If you manage a local business listing, a lot has changed this year, and Google rarely announces it. In this guide I cover the Google Business Profile new features that are actually live as of early May 2026, and what each one means for you. That’s WhatsApp and text chat, menus built from a photo, emoji reactions on reviews, replies that get checked before they go public, Google’s automated check-in messages, and AI answers taking the place of Q&A.
For each feature, you’ll find what it is, who can use it, how to set it up and what it does for local visibility. Some of these started small in 2024 or 2025 and only reached most profiles recently. So I’ve given each one an honest date instead of calling everything brand new.
Google Business Profile New Features at a Glance
Here is the short version before the detail.
| Feature | Live since | Who gets it | What you should do |
|---|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp and text chat | Early 2025 (US and most regions) | Verified profiles in supported regions | Add a chat link under Contact |
| AI menu from a photo | Mid-2024, experimental | Food and drink businesses | Upload a clear menu photo in Edit menu |
| Emoji reactions on reviews | March 2025, mobile | Anyone viewing reviews on a phone | Nothing to set up; read the signals |
| Review reply screening | Visible in the API from April 2026 | All verified profiles | Check replies actually went live |
| Automated call, text and WhatsApp check-ins | Owner emails from late March 2026 | Profiles with a verified phone number | Decide whether to keep them on |
| Ask Maps and AI answers instead of Q&A | Ask Maps from 12 March 2026 (US and India) | Searchers on the Maps app | Fill your profile with facts it can answer from |
WhatsApp and Text Messaging as a Contact Option
What It Is
Your profile can show a chat option that opens WhatsApp or a text message to your business. It replaced the old Business Profile chat, which Google shut down in July 2024.
The WhatsApp option first showed up for businesses outside the US. It reached US profiles in January 2025 and opened up to most countries in February 2025. A few markets, including China, Japan and South Korea, were left out at that point.
Who Gets It
You need a claimed and verified profile in a supported region. Google’s help page still says chat is only available in select countries and regions. So if you don’t see the option, that is likely why.
How to Set It Up
- Sign in to your profile and select Edit profile, then Contact.
- Next to Chat, select Edit.
- Pick WhatsApp or Text message from the dropdown.
- Enter a WhatsApp click-to-chat link (for example
https://wa.me/447700900123, using your full number with country code and no plus sign) or a mobile number that can get texts. - Save, then test it from your own phone. I always do this test; a broken link is easy to miss.
One catch: if you add both options, customers only see the text message option. Choose the one your team will actually answer. Full steps are in Google’s help page on chatting with customers.
What It Means for Local Visibility
Chat doesn’t make you rank higher. What it does is turn a searcher who isn’t ready to call into a conversation. Those conversations are leads you’d otherwise lose to a competitor’s call button.
The risk is slow replies. In my opinion, a WhatsApp button nobody answers is worse than no button. Before you switch it on, decide who owns the inbox and how fast you’ll reply during opening hours.
Chat activity shows in your profile performance numbers, so you can see whether people use it.
Menus Built From a Photo of Your Menu
What It Is
Restaurants, cafés and bars can upload a photo of their menu. Google’s AI then turns it into a structured menu with sections, item names, descriptions and prices. Google still labels the feature experimental. It started in July 2024 with a single photo, and PDF menu uploads were added that September.
Who Gets It
Food and drink businesses only. It’s limited to some regions and languages. You also have to accept Google’s Generative AI Additional Terms of Service the first time you use it.
If your menu comes in through the Business Profile API (a direct data feed), usually from a menu management platform, you may not see the option at all.
How to Set It Up
- Open your profile and select Edit menu.
- Choose Photos of menu, then Select photos. You can take a photo right there or upload one.
- Select Generate a menu.
- Check every item and price against your real menu.
- Select Publish and edit, then fix anything the AI misread and add dish photos.
Changes can take 24 to 48 hours to show on Maps and Search. Google’s menu help page has the current eligibility notes.
Getting a Clean Result
- Shoot the menu flat, in good light, with no glare on laminated pages.
- Google’s guidance assumes a menu that fits on one page in one photo. If yours is longer, generate the main menu first and add the rest by hand.
- Watch prices with symbols or ranges, like “£12 / £18”. These are the items most likely to be misread, so I check them first.
- Name dishes the way people search for them. “Chicken tikka masala” is more useful than “Chef’s signature curry”.
What It Means for Local Visibility
A structured menu gives Google text for each item that it can match to dish searches like “vegan ramen near me”. A photo of a menu or a link to a PDF isn’t as clear. I cover the wider picture in my guide to local SEO for restaurants.
If you also run a website, keep its prices the same as your profile. Mismatched details across the web are the same problem I cover in our guide to local citations in 2026. You can mark up the web version using the approach in the schema markup guide.
Emoji Reactions on Maps Reviews
What It Is
Since March 2025, people viewing reviews on mobile Search and Maps can react to someone else’s review with one of five emoji: ❤️, 🙏, 🔥, 😋 or 🤯. Before that, the only option was marking a review as helpful.
Who Gets It
Anyone looking at reviews on a phone. There’s nothing for a business to switch on or off.
What It Means for Local Visibility
Google hasn’t said that reactions affect rankings, so don’t treat them as a ranking factor. I treat them as a free reading of which reviews customers relate to.
Practical uses:
- If one detailed review gets lots of reactions, that’s the story people connect with. Use the theme, but not the reviewer’s words or name, in your posts and on your website.
- Reactions on a negative review suggest other customers agree with it. Fix that issue first.
- Never ask staff, friends or customers to react to reviews in bulk. Fake engagement like this breaks the rules covered in our breakdown of Google’s 2026 review policy.
Review Replies Are Now Checked Before They Go Public
What It Is
Owner replies to reviews used to show as soon as you posted them. In late April 2026, a new field called ReviewReplyState appeared in the Business Profile API with three values: PENDING, APPROVED and REJECTED.
Google’s help pages now say it checks replies against its content policies before publishing them. It asks you to edit a reply that isn’t approved. Google hasn’t formally announced the change, so how strict the checks are and how fast they run isn’t clear yet.
Who Gets It
Every verified profile. You can’t opt out.
What to Do About It
- A day after posting, open the review on Google Maps while signed out (or in a private browser window). Confirm your reply is actually visible.
- If you use a review management tool, ask whether it reads the reply state from the API. If it does, it can flag replies that are pending or rejected.
- Write each reply for that one review. Copy-pasted replies across dozens of reviews look like spam, to customers and to automated filters.
- Follow the content policy basics: no personal details about the reviewer, no offensive language, no promotional spam.
- If a reply is rejected, rewrite it more plainly and try again.
What It Means for Local Visibility
Replies matter mostly because people read them, and replying shows you’re active. A reply that quietly never appears does nothing for you. So the key change is to check, not assume.
If you use AI to draft replies, edit them. Bland, swap-in replies were already a weak look, and now they also have to get past a filter. I’d rather see a short, real reply than a long generic one.
Google May Call, Text or WhatsApp You to Confirm Details
What It Is
In late March 2026, Google began emailing profile owners. It said it may contact the verified phone number on their profile by automated call, text or WhatsApp message to confirm business details. What you reply, including photos, can be added to your profile for you.
Google’s help page on automated calls and texts lists what it asks about: opening hours, whether you offer certain services, wait times, and product prices or stock.
Who Gets It
Profiles with a verified phone number. Google says it only posts updates for you on verified profiles. It emails you each time so you can review or remove the change.
How to Control It
- Go to your profile and select More, then Business Profile settings, then Advanced settings.
- Under Google automated calls and text messages, you’ll see three separate toggles: bookings and inquiries, keeping your profile up to date, and posting on your behalf.
- Switch off the ones you don’t want. To stop texts, you can also reply STOP.
What It Means for Local Visibility
This is Google trying to keep data fresh. Accurate hours and services help you show up for the right searches. The trade-off is control. Whoever answers your phone is, in effect, editing your listing.
Tell front-of-house staff what a real message looks like. Google says it will never ask for payment, card details or passwords, so anyone who does isn’t Google. Also make sure staff give accurate answers, because Google warns that information that breaks its policies can lead to suspension.
AI Answers Replace Q&A, and Ask Maps Arrives
What Changed
Public Q&A on Maps has been winding down since 2025. In December 2025, Google said it was moving to an AI-powered Ask feature. Customers type a question and get an instant answer built from what the business provided and from relevant reviews. I cover the background in Google Business Profile Q&A is gone.
Then on 12 March 2026, Google launched Ask Maps, a Gemini-powered chat feature in the Google Maps app. People can ask detailed, real-world questions, like whether a court has lights for playing at night, and get answers on a map. It draws on information about more than 300 million places and community reviews. At launch it covered the US and India on Android and iOS, with desktop described as coming soon.
Who Gets It
Searchers, not businesses. There’s no setting to turn on. Your profile is the source material.
How to Prepare Your Profile
- Answer any questions still waiting in the Q&A area of your profile. Google says published answers still feed its understanding of your business and may still show in Maps.
- Fill in every relevant attribute: accessibility, payment options, parking, amenities, service options.
- Write a business description with concrete facts: what you do, for whom, where, and anything unusual (open late, wheelchair accessible, dog friendly).
- Add products, services and menu items with plain names.
- Reply to reviews in ways that confirm facts. “Yes, we have step-free access from the car park” is useful text for an AI to find.
What It Means for Local Visibility
AI answers reward profiles that state facts clearly and whose reviews back those facts up. Say a searcher asks Ask Maps for “a quiet café with good Wi-Fi to work from”. If nothing on your profile or in your reviews mentions Wi-Fi, you’re unlikely to be in the answer. See our guide to voice and conversational search for local businesses.
On reporting, Ask Maps views are expected to count as normal Maps impressions, not as a separate line. So you can’t yet see them on their own in your profile insights. The wider pattern looks like what’s happening in web search, which I compare in more detail in AI Overviews vs AI Mode.
What I Left Out, and Why
You may see posts claiming a long list of other 2026 changes, such as new verification methods or a fixed “freshness window” for profiles. I couldn’t confirm those from Google or from reliable reports when I wrote this, so I left them out. My rule: if a claim has no Google source or believable screenshot behind it, wait before you change how you run your profile.
A 30-minute Checklist for This Month
- Add WhatsApp or text chat, but only if someone will answer it.
- Food businesses: generate your menu from a photo, then proofread every price.
- Check that your last ten review replies are actually live.
- Review the automated call and message toggles and tell your staff about them.
- Answer any remaining Q&A in your dashboard and complete your attributes.
- Read the reactions on your most-viewed reviews and note what they tell you.
Conclusion
Taken together, the Google Business Profile new features point one way. Google wants your profile to be a complete, accurate source of facts that its AI can use and customers can act on right away. I’d switch on chat and menus. I’d keep an eye on reply screening and automated check-ins. And Ask Maps rewards profiles that answer questions before anyone asks.
Start with the checklist above. Then make sure your business details match everywhere else they appear online. AI answers lean on the same consistency signals as normal local rankings, so this is time well spent on top of the Google Business Profile new features.
