If you have looked for the Questions and Answers section on your Google Business Profile recently and could not find it, that is not a display error. Google officially discontinued the Q&A API on November 3, 2025, and the public-facing section has been phasing out progressively since December 2025. New profiles are created without Q&A. Existing Q&A content is frozen and being removed over time.
What replaced it is Ask Maps, a Gemini-powered feature that generates real-time answers to customer questions rather than displaying static, user-submitted threads. This change has direct consequences for how your business is described to potential customers, and unlike the old Q&A, you have no direct control over the answers generated. You only control the sources they are drawn from.
What Ask Maps is and how it works
When a user asks a question about your business directly in Google Maps, Ask Maps uses Google's Gemini AI to generate an answer in real time. It does not pull from a Q&A thread. It assembles an answer from multiple sources simultaneously:
- Your GBP profile information: description, attributes, hours, services, categories
- Customer reviews and your responses to those reviews
- Your website content
- Your profile photos
- Other publicly available information about your business
The critical difference from the old Q&A is that you never see the questions being asked or the answers being generated. A potential customer can ask "do they have outdoor seating?" or "is parking available?" and receive an AI-generated answer right now, without you knowing it happened.
Why this matters even if you never used Q&A
Many businesses never actively managed their Q&A section. They assume its removal does not affect them. That assumption is incorrect for two reasons:
- Third-party answers from the old Q&A may have fed the AI during the transition. If users had answered questions on your profile, and some of those answers were inaccurate, that information may have influenced how the AI describes your business. You had no control over it then, and you have no way to correct it directly now.
- Ask Maps is generating answers about your business that you cannot see. If your profile description is thin, your attributes are incomplete or your website does not clearly answer common customer questions, the AI produces approximate answers. You receive no notification when this happens.
What you can control: the four source levers
You cannot edit Ask Maps answers directly. You can optimize the sources the AI uses to generate them. That is the new operational logic.
1. Complete every GBP field
Your description, attributes, hours, services and secondary categories are all potential sources for Ask Maps. A thin description or empty attribute fields leave gaps the AI fills with approximations. Write your description as if it were answering the questions your customers most frequently ask before visiting: parking, payment methods, accessibility, service specifics. If your profile answers those questions clearly, the AI has the right material to work with.
2. Build a detailed FAQ page on your website
Ask Maps extracts information from your website. A structured FAQ page that answers common customer questions in a clear question-and-answer format is the modern functional equivalent of the old Q&A section. Add FAQ schema markup to that page to make it easier for Google's AI systems to read and use your content accurately.
3. Write review responses that contain useful information
Ask Maps draws from reviews and owner responses. A review response that naturally mentions a specific service, a feature of your location or a common customer concern becomes an information source for the AI. This is one of the least obvious but most actionable levers available to you after the Q&A removal.
4. Recover and repurpose your old Q&A content
If your profile had Q&A content before the removal, that content represented real questions your customers were asking. Before it disappears entirely, recover what you can and repurpose it: integrate those questions and answers into your GBP description, into your attribute fields, into Google Posts or into the FAQ page on your website.
Attributes: the most underused source for Ask Maps
Attributes on your GBP profile answer exactly the type of questions users were asking in the old Q&A section. "Do you accept card payments?" "Is there wheelchair access?" "Do you offer delivery?" Each attribute you fill in is a direct, accurate answer the AI can use. Most profiles leave the majority of available attributes blank.
Completing your attributes takes less than an hour and directly improves the accuracy of AI-generated answers about your business in Google Maps. It is the highest-impact, lowest-effort action available after the Q&A removal.
For agencies: how the Q&A removal changes the service scope
For agencies managing GBP profiles for clients, the Q&A removal eliminates one operational task but creates two new deliverables with genuine value:
- Systematic audit and completion of all client profile attributes
- FAQ page creation or optimization on the client's website to feed accurate information to Ask Maps
Both actions have measurable impact on the quality of AI-generated answers about your clients' businesses. That impact is presentable as a concrete deliverable in monthly reports, positioned as proactive management of the Ask Maps source layer rather than a replacement for a deprecated feature.
For the full picture on GBP optimization after the Q&A change, see our complete guide to optimizing your Google Business Profile in 2026. Check your profile's current state with the free LocalEdge scan and see how LocalEdge monitors your profile.
