“Customers used to message me on Google. What happened?” Google turned the feature off. If your profile once had a Chat button and the messages stopped coming, nothing is broken on your end: the button, the inbox behind it and the quote requests that came through it are gone for every business.
The customers did not go anywhere, though. They now reach you through whatever is left on your profile: the call button, the website link, and in some places a text or booking option. This article covers what changed, what a customer can still do from your listing, and how to set those buttons up so nothing that chat used to catch now slips past.
What Google turned off, and when
Google’s help page on the change is short and final: “As of July 31, 2024, the chat and call history features are no longer available in your Business Profile.” Customers with open chat conversations were notified on July 15, 2024. Past chats and call history could be downloaded through Google Takeout until August 30, 2024; that window has closed, so whatever was not saved then is gone.
The same page answers the questions a contractor would ask. Can customers still request a quote through the profile? “No, customers can no longer request quotes.” The automatic chat FAQ answers went too: “the chat FAQ feature is no longer supported.” And the change applied to everyone.
The call button changed with it. Google says the button was switched automatically from the Google forwarding number to the phone number the business supplied in its profile. If chat was your main way in, Google recommends adding your phone number, or unhiding it, so customers can contact you.
What a customer can do from your profile now
Four ways in remain, and you control all of them from Edit profile.
Call. The call button dials the number on your profile. Google’s editing page says you can enter up to 2 more phone numbers in addition to your primary one. Google’s guidelines ask for a number under the business’s direct control, local rather than a central call center wherever possible. Google Business Profile for Contractors covers the rest of those setup rules.
Text or WhatsApp. This is the closest thing to the old chat, and it goes to your own phone rather than a Google inbox. Google says businesses with a claimed and verified profile can add a WhatsApp or text messaging option, but that it is “currently available for select regions and might not be available for your Business Profile.” To add it: Edit profile, then Contact, then Edit next to Chat; choose Text message or WhatsApp, enter a number that can receive texts or your WhatsApp click-to-chat link, and save. If you add both, Google shows only the text option. Edits are reviewed before they go live.
Website. The link to your site, entered as a full address with the http:// or https:// included. Of all the buttons, this one has the most to do now that the profile cannot take a quote request.
Booking. Google says some business categories can add links such as appointments, and lets a business add up to 10 links per category for actions such as booking an appointment, and the link can be to your own site or to a booking provider. If you book estimate visits online, this puts the booking page one tap from the map.
If you run Local Services Ads, those have their own message channel. Google says message leads let prospective customers reach you by text or email directly from your ad, routed through anonymized proxy numbers and email aliases, and are typically priced lower than phone leads, “although that is not always the case.” Google Local Services Ads covers the screening, the budget and how bad leads get credited.
A text option needs someone to answer it
Turning on the text option is easy. Answering it is the work. A text that sits unread until Thursday loses the job just as surely as a call nobody picks up. Before you add the option, decide whose phone it rings and when it gets checked during the workday. Your Answer Rate is a one-week audit of every call and form that shows how many you are actually catching; add the texts to the same log.
Answering a question a homeowner texted you is one thing. Sending that number marketing texts months later is another, with its own consent rules; Texting Customers in 2026 explains them.
Make the website button do what chat did
The questions a homeowner might once have typed into chat, such as roughly what will this cost and can you come out, still need somewhere to land. The profile can no longer take a quote request, so the page your website link opens has to.
Look at that page the way a homeowner on her phone would. If the link opens a home page with a slideshow and a “contact us for a free estimate” button, the person who would have typed “how much for a 12 by 16 deck?” into chat has nowhere to type it. Three changes fix most of that:
If you take estimate visits by appointment, add the booking link as well, and make the booking page say how long the visit takes and what you will look at. Booking Estimate Visits That Do Not No-Show covers the reminders that keep those appointments.
Check what the profile sends you
The profile’s Performance page shows whether the remaining buttons are being used. Google defines calls as “the number of times a customer clicked on the call button on your Business Profile,” website clicks as the times people clicked the website link, messages as “the number of different conversations through messages,” and bookings as the bookings people completed. Performance data is available only for verified profiles.
If your site runs Google Analytics, you can link the two: Google says a Business Profile owner or manager who is also an administrator or editor on the Analytics property can share the profile’s interactions, website clicks, calls, directions, messages and bookings with Analytics, so the profile’s numbers sit beside your website’s. Write the monthly numbers down beside the jobs they turned into; Tracking Where Leads Come From has a simple table for it.
A ten-minute profile check
If you want the page behind the website button to give a real number instead of a static table, NapkinPrice™ puts an instant price range from your own pricing rules on your site and sends you the homeowner’s answers with the lead.