Google will be removing the call history reports and the Chat and messaging features within Google Business Profiles on July 31, 2024. Google said, “We acknowledge this may be difficult news,” but added, “We occasionally have to make difficult decisions.”

I wondered if Google removed this over privacy issues, but Google said it was because the features had “relatively low usage and we’re prioritizing focus on higher-impact features for merchants.”

Google added call history reporting in 2020, it was missing data for most until the following year but was teased as a way to preview calls.

The chat feature launched as messaging back in 2017. Here is the help document on this change.

Starting on July 15th, Searchers won’t be able to start new chats with you, but existing chats will still work. July 31st, chatting will be fully disabled.

Google is giving you a way to download the historical call history and chat history for now…

I received a combined email that says “Business Profile chat and call history are going away,” but some received individual emails about individual features going away.

Here is a comment on this from Google’s Ad Liaison:

Jason Brown posted a screenshot on X of the email he received from Google about this news. Here is that screenshot:

It reads:

Sohan Jain posted a screenshot of the chat email on X:

It reads:

Also, it seems like Chat and Messaging are not the same because Google has a different email about “messaging” going away via Francastro on X. It says:

Here is the combined email I received on this news:

Forum discussion at Local Search Forum.