Google Search Won’t Let You Start New Chats With Businesses

Yesterday, July 15th, Google ended support for new chats to be initiated within Google Local, Google Business Profiles, in Google Search and Google Maps. This is not a surprise, Google told us in May this was coming and now it is here.

Google wrote back then, “starting July 15, customers will no longer be able to start new chat conversations with your business from Google. Customers in existing chat conversations will be notified that chat will be phased out.”

Then “starting July 31, chat functionality in Google Business Profile will end. This means you’ll no longer receive new chat messages. You’ll no longer be able to see your business’ call history in Google Business Profile. Customers will still be able to find and contact your business via Google Search and Maps.”

Yesterday afternoon, Google sent out an email as a reminder, saying:

We’re reaching out to remind you that we’ll be winding down Google’s chat and call history features in Google Business Profile. Starting today, July 15, 2024, Google will stop creating new conversations, and all chat functionality will end on July 31, 2024.

Please note, customers will still be able to find and contact your business via Google Search and Maps – and learn more information about you from your website links, business description, photos, and anything else you share on your Business Profile. You’ll also continue to be able to receive calls from your Business Profile and track other engagement metrics for your business, including web traffic or directions requests.

It’s important to us that your Business Profile continues to be a helpful tool for you to manage your business. If you have questions about this change, you can learn more here.

Here is a screenshot of that email:

I have a ton of details on this change in my story from May.

If you have not downloaded your chat history, you may want to do that now. This was a big deal when it was announced and got a lot of media attention.

Forum discussion at X.