Videos in GBP - Becoming More Strict

[Ben Seidel]

Has anyone noticed that GBP has become more strict recently regarding video uploads on profiles?
We are aware that technically the guidelines say videos should be only up to 30 seconds long (Manage photos or videos for your Business Profile - Google Business Profile Help) and at 720p resolution or higher. However, in the past, you could still upload a video longer than 30 seconds. Google would simply downscale the quality of the video if exceeded 30 seconds.
That said, more recently, we've had a significant uptick in 1-3 minute videos getting rejected with the "not approved" label. They don't violate any other guidelines as far as we can tell.
Has anyone else noticed a change in the video upload restrictions? If so, have you discovered any workarounds or received additional info on the restrictions from Google Support?

 

[JS Girard]

Has anyone noticed that GBP has become more strict recently regarding video uploads on profiles?
We are aware that technically the guidelines say videos should be only up to 30 seconds long (Manage photos or videos for your Business Profile - Google Business Profile Help) and at 720p resolution or higher. However, in the past, you could still upload a video longer than 30 seconds. Google would simply downscale the quality of the video if exceeded 30 seconds.
That said, more recently, we've had a significant uptick in 1-3 minute videos getting rejected with the "not approved" label. They don't violate any other guidelines as far as we can tell.
Has anyone else noticed a change in the video upload restrictions? If so, have you discovered any workarounds or received additional info on the restrictions from Google Support?

Are you sure this is not just Google showing the same "not approved" labels for both pictures that are actually rejected and those merely not yet approved? I've had one case of pictures labelled "not approved" that showed up normally after a couple days (such a delay has existed for new profiles for several years now). Videos have always had more of a delay too for me, because google processes them.

 

[Ben Seidel]

@JS Girard, currently our answer is that we aren't 100% sure yet - hence why we are dipping our toes in the forum to see if anyone else is noticing the issue.
We are running a test right now with videos (varying in length) across a company's multiple locations to see if we can extract more info.
What we do know is this use to work just fine previously, and now we are seeing some weird issues with the video uploads.

 

[JS Girard]

@JS Girard, currently our answer is that we aren't 100% sure yet - hence why we are dipping our toes in the forum to see if anyone else is noticing the issue.
We are running a test right now with videos (varying in length) across a company's multiple locations to see if we can extract more info.
What we do know is this use to work just fine previously, and now we are seeing some weird issues with the video uploads.

A lot of people have reported uploads just failing outright in the NMX dashboard. It appears that for some reason Google, did not reuse the exact same code as in the old dashboard...

 

[Ben Seidel]

@JS Girard, yep, that's approximately when we started noticing the issue as well. Oh, how we miss the old way of editing GBP listings

 

[Ben Seidel]

Ok, so as an update on this, from our small test, it appears the labels added to videos that are uploaded via NMX dashboard are truly inaccurate.
We uploaded a test set of 4 videos across 5 different listings (all for the same company). Some videos got approved immediately without error. On 1 or 2 of the listings, while those same videos were marked "Not Approved." Additionally, at least one video was "Not Approved" on all listings.
Instead of attempting a re-upload, we simply waited in our case two weeks, and checked back. Note that they did not move to the approved/published status within 24 hours, so it is a longer waiting game.
The result: All 4 videos on all 5 listings then were approved and published - including those previously marked "Not Approved"
In summary "Not Approved" is simply not accurate and could mean "Not Approved" or "Pending". Hopefully, they upgrade their systems better in the future for more clear labels on media uploads.

@JS Girard - your instinct was right
@Colan Nielsen just an FYI on the above test in case you or Joy are seeing an uptick of other users experiencing the same issue and trying to "fix" their "not approved" uploaded videos instead of waiting.