Google has added the messages button back to the Google Business Profile dashboard within Google Search. Google use to have a feature like this but I believe removed it but now it is possibly coming back. This feature was live for a few hours on Thursday morning and removed later, I assume because it was accidently pushed out to everyone before it was ready.

This was first spotted by Muhammad Hussain who posted about it on LinkedIn and wrote, "Google is quietly rolling out an exclusive pilot program that integrates an automated conversational AI Agent directly inside Google Business Profile Messaging."

Here is the button that I see for my business:

When I click on it, I get taken into the messaging system:

You can see there is a section named "Handled by your Al agent." This does not seem to be the automated responses feature that Google has reolled out a while ago, but more of an AI Agent to respond to customers - which seems more dangerous.

All the sections are empty for me, including the messages, insights, settings and promote. Promote seems to try to send you to Google Ads.

Do you see it? I do. Well, I did - Google seems to have removed it now.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn and Local Search Forum.