Business Profile messaging guidelines

You can communicate with your customers through the chat feature on your Business Profile. For the best interaction experience, follow the guidelines below. The following policies outline forbidden behaviors and provide information on how to to block a conversation or opt out from the service.

Important: We reserve the right to suspend your access to chat on your Business Profile in case of serious or repeated violations of the product policies. Make sure to also follow the guidelines for representing a business on Google.

Guidelines for merchants

Help secure personal & confidential information

Make sure that you don’t provide or request sensitive information during a chat with customers. Sensitive information includes, but is not limited to:

• Credit card numbers
• Social Security, passport, or other government identification numbers
• Login credentials, like passwords

To help keep your customers’ information safe, don’t discuss sensitive content during chats. It’s strictly not allowed to use personal information in ways to which the other party has not consented.

Don't make unacceptable responses

To help ensure customers have a good experience with your business, respond to them in a timely manner.

• Don’t fail to respond to a customer.
• Don’t wait an unreasonable period of time to respond to a customer.

It’s also unacceptable to send irrelevant or unwanted messages to customers who contacted you.

• Don’t message about a product or service unrelated to the original request.
• Don’t message repeatedly with no response.
• Don’t reply with an excessively long message or with excessive use of emojis and URLs.

Don’t misrepresent or make misleading claims

Do not impersonate an organization or individual. Do not make false statements about your identity or qualifications, such as falsely claiming to be an authorized representative of a company. Make sure to follow the guidelines for representing your business on Google.

Do not provide inaccurate promotion information that omits or obfuscates how the user will be billed or charged.

Respond promptly (time requirement)

To help build a better experience for your customers, reply to messages within 24 hours after you receive them. This can promote trust and encourage engagement with your business. To support timely responses, we may deactivate chat for your business if you don’t respond within the timeframe.

Learn more about the chat feature in the Google My Business app.

Guidelines for merchants & consumers

Inappropriate content

Conversations should focus on the business and services offered. Avoid any inappropriate content, including:

• Content that promotes or condones hatred or violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity
• Harassing, bullying, or threatening content toward individuals or groups
• Graphic or violent materials for the sake of disgusting others
• Sexually explicit or pornographic images or videos
• Content that exploits or abuses children

Spam, malware & phishing

Chat is meant for quality conversations between merchants and customers.

• Don’t send spam, such as unsolicited messages or unwanted promotional or commercial content.
• Don’t share content or engage in behaviors that harm or interfere with customers’ devices, network operations, or other infrastructure.
• Don’t use this service for phishing scams.

Illegal activities

Don’t use this service to engage in illegal activities or promote dangerous and illegal acts. Fraudulent or illegal activities aren’t tolerated on Google and may result in account suspension and removal of business information from search results. In those cases, we may report you to the relevant authorities.

It’s also your responsibility to comply with all applicable laws and regulations when using this feature.

Terrorist content

We do not permit terrorist organizations to use this service for any purpose, including recruitment. We also strictly prohibit content related to terrorism, such as content that promotes terrorist acts, incites violence, or celebrates terrorist attacks. If posting content related to terrorism for an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purpose, be mindful to provide enough information so viewers understand the context.