Setup guide

Meta business verification: the full checklist

Updated August 2026·9 min read

Why this matters more in a restricted category

Verification is boring and most people put it off. In a restricted category that is an expensive habit. Unverified accounts carry lower default spend limits, more review friction, slower and less favourable appeals, and no access to some features at all.

It does not exempt you from category rules — nothing does. But it changes how every borderline judgement about your account gets made, and those judgements are constant when you sell research compounds.

Get these right before you start

Most rejections are caused before anyone uploads a document. Confirm all of this first:

• Your legal entity exists, is in good standing, and is findable in a public registry.
• Your business address matches what the registry holds — exactly, including suite numbers.
• Your business phone number is reachable and, ideally, publicly associated with the business.
• Your website is live, complete, and shows the business name, address, and contact details.
• Your business email is on your own domain. Free-provider addresses weaken the application.
• Your Business Manager legal name field matches the registry exactly — including “LLC,” “Inc.,” punctuation, and spelling.

Which documents actually work

Meta accepts several document types. In practice some clear far more reliably than others.

Strongest: articles of incorporation or organisation, certificate of formation, or the equivalent state or national registration document. Government-issued, shows the legal name and address, and is exactly what the reviewer wants.

Usually fine: business tax documents showing the entity name and tax ID, business licences, or a certificate of good standing.

Weaker: utility bills and bank statements. Accepted in some cases, rejected often, and generally the fallback rather than the opening move.

Whatever you submit: full page, all four corners visible, unedited, legible, in colour, and current. Cropped or annotated scans get rejected on sight.

The mismatches that cause rejection

Verification is fundamentally a string-matching exercise. These are the mismatches that fail applications:

• Legal name vs document — punctuation, suffixes, abbreviations, trading names used instead of the registered name.
• Address formatting — missing suite number, abbreviated street type, or an old address the registry has not been updated with.
• Phone number — a number that does not appear anywhere publicly associated with the business.
• Website vs entity — the site trades as one name, the entity is registered as another, with nothing on the site connecting the two.
• Domain registration — domain in a personal name or fully privacy-shielded while claiming business ownership.

The fix for the fourth one is simple and frequently skipped: put the full legal entity name and address in your site footer and on your terms page. It gives the reviewer the link between the site and the document.

Domain verification

Separate from business verification and equally necessary. It establishes that you control the domain your ads point to, which matters more once the iOS privacy changes made event configuration dependent on it.

Three methods; pick by what you control:

• DNS TXT record — most reliable, survives site rebuilds and platform migrations. Use this if you have registrar access.
• HTML file upload — fine, but breaks if the file is lost in a redeploy.
• Meta-tag — easiest on hosted platforms, breaks if a theme update strips the tag.

Verify the root domain, not a subdomain, and verify every domain you advertise on — including the ones you only use for landing pages.

If you get rejected

Rejections are usually mechanical rather than judgemental. Work through it in order:

• Re-read the stated reason literally. It is normally more specific than people assume.
• Compare your Business Manager fields against the document character by character.
• If the document was weak, resubmit with the registration document instead.
• Check the scan is complete, colour, uncropped, and legible.
• If your registry record itself is out of date, update it there first. The document has to be right before the application can be.

There are limits on resubmissions, so treat each attempt as if it were the last. Fix everything you can find before trying again rather than iterating one field at a time.