I’m gonna let you in on something that’ll probably make you want to throw your laptop across the room: Google’s “30-second video limit” for Business Profiles is basically bull.
Actually, wait. Let me back up.
Last March, I was trying to upload this video for a client’s auto detailing shop. Beautiful 47-second walkthrough showing a complete paint correction job. The kind of satisfying content that makes you stop scrolling. And Google’s upload interface just sat there, mocking me with its “videos must be 30 seconds or less” message.
So I chopped it down. Ruined the whole flow. Uploaded the butchered version and went to bed annoyed.
Then two weeks later, I’m stalking a competitor’s profile (we all do it), and there’s this minute-and-a-half video just… playing. Working fine. Getting views.
What the hell?
The Real Constraint: File Size
Turns out I’d been reading the rules wrong this whole time. Well, not wrong exactly. Google does say 30 seconds. It’s right there in their guidelines. But that’s not the actual limit that matters.
The real limit is 75 MB. File size. Not duration.
I felt like an idiot when I figured this out. All those videos I’d butchered, all those perfect moments cut short because I thought I was following the rules.
Started testing it immediately. Grabbed that original 47-second detailing video (thank god I kept it), compressed it down to 71 MB, uploaded it. Worked perfectly. Then I tried a 58-second testimonial video for a pizza place. 74.8 MB. Also worked.
The longest I’ve gotten away with so far is 1 minute 23 seconds, but that was compressed and honestly looked pretty rough. Sweet spot seems to be around 45-60 seconds if you want decent quality.
How to Correctly Do This
I use HandBrake. It’s free, it works, and once you figure out the interface (which, admittedly, looks like it was designed by engineers for engineers), you can batch process videos pretty quickly.
Here’s my usual process, though I’ll be honest, sometimes I forget steps and have to start over:
First, I export at 1080p from whatever I’m editing in. Then I run it through HandBrake with these settings… actually, you know what? The specific settings don’t matter as much as just watching that file size number. I usually start with the “Fast 720p30” preset and adjust from there.
The weird thing is, sometimes a 45-second video will compress down to 40 MB, and sometimes it’ll stubbornly stay at 90 MB no matter what I do. Depends on how much movement is in the video, how many colors, whether there’s text overlays. I had one video of a massage therapist’s office that just would not compress properly because of all the subtle lighting changes.
Adobe Express works too if you don’t want to download anything. CloudConvert is decent. Hell, I’ve even used iMovie’s export settings in a pinch, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what it’s designed for.
Uploading to Google Business Profile
Google buries video uploads under “Add Photos” because of course they do. Every time I show a client how to do this, they look at me like I’m trying to trick them.
“But it’s a video.”
“I know.”
“So why is it under photos?”
“Because Google.”
Sometimes the upload works immediately. Sometimes it sits in processing for two days. I had one video that got rejected three times over a weekend, then randomly appeared on Monday morning without me doing anything.
Oh, and here’s something I learned the hard way: if your video has music, even background music from your store’s speakers, it might get flagged. I had a gym owner’s video rejected because you could faintly hear whatever was playing on their sound system. Stripped the audio, re-uploaded, worked fine. Now the video shows this really intense workout with no sound, which is actually kind of unsettling, but whatever.
Why This Matters
When I first started messing with Business Profile videos, I thought it was just another box to tick. Update your hours, add some photos, throw up a video, done.
But something shifted in the last year. Maybe year and a half? These videos started showing up everywhere. Not just in the Business Profile itself, but in the local pack, in Maps, even in regular search results sometimes.
I’ve got a dentist client who added a simple office tour video. Nothing fancy, just the dentist walking through showing the updated equipment, explaining their COVID protocols (back when that mattered more). Her new patient calls jumped 30% that month. Could’ve been coincidence, could’ve been other factors, but she’s convinced it was the video.
Another client runs a small bakery. Added a 52-second video of their decorator making roses out of buttercream. That video has been viewed over 12,000 times. For a local bakery in a town of 40,000 people. The math doesn’t even make sense, but there it is.
The trust factor is real too. People want to see inside before they visit. It’s like… you know when you’re meeting someone from a dating app and you reverse-image search their photos? Same paranoid energy, but for businesses.
The Technical Stuff That Trips Everyone Up
Google automatically crops videos to square in certain views. Learned this when a contractor’s video of a beautiful kitchen remodel got cropped so you could only see the ceiling fan. Now I always preview everything assuming it’ll be butchered into a square.
Resolution needs to be at least 720p, but here’s the thing: I’ve uploaded 4K videos that looked worse than 720p ones after Google’s compression. Their system does something weird to the files. Sometimes I think it’s better to pre-compress it yourself so you control how it looks.
Oh, and vertical videos. Don’t. Just don’t. I know TikTok and Instagram have trained us all to film vertical, but Google Business Profile videos look terrible in portrait mode. They get these huge black bars and look unprofessional.
What Works
Forget the fancy stuff. The videos that perform best are usually the simplest ones. Owner introducing themselves. Quick tour of the space. Someone actually doing the work.
I had a plumber client who wanted to do this whole production with multiple angles and music and graphics. Spent weeks on it. Meanwhile, his competitor uploaded a shaky 40-second video of fixing a toilet while explaining what he was doing. Guess which one gets more engagement?
The sweet spot seems to be:
- Show real people doing real work
- Keep important stuff in the center (for the square crop)
- 45-60 seconds (now that we know we can)
- No music unless it’s absolutely necessary
- Good lighting matters more than good cameras
Actually, that reminds me. I tried using some B-roll from a stock footage site once, just to fill out a video. Google rejected it immediately. They’re apparently pretty good at detecting generic footage now.
Will Google Eventually Crack Down on This?
The 30-second rule is more like a 75 MB rule, and once you know that, a whole world of possibilities opens up. Your competitors probably don’t know this. Most of them are still either uploading static photos or cramming everything into 29 seconds.
Just remember the upload might take a few days to show up. And it might get cropped weird. And you might have to compress it three times to get under 75 MB. And Google might change the rules tomorrow because they’re Google and that’s what they do.
But when it works? When you’ve got a solid minute-long video sitting there on your Business Profile, auto-playing for everyone searching for your type of business? It’s worth the hassle.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go re-upload a video that got rejected for reasons I still don’t understand. Third time’s the charm, right??