Google Business Profile Bilingual Name Ban: What Irish-Named Businesses Should Change

Imagine a sea-kayak hire business on the Donegal Gaeltacht coast. The sign over the shed carries the Irish name in large letters, with the English translation underneath, and the owner typed it into their Google Business Profile exactly that way years ago: Irish name, a forward slash, English name. It matched the sign. It matched the vans. It felt like the honest thing to do.

The scenario is invented. The rule it runs into is not.

On a quiet weekday in late September, the owner edits the profile to add autumn opening hours. A few days later an email arrives saying the profile has been suspended for not following Google's guidelines. The phone, which normally rings with people who found the business on Google Maps and want a slot on Saturday, goes quiet. Nobody has done anything dishonest. The business name simply broke a rule that did not exist in July.

The Rule That Changed in August

Google's guidelines for representing your business on its Business Profile now list a new prohibited item under the business name field. It is called "Repeated Bilingual Names / Script Transliterations", and Google defines it as "repeating the same business name in multiple scripts or languages, even if it appears this way on physical storefront signage" ^[1].

The examples Google gives are a café name written in both Latin and Japanese characters, and a well-known burger chain with its name repeated in Japanese. The acceptable version in each case is the name written once.

Search Engine Roundtable reported the addition on 10 August 2026, after local search consultant Hiroko Imai spotted it and noted that business name violations are a common trigger for profile suspensions ^[2]. That last point matters more than the rule itself. Google states plainly on the same guidelines page that including unnecessary information in your business name "could result in the suspension of your Business Profile" ^[1].

So this is not a style preference. It is a name-field violation, and name-field violations are enforced.

Why an Irish Sign Is Not a Defence

Most of the business name guidelines have a built-in escape hatch: represent your business as it appears in the real world. Google's own wording is that your name "should reflect your business's real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers" ^[1]. For years that meant a bilingual shopfront justified a bilingual profile.

The new rule closes that door deliberately. The phrase "even if it appears this way on physical storefront signage" is written into the prohibition itself. Your sign is not evidence in your favour here. It is simply the thing Google has already said does not count.

That lands harder in Ireland than in most markets. Bilingual naming is part of everyday life here, from road signs to public notices, and plenty of family businesses chose an Irish name, or an Irish name with an English gloss, precisely because it says something about who they are and where they come from. According to the CSO's Census 2022 results, roughly 1.87 million people said they could speak Irish, though only around 72,000 reported speaking it daily outside the education system ^[6]. The language is part of the identity of far more businesses than it is part of their daily trade, and that is exactly the gap where a slash-separated name tends to appear.

What a Suspension Actually Costs

Operationally, I treat a Business Profile the way I treat a DNS record. It is a production dependency that sits outside your website but decides whether customers reach you at all. Early on I made the mistake of filing it under marketing, something someone else looked after. That was wrong. When it breaks, the phone stops, and nothing on your own server tells you why.

Depending on how Google handles a particular case, a suspended profile can stop appearing to customers or leave you unable to manage it. Either way, the customer searching "kayak hire near me" from a car park sees a competitor's listing, a map pin, a green "Open" label, and a phone number that is not yours.

Then comes the part that catches people out after they fix things. In late August, Search Engine Roundtable reported that some profiles reinstated after a suspension were coming back live but with their reviews missing, and that Google was aware of the problem and working on it, with no timeline given ^[3]. Years of reviews are the one asset on a profile you cannot rebuild quickly. Losing them, even temporarily, costs you the reason a stranger picks you over the business beside you.

Not every business feels this equally. A firm that wins its work through tenders or referrals may barely notice a week without a profile. A walk-in or book-today business, the kayak hire, the café, the emergency plumber, feels it by lunchtime.

Choosing Which Name Stays on the Profile

The fix is simple to describe and harder to decide: one name on the profile. The rule does not favour English. It favours one.

Three questions help you choose:

1. Which name do customers actually type? Your profile's performance report shows the searches people used to find you. If most of them use the Irish name, keep the Irish name. If they use the English one, keep that.
2. Which name is on your registration and your invoices? Google's appeal process asks for documents such as business registration and utility bills, and it tells you to check that the business name on them matches the profile ^[4]. Pick the name your paperwork already supports.
3. Which name would you want on the map pin in ten years? This is an identity decision as much as a search one. Make it once.

Then edit the existing profile. Do not create a new profile with the new name, and do not delete the old one to start fresh. Treat the name edit as a change Google may review, and have your registration documents to hand before you make it, the same way you would verify a backup exists before you deploy a change to production.

The second language does not have to disappear from Google entirely. Google describes the business description field as the place to explain your services, your mission and your history ^[1]. The story of the name, what it means and why you chose it, is history. It belongs there, written as a sentence, not bolted onto the name field.

Your Website Carries the Name Google Will Not

A profile is a rented listing with one name field and someone else's rules. Your website has no such limit. It is the one place online where your business can present itself exactly as it wants to, both languages included, without a moderation queue deciding what counts.

That matters for search, not just for pride. Google's guidance tells you your name should be used consistently across your storefront, website and stationery ^[1]. The most useful thing your website can do now is make that consistency obvious. In practice that means four things:

• The primary name matches the profile exactly. Same spelling, same fadas, same word order, in your site title, logo text and footer. When a customer clicks from the map pin to your homepage, they should see the same name they just tapped.
• The second-language name appears as a translation or tagline. Under the logo, in the About page, on the contact page. Present it as what it is, the same name in the other language, not a second business.
• The About page tells the story. A paragraph on why you chose an Irish name does more for trust than any directory listing, and it gives Google plain text connecting both versions to one business.
• Structured data names both. Google's site names documentation describes an alternateName property for WebSite markup on your home page, and its Organization markup supports the same property for the business itself ^[5]. Google is clear that it may still choose a different name, or show your domain, if it is less confident in what you provided ^[5].

The last point sounds technical. It is not much work. On a full WordPress site, popular SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO include an alternate name field for your organisation in their settings, so you type the second name into a box and the plugin writes the markup for you. The consequence is practical: when someone searches the Irish name and your profile only carries the English one, Google has a machine-readable statement on your own site saying both names belong to the same business.

This is where the platform your website sits on stops being an abstract choice. On a closed website builder, you get the fields the vendor decided to give you. On a full WordPress site, you control the page titles, the About page, the footer and the structured data yourself, without waiting on anyone. A Web60 site is full WordPress with the whole plugin ecosystem, built by the AI Website Builder in under a minute from a description of your business, and everything included for €60 a year means the name fix costs you an afternoon, not an invoice. If you would rather describe the business in both languages and let the AI draft the pages, that is a reasonable place to start, and you can edit every word afterwards.

If the Profile Is Already Suspended

For the kayak business in our scenario, the rule change arrived as a suspension email rather than a news story. If that is where you are, the sequence is methodical.

First, correct the name to a single version before you appeal. Google's help page says to make sure the profile follows all the guidelines before you submit an appeal ^[4].

Second, gather your evidence before you open the form. Google's appeal process gives you 60 minutes to submit evidence once you open the evidence form, and suggests official business registration, business licences, tax certificates and utility bills ^[4]. Have scans ready so the clock does not beat you.

Third, submit the appeal through Google's appeals tool, which shows the restricted profile, the reason for the action and a link to the policy you broke ^[4]. Google also warns not to create a new profile for the same business while the appeal is under review ^[4]. That instruction is easy to ignore when the phone has gone quiet. Ignore the temptation instead.

Fourth, verify the profile after reinstatement. Check the name, hours, photos and, above all, the review count. If reviews are missing, reply directly to your support ticket email so the issue stays attached to your original case, which is the step Google's support team has been recommending ^[3].

Throughout all of this, your website keeps working. It is the fallback your customers can still reach through an ordinary search, a printed flyer, or a link someone shared, while the profile is in review. We have written before about how Google Business Profile rules keep tightening while your own site stays under your control, and this is a textbook example.

What This Rule Does Not Say

One honest limitation belongs in any guide like this. Every example Google published involves two different writing systems, Latin and Japanese characters. Irish and English share an alphabet. The rule's wording, "multiple scripts or languages", plainly covers both, but nobody outside Google knows yet how consistently moderators will apply it to a Latin-script pair like Irish and English, or whether older profiles will be reviewed or only ones that are edited.

That uncertainty is not a reason to wait. It is a reason to fix it on your own schedule, in a quiet week, with your documents ready, rather than on Google's schedule in the middle of a busy one.

And the rule is narrower than some commentary suggests. It does not ban Irish-language business names. A business whose real-world name is entirely in Irish can keep it, written once. It does not stop you using both languages on your signage, your website, your menus or your social profiles. It only limits the single name field on a Google listing.

Where This Leaves the Kayak Business

Back on the Donegal coast, the eventual fix takes an afternoon. The profile carries one name, the one customers search. The description tells the story of the other. The website shows both, in the order the owner prefers, with structured data connecting them, and it did not stop taking bookings while the profile was in review.

If your profile name has a slash, a dash or a second language in it, the useful move this week is to verify it, choose one name, and make sure your own site is doing the work of carrying the rest. It is also worth looking at what else appears when someone searches your name, because page one for your business name is not always yours by default. The language on your sign is yours to keep. The listing is just the part you rent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my Google Business Profile name include both Irish and English?

Not as a repeated name. Google's business name guidelines now prohibit repeating the same business name in multiple scripts or languages, even when your storefront sign shows both. Choose one version for the profile name and keep the other for your description, website and signage.

Will Google suspend my profile for a bilingual name?

It can. Google says unnecessary information in a business name could result in suspension, and name violations are a common suspension trigger. Enforcement on Irish and English pairs has not been clarified, so the safest approach is to correct the name yourself before anything happens.

Which name should I keep, the Irish or the English one?

Keep the one customers actually search for and the one your registration and invoices use. Your profile's performance report shows the search terms people used to find you. The rule does not prefer English, so an Irish-only name written once is fine.

Can I still use my Irish name on my website?

Yes. The rule applies only to the name field on a Google Business Profile. Your website can present both names, tell the story behind them on your About page, and include the second name in structured data using the alternateName property.

What should I do if my reviews disappeared after reinstatement?

Reply directly to the support ticket email from your appeal so the missing reviews are documented against your original case. Google has acknowledged an issue with reviews missing after reinstatement and has said it is working on it, without a timeline.

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