Lead Capture · New this week
Customers can message you on WhatsApp from Google. Is anyone answering?
Google has started showing WhatsApp buttons on some business listings. Every new way to reach you is a new place a lead can sit unread.
By Jimmy Thomas, founder ·
1. What people are seeing
On October 7, Search Engine Roundtable reported WhatsApp buttons appearing in Google’s local business panels, sometimes in place of the chat button and sometimes next to it. Google has not announced it, so treat it as something rolling out unevenly rather than a switch everyone has.
It comes alongside another change: since late September, Google Maps asks people to sign in before they can read all of a business’s reviews or sort them. Your listing is doing more of the selling, and it is quietly adding ways to contact you.
2. How chat works on a Business Profile
If you remember the old Google chat feature, that is gone. Google ended Business Messages in July 2024.
What exists now is simpler. The owner of a verified profile can add a WhatsApp click-to-chat link or a text-message number under Edit profile &rsarr; Contact &rsarr; Chat. Google says it is available in select regions, and if you add both, only the text option shows.
Either way, the message does not arrive in Google. It lands in WhatsApp or your texting app, wherever that number lives.
3. Should you turn it on?
Messaging is how many people prefer to reach a business, especially for quick questions. A chat button can catch someone who would never call. But a button nobody watches is worse than no button, because the customer thinks they reached you.
- Turn it on if someone checks that app several times a day and replies within business hours.
- Pick text over WhatsApp if most of your customers are local and already text you, and you can route those texts into your CRM.
- Leave it off if the messages would land on one person’s personal phone with no backup.
4. Count your doors
Tick every way a customer can reach you today, then tick the ones someone actually checks every few hours. Your answers stay in this browser.
5. One inbox, one owner
More doors are fine. More inboxes are the problem.
A connected system pulls texts, chats, form fills, social messages and missed calls into one conversation view, attaches each to a contact record, and tells a named person when something comes in. Then a WhatsApp button on Google is just one more door into the same room.
Two related reads: missed-call text back for the calls you can’t pick up, and what one business hub can replace.