To automate Google Business Profile posts with AI, have it write each post and publish it through Google's Business Profile API on a schedule: in an IvI SEO setup for a York electrician, AI wrote 30 posts and queued 29 of them to go out on their own through to 28 November 2026. The first went live on 5 September. Doing that by hand is about 3 hours of cutting down, pasting and posting. Tedious doesn't cover it.
How do you automate Google Business Profile posts with AI?
To automate Google Business Profile posts with AI, give it something real to write from, have it write each post with an image and a button, then connect it to Google's Business Profile API, the official route for software to post on your profile, so it publishes them for you. In IvI SEO's setup for a York electrician, AI wrote each post from one of the business's own blog articles, and each goes out two days after that article is live.
The "something real" bit matters most. AI can't know what your business has been up to, so give it material: finished jobs, seasonal problems you get called about, offers you're genuinely running, or articles already on your website. The electrician had 30 advice articles, some live and some scheduled to publish over the autumn, so that's what we used. Each one was a ready-made post waiting to happen. It just needed cutting down.
Here's the brief, adapted so you can use it with whatever you've got. Swap in your details:
Here's what I want posts about: [articles, job notes, offers or seasonal topics]. For each one, write a Google Business Profile "Update" post.
- Keep it under 700 characters, in plain English, written for a customer, not for Google.
- Open with the customer's problem, say what we do about it, and end with a reason to click.
- No phone numbers, email addresses or hashtags in the text.
- Add a "Learn more" button linking to the matching page on my website.
- Suggest an image for each post and write its alt text (a short description of the image for people who can't see it).
- Only use facts I've given you. Don't invent prices, offers or promises.
Put it all in a spreadsheet: post number, topic, post text, button, link, image and alt text.
So for a plumber, an article called "Why is my boiler making a banging noise?" becomes something like:
Boiler banging every time the heating kicks in? It's usually limescale or trapped air, and it's rarely something to ignore. Our guide covers the safe checks you can do yourself, and the signs it's time to get an engineer out before it turns into a breakdown in January.
A few things that mattered on the electrician's set:
- Add a button, and link it back to the original article. Every post can have a button that takes people to a link, such as "Learn more", "Book" or "Call". Where a post came from a blog article, I link the button straight back to that article. The post sends people to the article, the article does the explaining and the selling, and every new article gives you another post. It's a nice little loop.
- Read every one before it goes out. One of the 30 got held back because the article it came from was still waiting on a legal check. That's your call, not the AI's.
- Images need a public web address. Google fetches each image from a link. The electrician's were in a Google Drive folder, which had to be switched to "anyone with the link" before Google could see them. Uploading them to your own website works too.
- Use real photos where you have them. The set used branded illustrations, which is fine. A photo of an actual job is better whenever there's one that fits.
Write once, use twice
The repurposing loop
Write a blog article, on your website
Turn it into a post, on your Business Profile
The post's button links back to the article
New readers find it, then write the next article
Why bother posting at all? I've gone into that in why you should post to your Google Business Profile regularly. This post is the how.
Can AI post to your Google Business Profile for you?
Yes, AI can post to your Google Business Profile for you, but only through Google's Business Profile API, and you have to apply for access first. Google only considers profiles that have been verified and active for at least 60 days and have a website. IvI SEO's application took two weeks to be approved. Once it's approved, you sign in to Google yourself, once, and the AI posts using that saved permission without ever seeing your password.
Not everyone gets in. Google doesn't say much about how it decides, but my guess is that applying from a business Google account, for a proper established business, helped mine through. If you're applying with a personal Gmail for a profile you set up last month, I wouldn't hold your breath.
Once you're approved, the setup is about 10 minutes in Google Cloud (Google's console for developer tools), and the AI can walk you through it:
- Switch on three APIs in the Google Cloud project you applied with: Google My Business API, My Business Account Management API and My Business Business Information API. The first one is hidden from the search, so use the direct link: console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/mybusiness.googleapis.com
- Set up the sign-in screen (Google calls it the OAuth consent screen, OAuth being the way Google lets an app act for you without your password). Choose External and add yourself as a test user.
- Create a "Desktop app" sign-in key under Credentials and download the file.
- Sign in once. The AI opens a Google sign-in page, you log in with the account that manages the profile and click Allow. Do it on the same computer the AI is running on, because the page hands back to that machine.
Getting API access: the wait, then about 10 minutes
- 2 weeks
Apply
Google's access request form, approved in 2 weeks
Switch on APIs
Three My Business APIs in your Google Cloud project
Sign-in screen
OAuth consent screen: External, you as a test user
Desktop key
Create a Desktop app key, then download the file
Sign in once
You log in and click Allow. The AI never sees it
Steps 2 to 5 are about 10 minutes in Google Cloud, and the AI can walk you through them.
That's the only bit you do yourself. From there, it checked it could see the electrician's profile, posted the first one on 5 September, and read it back from Google to make sure the image and button had come through.
Can you schedule Google Business Profile posts?
Yes, you can schedule Google Business Profile posts in Google itself: since November 2025, you can pick a date and time for a post and set posts to repeat. For a handful of posts, that's all you need. IvI SEO used AI and the API instead because each post was tied to a blog article that wasn't live yet, so every post had to wait until its article was published and the link actually worked.
Before every post: is the article actually live?
What the York electrician's queue does each morning
A post is due today
Find the article's real address (sitemap)
Does the article load?
Yes
Post it, with its image and button
Log it and report back
No
Skip it. Try again tomorrow
No post ever links to a missing page. If the website's schedule slips, the post just waits.
Google's scheduler doesn't know or care whether your article has gone live. If your website's schedule slips, a scheduled post sends people to a page that isn't there. So the electrician's posts run from a queue that the AI built, and it checks first. Here's how it works:
- Two days after the article. The 16 posts for upcoming articles each go out two days after their article publishes. The 12 for older articles follow every three days after that, through to 28 November.
- It checks the link first. Before each post, it checks the article loads. If it doesn't, it skips and tries again the next day. No post links to a missing page.
- It finds the real web address. Several articles went live with shorter web addresses than their titles. The queue looks each one up in the site's sitemap (the list of pages a website gives Google) before posting.
- It can't double-post. Pressing "Run now" on a day nothing was due posted nothing.
- It reports back. Every run is logged and I get told what went out. If Google's sign-in ever expires, it tells me rather than trying to sign in itself.
29 posts, 5 September to 28 November, all on autopilot
The York electrician's Google Business Profile queue, 2026. One more post is held back for a legal check.
September
October
November
It runs as a daily scheduled task in the Claude desktop app, at about 10am. The catch: it lives on one computer, so if that computer's off, the post goes out when it's next switched on. With posts three days apart, that doesn't matter. For anything tighter, put it on a machine that's always on.
Has it made a difference yet? Too early to say. The first post went out on 5 September 2026, and I'll update this when there's something worth showing.
Is it OK to use AI for Google Business Profile posts?
Using AI for Google Business Profile posts is fine if every post comes from something real and a person checks it, because Google's own posting tips say to avoid "auto-generated or distracting content". In IvI SEO's setup, each post was written from one of the business's own published articles, the whole set was checked before anything was queued, and the first post was approved word for word before the rest went out.
What Google's warning about is the "Happy Monday from all the team!" post a tool churns out every morning. Nobody reads those. Nobody should.
These posts are different because each one says something a customer might actually want to know, it's backed by a full article, and it doesn't make anything up. That's the whole trick with AI and your Business Profile. Let it do the cutting down and the posting, the boring bits. Don't let it decide what your business says.
Want this set up for your business?
Automating your Google Business Profile posts is part of IvI SEO's local SEO service: posts written from your own work and content, checked, and sent out on a schedule that fits your business. If your profile hasn't had a post in months, take a look at how I can help. I'll tell you straight whether it's worth doing for your business.