A Google Business Profile in Welsh and English: the name, the description, posts and reviews for a bilingual business

A bilingual business in Wales gets one Google Business Profile with one name in one language: Google's guidelines list "repeated bilingual names" among the things a business name must not include, even when the sign over the door carries both. The Welsh goes into the parts of the profile that have room for it: a description that can hold both languages within its 750 characters, posts written in the language of the customers they are for, and replies to reviews in the language each review was written in. The website the profile links to does the rest, because that is where each language has its own pages.

The name: one language, the one customers know

Google's guidelines for representing your business say the name should reflect the business's real-world name, as used consistently on the shopfront, the website and the stationery, and as known to customers. In the list of what a name must not include they put repeated bilingual names, which they describe as repeating the same business name in multiple scripts or languages, "even if it appears this way on physical shop front signage". A café whose sign reads, say, Caffi'r Cei above Quay Café is one business with one name on Google, and it has to choose.

Choose the form your customers use and your paperwork carries. In Gwynedd, where the Welsh Government's Census 2021 bulletin counts 64.4% of residents aged three and over as Welsh speakers, that may well be the Welsh; for a business in Wrexham that trades into Cheshire it is usually the English. Whichever it is, keep it identical on the website header, the invoices and the profile, because consistency is what the guideline asks for. Keep everything else out of it. The same guidelines refuse location information and service information in a name, and warn that including unnecessary information "could result in the suspension of your Business Profile". Caffi'r Cei Pwllheli Coffee would break two of those rules at once.

The description: one field, two languages, 750 characters

Google's help page on editing a profile says "do not exceed 750 characters in the description field", and asks for details about the business rather than promotions, prices or sales, with no web addresses or HTML. The guidelines add that no links of any type are allowed and that the field is for useful information on the services and products offered. There is one field, not one per language, so a bilingual description shares the 750 between two languages.

Write it as two short paragraphs that say the same things: what the business does, where, for whom, and that customers can deal with it in Welsh. Where most customers speak Welsh, the Welsh paragraph comes first; where most search in English, the English leads and the Welsh follows. Each gets roughly half the space, which forces plain sentences, and plain sentences are what a customer reading a profile on a phone needs. Have the Welsh written or checked by a Welsh speaker, never produced by a tool. The Welsh Government's Helo Blod service translates up to 500 words a month into Welsh free for a business, charity or community group, and a description sits well inside that.

Posts: write for one reader at a time

Google's help page on posts lists three kinds, updates, offers and events, and says posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set. Its content policy for photos, videos and posts adds that, to avoid fraud or abuse, Google may remove posts with unverified contact information, so a post should carry the Call button, which dials the profile's verified number, rather than a number typed into the text.

For a bilingual business, a post that is half Welsh and half English gives each reader half a post. A short notice, closed for the bank holiday or the new winter hours, fits both languages in one post. Anything longer works better as two posts a day apart, each written for its reader: the Welsh one about the stall at the eisteddfod, the English one about the coach party booking. The six-month archive also means a profile that posts twice a year shows nothing new for most of it.

Reviews: reply in the language of the review

Google's help page on managing reviews says replies are checked against its content policies, usually within ten minutes and sometimes up to thirty days, and that the customer is told when you reply. Its review tips ask for replies that are short and simple, under the heading "Be a friend, not a salesperson". The bilingual rule is simpler than any of that: answer in the language the review was written in. A Welsh review answered in English tells the reviewer their language was read and not used. If nobody in the business writes Welsh with confidence, keep the reply to two plain sentences and have a Welsh speaker check them, or send them to Helo Blod.

Ask for reviews in both languages as well: one message with a Welsh line and an English line, and the review link or QR code that Google's tips suggest. Never offer anything in return. The same tips describe incentives for reviews as fake engagement and prohibit them.

The website link, and the questions people type

The profile links to one website address, and Google's guidelines ask for a website that represents the business. Link the home page in the language most of your customers use, the Welsh home page for a Welsh-first business and the English for the rest, and let the language switch on every page take the others where they want to go. The profile cannot hold the detail; the pages can. Our own Search Console shows people typing whole questions into Google: in the three months to 31 October 2026, "who can build a bilingual welsh and english website?" reached our bilingual page at about position 8, and "who builds welsh language websites in wales?" reached our home page at about 12. Questions like those are answered by pages written in both languages, and the profile's job is to agree with them: the same name, the same services and the same promise about the Welsh, whichever one a customer reads first.

Our bilingual websites page describes how the two languages are built on the site the profile points to, so the profile and the pages tell the same story in both. If you would like your profile read against these rules, send the business name through the quote form and say which language most of your customers use; we will tell you what to change and what to leave alone.