Google called attention to changes in its Google My Business photo and video guidelines earlier this month. Local marketers are being told that all images or videos will now be reviewed before published.
Google was asked by Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land if this was a manual or machine-based review process. According to Google, both humans and machines will be involved. The company didn’t provide anymore detail than that.
To ensure consistency with our policies for user contributed content, we rolled out additional criteria for photos and videos for merchants late last year. We will continue to update and improve these policies over time to ensure all content that appears in the Business Profile is relevant, high quality, and appropriate. While we don’t share specific details about our moderation processes, we do use a combination of automated and manual reviews, and continue to work on making photo approvals as efficient as possible.”
— Google spokesperson
A number of local SEOs reported in early February that Google Posts with images were being rejected. It initially speculated that Google was being stricter with its guidelines, which prohibits stock photos, as well as other things. But, it was clarified by Google that the issue with Posts was that it was just a bug, which was fixed.