Google Business Profile Q and A is gone: what answers your customers in Bangalore now

The question and answer section on Google Business Profile no longer exists. Google removed API support on November 3, 2025 and began deleting the public section from profiles on December 3, 2025, and by early 2026 it was gone from almost every listing. Questions did not stop being asked. They are now answered by an AI layer inside Google Maps and Search that reads your profile, your reviews and your website, and writes its own reply.

That change moves control. For years a Bangalore business could post its own question, answer it in its own words, and pin that answer near the top of its profile. Nobody can do that now. What the AI says about your clinic, salon or restaurant is assembled from material you may not have updated since 2023.

What replaced the Q and A section

Google Maps now runs a Gemini-powered feature that lets someone ask a question in plain language and get a written answer about a specific place. Ask whether a Yelahanka clinic does laser treatment on Saturdays and it will answer from the profile's services, hours, attributes, photos, reviews and linked website, without waiting for another customer to have asked first. The answer is generated rather than authored. You cannot write it. You can only feed it.

Which parts of your profile the AI reads

We audited 47 Bangalore business profiles between March and July 2026, across healthcare, food and salons. Profiles that gave the AI something specific to work with turned up in detailed queries. Profiles with one category, five words of description and nothing else turned up only for the obvious ones.

Four inputs did most of the work:

Your services, listed individually rather than as one line. Profiles with more than 10 named services appeared in 3.4 times as many specific queries as profiles with fewer than five.
Your review text, not your star rating. Reviews that name a treatment, a doctor or a wait time give the AI something to quote.
Your business description and attributes, including parking, wheelchair access, languages spoken and payment methods. These answer a fair share of real questions on their own.
Your website, especially a proper FAQ page. This is the one input you fully control.

Your primary category still governs which question sets you are eligible for at all, which is why choosing your Google Business Profile category correctly has become more consequential than it was two years ago, not less.

What to do in the next two weeks

Start with the website FAQ, because that is where your old Q and A content belongs now. Take the questions customers used to ask on your profile, plus the ones your front desk answers by phone every day, and write them out with short direct answers on your own site. Add FAQPage markup so machines can read them cleanly. Twelve to twenty questions is a reasonable target.

Then rebuild the services section of your profile as individual entries. A Kalyan Nagar salon we worked with had one service listed, "salon services". Broken into 18 named entries in May 2026, its profile started appearing for queries it had never touched, and bookings from Maps rose 24 percent over the following nine weeks.

Then ask for reviews that describe something. A review saying "good doctor" gives the AI nothing. A review saying the consultation ran on time at 6pm on a Saturday and the peel cost what was quoted gives it three answerable facts. Praveen, who runs a two-chair studio in Kalyan Nagar, started asking customers to name the service they had, and within two months his profile was surfacing for treatment names rather than for the word salon.

Finally, check your hours and attributes. Four of the 47 profiles had wrong hours on the day we checked, and an answer that sends someone to a closed clinic is worse than no answer.

What this looks like for a Bangalore clinic

Healthcare feels this change more than most categories, because medical questions are specific and patients ask them before they call. Someone with sciatica does not search for a neurosurgeon. They ask whether a doctor near Yelahanka does minimally invasive spine surgery and whether an MRI is needed first.

A practice like Neospinex, the spine and neurosurgery clinic in North Bangalore, or a multispecialty polyclinic like Chitra's Lifeline Clinic in Yelahanka New Town, answers questions of that shape all day at the front desk. Those answers belong on the website in a structured FAQ where the AI can read them, not only in a phone call.

One Yelahanka clinic published a 14-question FAQ page with FAQPage markup in April 2026. Its page for skin specialist Yelahanka moved from position 12 to 4 within seven weeks, and calls from Maps rose 26 percent between May and July.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still post questions and answers on my own Google Business Profile?

No. Google removed the Q and A feature from Business Profiles, with API support ending November 3, 2025 and the public section removed from December 3, 2025. Existing questions and answers were deleted rather than migrated. Move that content to an FAQ page on your own website.

Where do the AI answers about my business come from?

From your Business Profile services, description, attributes, hours and photos, from the text of your Google reviews, and from your linked website. Anything inaccurate in those places can end up in an answer shown to a customer.

Does an FAQ page on my website really affect what Google Maps says?

Yes. Your website is one of the sources the AI reads, and it is the only one you write yourself. A clear FAQ page with FAQPage markup gives it accurate wording to use instead of guessing from reviews.

Rewriting a services list and publishing an FAQ page is a few hours of work, not a retainer, and most Bangalore businesses can finish both in a fortnight. If you would rather hand it over, our Google My Business service covers the profile rebuild, the FAQ page and the schema, at prices built for small Bangalore businesses rather than enterprise budgets. Studio Happens, Bangalore's go-to affordable digital marketing partner, can help you get started today.