Google Removed Q&A From Your Profile: What Now

Google did not just delete your Q&A. It took away the one place you could write the answer yourself and gave the job to Gemini. Now, when someone asks Google Maps whether you do weekend calls or serve their town, an AI writes the answer from your profile fields, your reviews and your website. So the fix is not to find a new Q&A box. It is to make sure every question customers used to ask already has a plain answer in those three places.

This is what changed, with dates from Google's own pages, what you can still save, and three fixes being sold right now that either do nothing or break Google's rules. If you have never set up the basics, start with our Google Business Profile setup guide and come back.

What exactly did Google remove, and when?

Google removed the ability to post new public questions and answers, first through software tools and then on the listing itself. It happened in steps over about four months, which is why owners saw different things on different days.

The November date is the one that broke tools. If you paid for a listing manager, Moz Local's help page now says its Q&A section "will be read-only", and anything that promised to "auto-post Q&A" has nothing left to post to. Google also retired the new-question and new-answer notifications, so no tool can alert you to questions any more.

On r/localseo, the thread that surfaced this change put it bluntly: Google "has removed the Q&As section from Google Business Profiles as of a couple days ago" and replaced it with a "Know Before You Go" panel and an "Ask A Question" box. One agency owner replied: "I seriously just uploaded Q and As a couple months ago for about 25 clients. Now it's suddenly gone?"

What does Google's AI read to answer questions now?

Google says the AI answers from "your answers and relevant reviews," and its Maps help adds your profile information and web sources. In the words of the Google announcement, instead of waiting for a response, "customers can ask their question directly in Google Maps and get an updated, instant answer based on your answers and relevant reviews."

In practice there are four inputs, and you control them to very different degrees:

Google's Ask Maps announcement says Maps "analyzes information from over 300 million places, including reviews from our community of more than 500 million contributors." That tells you where the weight sits. The question a customer used to type into your Q&A box is now answered from whatever those sources agree on. If your profile says nothing about weekend work and one review says "they couldn't come until Monday," that review is the answer.

An r/localseo commenter summed up the result: "If you don't spell it out on your site, Google's just gonna guess."

Save what you already wrote

Your existing answers are the most valuable thing left from Q&A, so keep them accurate and copy them somewhere you own. Google's announcement says your published questions and answers "will continue to power Google's understanding of the real world and may be shown in Maps," and that you can find them under the Q&A section in your profile.

Owners on the Local Search Forum describe what is left: "I am still able to edit or delete existing published questions and answers, but I cannot add new ones." So do three things this week:

1. Open the old Q&A in your profile manager and read every answer. Anything with an old price, a service you dropped or a town you stopped serving is now feeding an AI. Edit or delete it.
2. Delete stranger answers that are wrong. Q&A always let anyone answer. A wrong answer from a random Maps user is now frozen training material.
3. Copy the good answers to your website. In that same r/localseo thread, the advice to the agency with 25 clients was: "You can/should copy and paste them into a page on their site. It wasn't a waste of time." Our guide to FAQ content AI search will quote covers how to write them so they get lifted.

Three fixes being sold right now that backfire

The most common advice on page one is to stuff reviews with keywords, add FAQ schema for rich results, and mark up your own reviews. Two of those do nothing, and one breaks Google's written policy.

1. Telling customers what to write in reviews

Several agency guides now push "narrative" reviews that name the service and the town, and one commenter in the r/GoogleMyBusiness Gemini thread said they coach clients' customers on "service and location keywords." Google's Maps content policy says the opposite. When soliciting reviews, merchants "should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included." It specifically bans "merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content."

What is allowed: to "solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review." Ask everyone, the same way, and let them write what they want. We cover a compliant ask in getting more Google reviews, and why a discount for a review is out in review incentives.

The owners in that thread were not asking for tricks anyway. The top comment, with 25 upvotes: "Some of us have a hard time getting people to review us at all." An owner with over 250 reviews collected over five-plus years said reviews come back "short and sweet. Never do they refer to the type of service they used us for." That is normal, and it is why your own fields have to carry the detail.

2. Adding FAQ schema to "replace" Q&A

FAQ markup does not bring back a Q&A box, and it will not give a plumber or a salon an FAQ rich result. Google's Search Central changelog updated its FAQ documentation "to state that the feature is only shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites." The written FAQ on the page is what helps, because that is text. The markup is optional.

3. Marking up your own Google reviews on your website

One video on this change, from a Google Business Profile software vendor, tells owners to paste their Google rating and review snippets into their site's schema. Google's review snippet rules say local business review markup is "only for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses." Reviews of yourself, on your own site, are the self-serving case Google excludes. You will not get stars from it. Put real review quotes on the page as text if you like, and link to your profile.

The 20-minute test: what is Google saying about you?

Ask Google's AI the questions your customers used to ask, on your phone, and write down every answer that is wrong, vague or missing. Ask Maps is on the Android and iOS apps in the U.S. and India, with desktop still listed as "coming soon," so do this on a phone.

Open Google Maps, tap Ask Maps under the search bar, and ask about your own business by name. Then ask the generic version a customer would type. Use your real questions. For most service businesses these are the ten that come up:

1. Do you serve [town]?
2. Are you open on Saturdays or evenings?
3. Do you do emergency or same-day calls?
4. Roughly how much does [your main job] cost?
5. Do you charge for estimates or a call-out fee?
6. Are you licensed and insured?
7. Which brands or systems do you work on?
8. How far ahead do I need to book?
9. What payment methods do you take? Financing?
10. What warranty do you give?

Score each answer: right, wrong, or "I don't have that information." A wrong answer is urgent. A "no information" answer is a gap your competitor may fill. Google's own Maps help is candid that "AI-powered answers can sometimes be incorrect," so do not assume the answer is right because it sounds confident.

When an answer is wrong, tap the thumbs-down under it, pick a reason and describe the problem. Google Maps Help lists that as the way to flag an answer that is inaccurate. Then fix the source, because feedback alone does not change what the AI reads.

Where each answer needs to live now

Every question needs an answer in the place Google reads first for that kind of fact. Here is where each of the ten goes:

Two limits to know. Google caps the business description at 750 characters and says not to put URLs in it, so it cannot hold everything. That is why the website carries the long answers. And if your website cannot be read by crawlers, or you do not control it, the AI loses its biggest source; our post on why a website does not show up in ChatGPT covers the usual causes, and if an old agency still holds the login, taking back your website and Google accounts comes first.

Write the website answers the way the earlier r/localseo thread suggested: include cost. As its author put it, "Give a range, even if it's a large range, if you have to but do something." A customer asking Google "how much" gets an answer either way. Better it comes from you.

Watch the new ways other people can edit you

With Q&A gone, three other doors let customers and Google itself change what your profile says, and you need to check each one monthly.

Tell Maps tips. Google's Tell Maps help page says customers can post short tips, which "may appear for others to see across Google, in places like the 'Know before you go' panel." They can also report hours, mark places closed and edit attributes through the same feature. It is US only for now. Search your business in the Maps app and read the panel.

Collected info. Google may contact your business "using automated messages via call, text, or WhatsApp" to confirm details, and what you say "may be used to update your profile." You can review it under Edit profile, then Collected info. The catch, in Google's words: "Deleting collected information removes it from Google's records but does not change other details already on your Business Profile." If wrong hours already went live, fix the hours field too. An r/GoogleMyBusiness post on September's changes dated this tab to September 14, 2026.

Suggested edits. Anyone can suggest an edit to a profile they do not own. Check your profile for pending or applied changes, especially category, hours and phone number.

Should you let Gemini manage your profile?

Gemini can now update your profile and draft replies, which saves time, but check the eligibility rules and read everything before it posts. Google's Gemini help page says that once connected, Gemini can update your hours, contact info and action links, draft review replies and posts, summarise feedback themes from reviews, and show performance metrics and search keywords.

The r/GoogleMyBusiness thread that announced it reported a "Business Notebook" that flags missing info. Google's page confirms the notebook suggests actions like adding missing hours, a description or an exterior photo. The eligibility rules are stricter than most posts mention:

• You must own or manage only one verified Business Profile.
• You must use a personal Google account, not a work or school account.
• Keep Activity must be on.
• It works only in the Gemini web app at gemini.google.com, and not in the European Economic Area or the UK.

It is a good fit for a one-location owner who never gets round to updating holiday hours. Two cautions. A drafted review reply is still your public reply, so read it; our guide to responding to bad reviews explains why tone matters more than speed. And Gemini keeps your fields tidy, but it cannot know your warranty terms or call-out fee unless you tell it.

Your checklist

Run this once now and the monitoring part monthly:

• Read every old Q&A answer in your profile manager. Edit what is out of date, delete what is wrong.
• Copy the good answers onto a website FAQ page, in plain words.
• Run the 20-minute Ask Maps test with your ten real questions. Thumbs-down every wrong answer.
• Fill every profile field that applies: services with descriptions, service area, hours, special hours, attributes.
• Rewrite the description (750 characters max) to cover what you do, where, how long you have been doing it, and emergency availability if you offer it.
• Put price ranges, fees, warranty and booking lead time on your website.
• Ask every customer for a review the same way, with no script and no incentive.
• Monthly: read the Know before you go panel, Collected info, and any suggested edits.
• Re-run the Ask Maps test after 30 days and compare.

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, for one location, most of this is an afternoon's work plus fifteen minutes a month. The Q&A cleanup, the ten-question test, the profile fields and a solid FAQ page are all things an owner can do without any tools. Nothing in this post needs software you do not already have.

It stops being worth your own time in three cases. When you have several locations, because Gemini's profile tools will not connect and each profile needs the same audit. When the wrong answers keep coming back after you fix your own fields, which usually means the AI is reading something outside your profile: an old directory listing, a stale page, or a review theme. And when the question is bigger than Maps: the same content gaps decide whether you appear in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT, which lean on third-party sources too; see which review sites ChatGPT uses.

Whether any of this is worth the effort depends on how your customers find you. If most come from Google Maps, it is urgent. Our look at whether AI search matters for local service businesses helps you judge, and once the answers are right, make sure the page they land on turns visits into calls: website conversion rate benchmarks show what to expect.

The Q&A box was never fully yours: anyone could post in it. What replaced it is less direct but more honest. The answer Google gives about you is now roughly the sum of what you, your customers and your website say. Make sure your part of that is complete, and check what the AI says about you every month.