On September 9, 2026, Google rewrote its Location asset requirements document and told advertisers the change was cosmetic. The rewrite added explicit troubleshooting steps, added policy sections for tobacco, recreational drugs, and restricted targeting under Personalized advertising, and dropped four sections that used to live on the page.
Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable ran the new document against the February 3, 2026 archived version and published the diff that morning; Anu Adegbola covered it for Search Engine Land hours later. Google’s framing, quoted in both, is that the update was made to “improve terminology, enhance readability, and include troubleshooting steps applicable to advertisers using location assets,” and that it “does not change enforcement of this policy.”
What changed in Google’s Location asset requirements on September 9, 2026?
Three things: the page gained a troubleshooting procedure for disapprovals, gained restricted-category sections, and lost four sections it used to carry. The underlying policies did not move. The document advertisers use as a checklist did.
The additions are tobacco, recreational drugs, and restricted targeting within Personalized advertising. The removals are misleading content, unavailable offers, unclear relevance, and trademarks. The troubleshooting language is the operationally useful part: if a location asset is disapproved for capitalization, punctuation, or symbols, Google now tells you to fix the business name inside Google Business Profile — standard title case, no unnecessary symbols — then unlink and re-link the profile in Google Ads so the correction syncs.
Google also scrubbed the legacy phrasing: the old page told you how to fix a “disapproved ad or extension,” the new one says “fix a disapproved ad or appeal a policy decision.” The section-by-section comparison is Search Engine Roundtable’s analysis, not a Google statement.
Why did Google say enforcement isn’t changing, and should you take that at face value?
Take it at face value for what it claims and ignore what it implies. Enforcement almost certainly is unchanged — ad review systems do not read the help center. But the implication that nothing consequential happened is wrong, because the removed sections shrank the surface most teams actually audit against.
Trademarks, misleading content, unavailable offers, and unclear relevance are still enforceable; they simply live in Google’s general advertising policies now instead of being restated on the location-asset page. If your quarterly compliance review is built by reading one URL and turning its headings into a checklist — which is how most three-person marketing teams do it — your checklist just got four items shorter while your exposure stayed the same size.
The additions cut the other way. Tobacco, recreational drugs, and personalized-advertising targeting restrictions were not spelled out on this page before. Their arrival signals that Google treats location assets as fully in scope for restricted-category rules — a live problem in a state where adult-use cannabis is legal and licensed provisioning centers sit on commercial corridors in Ann Arbor, Hazel Park, and River Rouge.
How does a location asset disapproval actually work under the hood?
Google Ads does not store your business name. It stores a link to a Google Business Profile plus a synced copy of the fields it pulls from that profile, and policy review runs against the synced copy sitting in the ads system — not against the live profile.
That single fact explains nearly every confusing symptom advertisers report. It explains why you can correct a business name in Business Profile, watch it go live on Maps within an hour, and still see the asset flagged in Google Ads three days later: the ads-side copy has not refreshed, so the reviewer is still reading the old string. It explains why there is no editable name field on the asset in Google Ads. And it explains why unlink-and-re-link is the documented remedy rather than a superstition — severing and re-establishing the link forces a fresh pull, which queues a fresh review of a string that now passes.
Once you hold that model you can predict cases this article does not cover: an hours change, a phone number correction, a category edit that pushes you into a restricted vertical, a profile suspension that leaves a stale-but-approved asset serving after the profile goes dark. The rule is always fix at the source, then force the sync.
Which Michigan advertisers are most exposed to this?
The businesses with the most profiles and the least standardized naming: multi-location service brands and dealer groups across metro Detroit, plus anyone in a restricted category.
Michigan’s independent automotive service and aftermarket sector is full of profiles named the way the sign is painted: ampersands, all-caps, and a location suffix bolted on for internal tracking. A group running seven bays across Warren, Sterling Heights, Roseville, and Rochester Hills typically has seven profiles created by seven different people over a decade, with names like “MIKE’S AUTO & TIRE – Warren #3.” The all-caps, the ampersand, and the store number are exactly what the editorial rules on capitalization, punctuation, and symbols are written to catch.
Multi-location dental, HVAC, and legal practices carry the same risk with higher stakes per lead. A Livonia HVAC company paying $80 to $140 per qualified furnace-repair call in January cannot afford a silently disapproved asset on its highest-volume campaign, because the ad keeps serving — it just serves without the address, phone number, and hours that make a cold-weather emergency searcher call rather than scroll. That is the specific way this costs money: not a shutdown, a downgrade. Same cost per click, weaker unit.
Licensed cannabis and vape retailers are the third group, and for them the added restricted-category sections are a serving-eligibility question, not a formatting one. The audit below is worth an hour this week; if you would rather hand it off, it is the kind of standing quarterly check our Detroit paid search team runs.
How should a small team audit location assets this week?
Seven steps, roughly sixty to ninety minutes for a ten-location account. None of it requires a tool you do not already have.
- In Google Ads, open Assets, filter to Location, add the Status column and sort by it. “Disapproved” and “Approved (limited)” are both actionable; the second is the quiet killer, because the campaign looks healthy at a glance.
- For every flagged asset, read the policy reason, not the summary label. Capitalization, punctuation, and symbols route to the Business Profile fix. Restricted-category reasons route to an eligibility question formatting will not solve.
- Rewrite each affected profile’s business name to the name on the building, in standard title case, with no store numbers, service keywords, or decorative symbols. “Mike’s Auto & Tire” — not “MIKE’S AUTO & TIRE – Warren #3.”
- Back in Google Ads, unlink the Business Profile, then re-link it. This is the step people skip, and skipping it is why the disapproval appears to survive the fix.
- Audit against the four removed policies anyway — trademarks, misleading content, unavailable offers, unclear relevance. Paste them into your own checklist so the next reviewer does not inherit the shortened version.
- Check profile categories against the new restricted-category sections. A category edit made months ago by a franchise partner can put a location in a bucket you never chose.
- Log the date and set a ninety-day reminder. Google has revised this document twice in 2026; assume a third pass before spring.
What dates should be on the Q4 calendar?
Four, and they stack badly if you leave the asset audit until November.
- September 9, 2026 — Location asset requirements document updated, with troubleshooting steps and restricted-category sections added.
- September 30, 2026 — Google’s automatic migration window for Campaign-level Broad Match and ACA Search campaigns to AI Max closes. Structure changes and asset disapprovals are painful to debug simultaneously.
- October 1, 2026 — Local Services Ads begin charging for missed calls. Home service companies running LSAs alongside Search want location data clean before that economics change.
- February 1–28, 2027 — Automatic migration of Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max begins and new DSA ad groups are permanently removed; reminders go out January 15, 2027.
Can you just fix the business name inside Google Ads instead?
No. There is no authoritative name field on the Google Ads side, because the name is not owned there. Any edit you think you are making in Google Ads is either hitting a different asset type or will be overwritten on the next sync.
This is why location data quality is not really a paid media problem — it is profile hygiene, surfacing in the ad account, the map pack, and increasingly in AI-generated answers about your hours and address. Teams that treat Business Profile as the system of record and everything downstream as a cache have fewer of these fires. Our local search and Business Profile work starts from that assumption.
Frequently asked questions
Does the September 9 update mean my existing ads are at new risk?
Not from enforcement. Google stated the update changes documentation, not how the policy is applied, and no reporting contradicts that. The risk is procedural: if your compliance checklist was built from the old page, it now omits trademarks, misleading content, unavailable offers, and unclear relevance — all still enforceable under Google’s general advertising policies.
How long does the unlink-and-re-link fix take to clear a disapproval?
Google does not publish a service-level target for location asset review, so treat any specific number you read as an estimate. Plan on the review queue, not the sync, being the slow part. Make the Business Profile edit first, confirm it has gone live, and only then re-link — re-linking before the source is corrected just re-submits the same failing string.
Why does my ad keep running if the location asset is disapproved?
Because assets and ads are reviewed separately. A disapproved location asset is dropped from the ad rather than stopping it, so the campaign keeps spending while serving a less complete result — losing the address, hours, and tap-to-call affordance that drive most mobile conversions, with no obvious signal in the spend report.
Do these rules apply to Performance Max campaigns too?
Yes. Performance Max draws on the same account-level and campaign-level asset pool, so a profile name that fails editorial review fails for every campaign type that would have used it — which is why fixing at the profile level resolves several campaigns at once.
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