile post allows up to 1,500 characters, but the visible portion varies noticeably by where it's being viewed — roughly 250 characters in Search results, but as few as 100-150 in the more compressed Maps carousel view. A post written for Search's slightly wider preview can still get cut awkwardly short in Maps, which matters specifically for businesses expecting nearby, already-searching customers to see the post while browsing Maps rather than Search.

The description and a post look similar — both are just text fields with a character limit — but they serve entirely different jobs. The description is a permanent bio; a post is more like a dated news update that fades from prominence within about a week. Writing them with the same voice and pacing misses what each one is actually for.

The Recent Change Worth Knowing: Services Field Cut by Two-Thirds

Google recently reduced the per-service description field from 1,000 characters down to just 300 — a change that caught a meaningful number of businesses off guard when they went to update an existing service listing and found their previous, longer description no longer fit. At 300 characters, each individual service description needs real discipline: what the service includes, who it's for, and one clear benefit, without the padding that a 1,000-character allowance used to tolerate.

What the Description Field Explicitly Can't Include

Google's own policy for the description field prohibits promotional content entirely — no prices, sales, or time-sensitive offers — reserving that kind of content specifically for posts instead. This isn't just a style suggestion; violating it is a policy issue that can affect a listing's standing, which makes the description-versus-post distinction more than a formatting preference.

Checking a Draft Against the Right Field and Surface

Since the description, post, and service fields all follow different limits — and posts additionally truncate differently across Search and Maps — checking a draft's exact character count against the specific field and, where relevant, the specific surface it's headed for avoids finding out after publishing that the important part got cut. A character counter makes each of these checks fast and exact, across all three fields.

---

Google Business Profile's numbers are generous on paper — 750 characters for a description, 1,500 for a post — but the actual working space is considerably smaller once truncation is accounted for, and the recently-shrunk 300-character services field is a genuine, recent change worth knowing about before it causes an unexpected save error. Writing for the visible portion of each field, not the technical maximum, is what actually reaches customers browsing Search or Maps.