Google Business Profile Retires Q&A Feature, Reshaping How Customers Get Answers
Published 2026-01-14
Google has discontinued the Questions & Answers feature on Google Business Profile, according to local SEO trackers, removing a tool that previously let searchers ask a business a public question directly on its listing. Industry coverage of the change describes the feature as effectively dead in 2026 after being phased out in late 2025.
The Q&A section had let prospective customers ask things like parking availability, appointment policies, or accepted payment types, with either the business or other users able to reply publicly on the listing itself. Local SEO publication Explore Digital reported that without the feature, Google will still attempt to generate answers to common searcher questions on its own โ just without direct input from the business owner, using whatever other data it can find.
That shift puts more weight on other parts of a profile and a business's own website to proactively cover the questions customers used to ask directly. Explore Digital's rundown of 2026 changes noted that Google has also become quicker to flag a profile as "stale," with multiple guides now warning of visibility drops when a listing goes 30 or more days without a new photo or update.
Local SEO consultancy SterlingSky, which tracks granular Google Business Profile changes on an ongoing basis, has documented a string of related interface changes through 2026, including new scheduling options for Google Posts across multiple locations and a new "Products at this location" link appearing on some search results.
For business owners, the practical takeaway is that a detailed, current business description, a complete FAQ section on the business's own website, and frequent photo updates now do more of the work that the Q&A feature used to handle. Building that information directly into a ListPilot directory plan alongside a complete Google Business Profile helps make sure the answers customers are looking for are available somewhere Google's automated systems โ and AI answer tools โ can find them.
Google has not published a formal replacement for Q&A, and local SEO practitioners are recommending business owners audit their profile descriptions and attributes to fill the gap left behind.