Google has retired the old Q&A section on Business Profiles and replaced it with Ask Maps, where Gemini answers customer questions about your business in real time. The AI builds its answers from your Google Business Profile, your website, your photos, and your reviews, and you do not get to approve what it says before a customer sees it. The only control you have left is the source material, so a complete, current, consistent profile and website is now the difference between the AI quoting you and the AI guessing.
Sometime in the last few months, while you were busy running your actual business, Google deleted the Q&A section from your Business Profile. The place where a customer could ask "do you take walk-ins?" and you could answer is gone. In its place is something called Ask Maps, and here is the part that should make you sit up: it answers questions about your business using AI, in real time, and it does not ask your permission first.
What actually happened to the Q&A section?
Google started phasing out public Q&A on Business Profiles back in December, after cutting off the Q&A tools in November. Its reasoning was honest enough: most Q&A sections were graveyards of three-year-old questions nobody answered. So instead of waiting for a busy owner to reply, Google now has Gemini generate an answer on the spot. A customer types "is there parking?" or "can I bring my dog?" into Maps, and the AI assembles a confident, conversational answer from whatever it can find about you.
Where does the AI get its answers?
From you, sort of. It reads your Google Business Profile, your website, your photos, and your reviews, then speaks on your behalf. That is the whole ballgame. If your profile says one thing and your website says another, the AI picks one. If your hours have not been touched since 2024, it may serve those up to a customer standing in a parking lot in July. And an AI answer that is wrong looks exactly as official as one that is right. It sits on your listing, next to your name, and the customer has no idea you never saw it.
Why does this matter more right now?
Because it is mid-July in Lake Geneva and this is the season that carries the year. Every weekend, thousands of visitors are asking their phones the exact questions the old Q&A used to catch. Are they open Sunday? Do they do reservations? Is it kid friendly? The AI is answering every one of those, right now, for your business, whether your information is ready for it or not. A stale profile in February costs you little. A stale profile in July costs you the customers standing closest to your door.
Want this handled for you, the right way, by someone local?
Get a Free Visibility AuditWhat can you actually control?
The inputs. That is it, and honestly, that is enough. You cannot approve the AI's answers, but you decide what it reads. Make your Google Business Profile complete and current: real hours, real services, real photos, the attributes filled in instead of blank. Make your website say plainly what you do, who it is for, and the practical stuff people actually ask about. Keep reviews coming and reply to them, because the AI reads those too and treats them as evidence. This is the same coherence work that gets you named in AI search results, and now it also scripts what the AI tells customers on Maps. One effort, two payoffs.
Where should you start?
Pick the question a customer asks you most often, then go check whether your profile and website answer it clearly. Most owners find at least one gap in the first five minutes. If you are the hands-on type who wants to fix all of it yourself, my free Marketing Ops Library is a self-paced masterclass covering the exact systems we use to keep client profiles current without anyone babysitting them. And if you would rather just see what the machines currently believe about your business, the free visibility audit shows you where your story contradicts itself and what the AI is likely getting wrong. Either door works. Just do not let a robot freestyle answers about your business all summer.