Google revives GBP Messaging with an AI chatbot for your business
A recent discovery suggests Google is reintroducing its GBP Messaging feature, this time embedded with an AI-powered chatbot designed to field inquiries about your business. The tool appears to offer 24/7 support for potential customers, with a handoff option to a human owner when necessary. Here’s a concise breakdown of what’s being reported and what it could mean for local businesses.
What’s new in GBP Messaging with AI
- Accessing Messages: The Messages button within the Google Business Profile (GBP) user interface (referred to in reports as the NMX) opens a page featuring four tabs:
- Messages
- Insights
- Settings
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Promotion
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How messages are organized: Conversations are divided into two categories:
- Needs your attention
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Handled by your AI agent
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Insights (coming soon): A forthcoming analytics area is expected to provide data on your audience, conversions, and conversation patterns. The idea is to deliver insights into what people are asking about and how interactions trend over time.
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Settings options: The Settings area reportedly includes:
- A welcome message for new chats
- Conversation starters to spark engagement
- The ability to upload your business logo
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A Customer handoff toggle to alert you when the AI agent requires human input
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The Promote tab: This tab is described as particularly intriguing. It suggests you’ll be able to launch ads quickly so customers can message you directly from Google Search results. In practice, this could mean creating Google Ads that drive engagement with your GBP AI Chatbot directly from the ad unit.
A little historical context
- GBP messaging has seen a rocky timeline in recent years. It was removed in July 2024.
- Early 2025 brought messaging options through WhatsApp and traditional text messaging integrations.
- The latest iteration appears to reintroduce native GBP messaging, but with a more advanced AI layer and expanded capabilities.
Why this could matter for your business
- Potential benefits:
- 24/7 customer engagement: An AI assistant can answer common questions about services, hours, locations, and offerings around the clock, improving responsiveness for prospective customers.
- Resource optimization: A chatbot can handle routine queries, freeing human team members to focus on more complex conversations or tasks.
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Data-driven improvements: The anticipated Insights section could help you identify popular questions, peak times, and common customer pain points, informing both marketing and operations.
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Important caveats:
- AI accuracy: Like any automated agent, the AI may occasionally provide incorrect or incomplete information. Ongoing monitoring and timely human oversight will be essential.
- Hand-off workflow: Effective handoffs depend on clear triggers and reliable notifications so that human staff can promptly intervene when needed.
- Data protection and trust: Ensure your use of AI complies with privacy expectations and local regulations, and maintain transparency with customers about when they’re interacting with a bot versus a human.
Practical tips for early adopters
- Prepare a strong welcome message: Craft a concise, friendly greeting that sets expectations and provides value right away.
- Create helpful conversation starters: Add prompts that guide users to common questions or actions (e.g., hours, services offered, locations, contact options).
- Brand your AI chat: Upload your logo to reinforce brand consistency and trust in automated interactions.
- Enable and test handoff: Turn on the customer handoff option and establish a straightforward process for the human team to take over when needed.
- Plan for ongoing monitoring: Regularly review AI-driven conversations, refine replies, and train the bot with new prompts as your offerings evolve.
What the email footnote might indicate
- A reference to an email address such as rbmpilot-external @ google.com was noted in discussions. The exact meaning of this alias isn’t fully explained in public summaries, and details about its role or scope remain unclear.
Bottom line
The reintroduction of GBP Messaging—with an integrated AI chatbot and optional ads-driven engagement—signals a significant shift in how local businesses can reach and assist customers via Google. If you manage a GBP presence, this could be a compelling opportunity to enhance responsiveness and capture more inquiries directly from search results. However, as with all AI-enabled tools, careful setup, ongoing oversight, and a clear handoff path to human agents will be critical to ensuring accuracy and a positive customer experience.
If you’d like to stay ahead of these developments, consider monitoring GBP-related updates from Google and testing the new features in a controlled manner once they become widely available. Special thanks to Deni from our SEO Services team for spotting these details.
