How to Set Up and Use Google Business Profile Messaging

What Business Profile messaging is

Messaging (labelled 'chat' in some parts of the interface) adds a message button directly to your Google Business Profile, visible in Search and Google Maps. A customer taps it, types a question, and it lands in your Business Profile dashboard or the Google Business Profile app — no phone call, no email, no need to find a contact form on your website.

It's built for a specific moment: someone is already looking at your listing and has a quick question that would otherwise stop them going further — is this open right now, do you have a table free, do you carry a specific size. The lower the friction to ask, the more likely they are to ask it instead of quietly moving on to the next result.

How to turn it on

In your Google Business Profile dashboard, look for 'Messages' (or 'Chat' in older interface versions) and turn it on. You'll be prompted to set a welcome message — a short automatic reply sent the moment someone starts a conversation, before you've had a chance to respond personally.

Use the welcome message to set expectations, not just to greet. Something like 'Thanks for messaging [business name] — we usually reply within a few hours during business hours' is more useful than a generic hello, because it tells the customer whether to expect a fast reply or to call instead if it's urgent.

Google expects you to actually respond

This is the detail most businesses miss when they turn messaging on and forget about it: Google's own guidance is that a Business Profile with a consistently poor response record can have messaging turned off automatically. If you're not going to check and respond regularly, it's better to leave the feature off than let it default into that state — a customer whose message goes unanswered for days has had a worse experience than one who never had the option to message at all.

Turn on notifications for new messages and make sure they reach someone who actually checks their phone or email during the day. As with reviews, this is more often a task that falls through the cracks from a lack of clear ownership than from a lack of care — assign it to a specific person, even in a small team.

What a good messaging response looks like

Keep replies short, specific, and quick. A customer messaging your profile is often comparing you against two or three other results at the same time — the business that answers in ten minutes has an advantage over the one that answers tomorrow, even if the eventual answer is identical.

• Answer the actual question first, then add anything else genuinely useful.
• If you can't answer immediately, a short 'checking and will confirm shortly' beats silence.
• Keep pricing and availability claims accurate — the same standard applies here as anywhere else a customer can see: don't quote a price or promise a booking you can't actually honour.
• Move genuinely detailed conversations — a complex quote, a complaint — to phone or email once you've acknowledged the message. Messaging suits quick, specific questions, not lengthy back-and-forth.

When messaging isn't worth turning on

Not every business is well suited to it. A sole operator who's on tools all day and only checks their phone in the evening may find that turning on messaging creates an expectation they can't consistently meet — and an unanswered message thread looks worse than having no messaging option at all.

If that's your situation, it's a reasonable call to leave messaging off and rely on your phone number and direct review link instead, at least until someone can own responses during the day. You can turn it on later once that's in place.