Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that it is not a bad SEO practice to link to your WhatsApp number on your site. This is despite what some SEO toolsets say, linking to a WhatsApp number, phone number or fax number is fine and Google does not judge your site differently based on the type of number you link to.
The question was “Google doesn’t like links to a WhatsApp number?” John responded “It’s fine to link to your WhatsApp or phone number (even fax number).”
Here are those tweets so you have more context:
It might be Google not considered whatsapp link in the website i also got the same error in SEMrush audit
— keyur shah | SEO (@Keyurshah3535) June 21, 2022
It’s fine to link to your WhatsApp or phone number (even fax number). I think semrush is just being a bit too picky there.
— 🐝 johnmu.xml (personal) 🐝 (@JohnMu) June 21, 2022
So no need to worry about putting WhatsApp numbers on your site for Google SEO reasons – it is fine either way.
Forum discussion at Twitter.