Google Business Profile WhatsApp link: how to add it, what customers see, and who answers

Geeta Rawat runs a six-person physiotherapy clinic in Haldwani (an invented clinic, for the examples here). Her Google Business Profile has done the finding for years: “physiotherapist near me” at 9 pm, a tap on Call, and a reception phone ringing in a locked clinic. The calls she lost were the ones from people in pain enough to search at night and polite enough not to call again in the morning.

A Google Business Profile WhatsApp link changes the tap. Instead of a ringing phone, the listing opens a WhatsApp chat with a sentence already typed, and the question waits in an inbox until someone answers it. This piece covers the set-up on both help pages, the link to paste, what the customer sees, what a reply costs after Meta’s October price change, and the part neither help page covers: who answers.

One caveat on the first screen. Google’s help page, read on 15 October 2026, says chat options “are currently available for select regions and might not be available for your Business Profile”. It doesn’t list the regions. If the Chat field isn’t in your profile’s Contact section, that line is why, and there is nothing to configure around it.

How to add WhatsApp to Google My Business (it’s called Business Profile now)

Open your Business Profile, go to Edit profile, then Contact, find Chat, select WhatsApp, paste your click-to-chat URL and save. Both help pages give the same path.

Google’s page adds the conditions. The profile must be claimed and verified. The Chat drop-down offers WhatsApp or Text message, and the field takes either “your WhatsApp click to chat URL or a phone number that can receive text messages”. Two tips from the same page matter for Indian businesses: if you add both options, “only the text message option will be shown to customers”, so don’t add a text number you never read; and different Business Profiles can use the same WhatsApp link, which suits a chain of three clinics with one front desk.

WhatsApp’s page, captured in September and unchanged on 15 October, says the number must be “a valid WhatsApp Business phone number in international format”, and that you can add more than one. It describes the result as “a WhatsApp click to chat button that shows to customers when your business appears in Google Search and Google Maps results”.

Neither page says whether the number has to be on the free WhatsApp Business app or the Business Platform. Either works for the link. What differs is what happens after the tap, which is the rest of this article.

Which link to paste

Paste a click-to-chat link with a pre-filled message, not a bare number.

WhatsApp’s click-to-chat page gives the format: https://wa.me/ followed by the number in international format with no plus sign, zeroes, brackets or dashes, then ?text= and the message, URL-encoded. For Geeta’s clinic, with <number> standing for the clinic’s WhatsApp Business number:

https://wa.me/<number>?text=Hi%2C%20I%20found%20Rawat%20Physio%20on%20Google.%20I%27d%20like%20to

The customer sees “Hi, I found Rawat Physio on Google. I’d like to” in the text box, finishes the sentence, and sends it. Three things are now true that wouldn’t be with a bare number. You know the chat came from Google, because the first line says so. The customer has told you what they want in their own words, so the first reply can be specific. And they have named your business, which is the opening line of an opt-in record if they later agree to hear from you.

Keep the pre-filled text short and leave it open-ended. “I’d like to book a slot” presumes; “I’d like to” invites. The same wa.me format with different text goes on your website, bills and standees, and our guide to adding WhatsApp to a website has the rest of the placements.

What the customer sees on Google Maps WhatsApp chat

A button on the listing, a WhatsApp chat with your sentence in it, and then an ordinary conversation they started.

That last point sets the price. A chat from Google is customer-initiated, so it opens a 24-hour customer service window in which you can send free-form replies, photos, a location pin or a PDF of your fee list. Since 1 October 2026 those replies are service messages with a free allowance of 1,000 per business number per month; after that Meta charges ₹0.115 per delivered message to an Indian number, before GST. The October cost guide has the full table.

Take Geeta’s clinic. Say 350 Google chats a month, three replies each on average, so about 1,050 service messages. The first 1,000 are free and the other 50 cost 50 × ₹0.115, about ₹6 before GST. The figures are illustrative; the point is that answering Google chats is close to free, and the cost sits in the staff time to answer them well.

Message	When	Meta’s charge to an Indian number
Any reply, photo or file	Inside 24 hours of the customer’s last message	1,000 free per number per month, then ₹0.115
Appointment confirmation for a slot they booked	After the window	Utility template, ₹0.115
”Please review us on Google”	After the window	Template; plan as marketing, ₹0.8631
A thumbs-up reaction	Any time	Free

Rates are from Meta’s India rate card effective 1 October 2026, per delivered message, before GST.

SN Suman Negi talking to Rawat Physio

1. Suman Negi:
   Hi, I found Rawat Physio on Google. I'd like to know if you treat frozen shoulder and what the first visit costs 9:12 pm
2. Rawat Physio:
   Hi Suman, yes we do. The first visit is an assessment of about 40 minutes with Dr Rawat. Tomorrow we have 11:30 am and 5 pm open. Would either work? 9:14 pm
   • 11:30 am
   • 5 pm
   • Another day
3. Suman Negi:
   5 pm 9:15 pm
4. Rawat Physio:
   Booked for 5 pm. The clinic is above Canara Bank on Nainital Road; here is the pin. Please bring any X-ray or MRI reports you have. 9:16 pm
5. Tagged: Google · assigned to front desk

Who answers at 9 pm

Someone has to, within the window, and ideally within minutes. A Google chat that gets its first reply the next afternoon has usually been answered by the clinic two listings down.

The free WhatsApp Business app can send an away message outside your hours; our auto-reply guide covers its limits. The trouble is that an away message isn’t an answer, and the app leaves every chat in one list on one phone with nobody assigned. On the Business Platform, a shared inbox gives the chat an owner, and a journey can send the slot buttons above before a person picks it up in the morning.

Whichever you use, write down the rule: every Google chat gets a human reply within your opening hours, and no Google chat is unowned at close of business. Geeta’s version is that the front desk owns Google chats from 9 am to 7 pm and the physiotherapist on evening duty checks the inbox at 9:30 pm. It is a small rule. It is also the whole difference between a listing that books patients and one that collects unanswered questions.

Asking for a Google review on WhatsApp

Yes, you can, with one Google rule and one Meta rule.

Google’s rule first. Its review help page, read on 15 October 2026, says offering “free or discounted goods or services” in exchange for posting, changing or removing reviews “is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited”. So the message is a request, never a deal. Google suggests reminding customers with a review link or a QR code it generates for your profile, and notes that the customer must be signed in to a Google account to review.

Meta’s rule is about category and price. If you ask on the day of the visit, inside the 24-hour window, the request is a service message and costs nothing beyond the allowance. If you ask after the window, it needs an approved template, and Meta decides the category from the content. Meta’s categorization page allows feedback surveys as utility only when they are tied to a specific order or visit, and says “a general/generic survey or request for feedback will not be approved as utility”. A link to post a public review on Google is closer to asking for an endorsement than to asking how the visit went, so budget it as marketing at ₹0.8631 per delivered message and treat a utility approval as a bonus. Marketing templates also need the person’s opt-in to receive messages from you, which a patient who booked through a Google chat hasn’t given unless you asked.

The practical sequence: ask for the review in the window, on the day. If a patient comes in weekly, the window is open most of the time anyway. For 120 after-visit requests a month sent after the window as marketing, the Meta charge is 120 × ₹0.8631, about ₹104 before GST. For the same 120 sent on the day, inside the allowance, it is nothing.

Keep the profile and the chat telling the same story

The customer compares your Google listing with your WhatsApp profile in the space of one tap. Every mismatch costs trust.

Name, address and phone number should be identical on the profile, the WhatsApp business profile and the website, down to the spelling. The WhatsApp display name should be the business name on the listing, within Meta’s display name rules. The hours on Google should be the hours in the away message; a profile that says “Open until 8 pm” and an away message that says “we’re closed” at 7:15 pm is the commonest mismatch we see. If the listing shows an address, the WhatsApp profile should carry the same one, so the location pin you send in the chat matches the Maps pin they came from.

Measuring Google-sourced chats

Count chats whose first message carries your pre-filled Google line, the time to first reply on those chats, and the bookings or orders that came out of them.

Google’s page says you can “check your chat performance metrics” in your Business Profile performance report, and that is worth a look each month for taps. Taps are not chats, though: some people open WhatsApp and send nothing. The honest count is on your side, in the inbox, and the pre-filled text is what makes it possible. Tag every chat whose first message begins with “I found Rawat Physio on Google”, and read three numbers each Monday: Google chats this week, the median minutes to first reply, and appointments booked from them. If the second number is in hours, fix that before touching the listing.

None of this is exact. A customer can delete the pre-filled line and type “hi”. Most leave it, and those who do are enough to show whether the listing is working.

Five mistakes

• The link points at the wrong number. A personal number, a number not yet registered on WhatsApp Business, or the owner’s number when the front desk answers. Register and verify the number first, then publish the link.
• Hours that disagree. The profile says open, the away message says closed, or the reverse. Change both on the same day, every time.
• No owner. The chat arrives on a shared phone, three people see it, nobody replies. Name the owner of Google chats by hour of the day.
• Both chat options added. Google shows only the text-message option, so the WhatsApp link you set up never appears.
• A pre-filled text that says only “Hi”. You lose the source and the question in one stroke. Name the business and Google in the text, and leave the sentence open.

Terms like customer service window, template and service message are in our glossary.

Add the link this week, then watch the inbox at 9 pm for a fortnight. The questions that arrive are the ones your phone was missing.