For years, the Google Business Profile Q&A section gave customers a public place to ask practical questions about a company, from opening hours to the exact services on offer. It also became a quiet but genuinely powerful local SEO tool for businesses that used it well. Unless you have been tracking the changes closely, you may be surprised to learn that this feature is now being retired. Here is what happened, why the Q&A box mattered, and what your business should do next to keep winning local customers.
Google has officially ended support for the Q&A system. The first clear signal came on 3 November 2025, when the My Business Q&A API was discontinued. From that point, businesses could no longer read or post questions and answers using the API, and the associated notifications that alerted owners to new activity stopped arriving.
Soon afterwards, Google confirmed that the public-facing Q&A section was also being retired as part of a larger shift on the platform. Business owners had already started noticing the feature disappearing from some profiles before any formal announcement, which created understandable confusion across forums and support threads. By early 2026, the retirement was widely reported and the familiar Q&A box had vanished from many Google Business Profiles.
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| 3 November 2025 | The My Business Q&A API was discontinued. Reading or posting questions through the API stopped working, along with the associated new question and answer notifications. |
| December 2025 | Google ended support for the Q&A system behind the scenes and confirmed that the public Q&A feature was being retired. |
| Into 2026 | The public Q&A section disappeared from Google Business Profiles, with the discontinuation widely confirmed across industry reporting. |
The situation is easy to misread because the change rolled out gradually. Even in 2026, guides describing how the Q&A feature used to work are still circulating online, while tutorials published as recently as early 2025 were still explaining how to add questions to a profile. If you are unsure whether the feature is still active on your own account, the safest assumption is that it is gone for good.
The Google Business Profile Q&A feature was valuable for two separate reasons. First, it was a useful source of information for customers and clients. A well-maintained Q&A section answered common questions before a potential customer ever needed to pick up the phone, which removed friction from the buying process.
Second, it was a powerful local SEO tool. In the public Q&A section, customers could ask questions about a business and anyone with a Google account could respond. That activity created fresh, relevant, locally focused content in a prominent place on the profile. For businesses in competitive local markets, every visible signal of relevance and engagement helped them stand out when customers compared options on Google Maps and in local search results.
Some business owners struggled with the feature even while it was active. The option to manage questions was never especially well signposted, and Google support threads show owners who had added questions in the past but could not find the controls to add more. For anyone who mastered it, though, Q&A became a dependable way to publish useful answers in a location where customers were already looking.
The retirement of Q&A removes one public content surface from your profile, but it does not remove the need for strong local SEO. What it changes is the way you answer customer questions and demonstrate relevance to Google.
The broader shift is towards a more streamlined Business Profile, where information is expected to be accurate, complete, and kept up to date. Businesses that treated Q&A as their only public answer channel now need to make sure the rest of the profile carries that weight. Reviews, the business description, service listings, photos, and regular updates all play a part in showing customers what you offer and why they should choose you.
For established businesses in construction, engineering supply, and other trade services across Scotland and the UK, the practical effect is simple. The questions that customers used to type into the Q&A box have not gone away. They are now being asked over the phone, through website contact forms, and in person. Your job is to make sure the answers are just as easy to find.
Customers still want to know whether you cover their area, how quickly you can quote, and whether you are properly insured and accredited. Without a public Q&A box, those answers need to live somewhere else. These are the most effective places to put them:
The businesses that come out of this change strongest will be those that treat customer questions as content to be planned, rather than messages to be answered reactively. A customer who finds a clear answer on your website or in your review responses has already been half convinced before they contact you.
If you were relying on Q&A as part of your local search presence, now is the time to audit the rest of your profile and close any gaps. These steps will help you maintain visibility and turn profile views into enquiries:
None of these steps depends on a single platform feature. That is the point. A resilient local SEO strategy spreads your information across your website, your reviews, and your profile so that no single change by Google can wipe out your visibility overnight.
Yes. Google discontinued the Q&A feature on Google Business Profiles, beginning with the supporting API on 3 November 2025. Google then confirmed that the public Q&A section was being retired from December 2025 as part of a wider change to the platform. If the Q&A box has vanished from your profile, that is the reason.
Not through the old public Q&A box. With that feature retired, customers now reach you through the contact methods shown on your profile, such as phone and website links. The practical replacement is a clear website FAQ page and a profile that answers common questions in its description, service areas, and regular posts.
Google has not introduced a direct replacement for the public Q&A section. The retirement is part of a broader shift in how the platform handles business information and customer interaction. The sensible response is to make your website answer common questions clearly and to keep your Google Business Profile fully up to date so customers can find what they need without a public question box.
Google has not published a detailed explanation for the removal, but it describes the change as part of a larger move towards other ways of surfacing business information. Rather than depending on one public section, spread useful answers across your website, your review replies, and the posts you publish on your Business Profile.
