Red Isle WebIf you open your Google Business Profile and go looking for the Questions and Answers box, the spot where a customer once asked whether you take walk-ins and you or someone else typed back an answer, you will most likely find it gone. There was no email about it, and most owners only notice when they go looking for a question they remember answering.
Google has retired the Q&A section on Business Profiles: it shut down the tool behind it on November 3, 2025, and in December said an AI feature in Google Maps would take its place, where a customer asks a question and Google writes the answer from details like your profile and your reviews.
What exactly did Google shut down?
The first piece to go was the Q&A API, a developer tool that listing software and agencies used to read and post questions and answers for a business. Google gave developers notice in September 2025 and closed it on November 3, describing the work only as updating the Q&A functionality and user experience, with no date or details for a replacement.
The section customers saw followed in December 2025, when a Google product specialist wrote in the Business Profile help forum that Q&A had become hard to navigate and announced an AI-powered Ask button in its place. According to Whitespark, the old questions no longer appear on profiles and owners can no longer add new ones from the dashboard.
What replaced it?
Customers now see an Ask option inside the Google Maps app, which Google has been calling Ask Maps. They type a question about a place, such as whether it has parking or takes walk-ins, and the AI writes an answer, drawing on information the business has provided and on what reviewers have said. BrightLocal notes that you cannot edit or report one of those answers directly.
Can my customers on PEI use it yet?
Island customers may not have it yet, because Google introduced Ask Maps in March 2026 for the United States and India only, and Whitespark's January 2026 check found the earlier version of the feature on American businesses but not Canadian ones. In August 2026, MobileSyrup reported that Google had announced it was coming to Canada. I have not confirmed it is switched on for Island profiles, so try it yourself by opening Google Maps on your phone and asking a question about your own business.
Is it a problem that an AI is answering questions about my business?
Only if the answers are wrong, and since you cannot edit them, what you control is the material the AI works from. Say a Charlottetown groomer's profile lists her hours but nothing about walk-ins, and her website never mentions them either. A customer asks Maps, and the AI has nothing from her to quote.
Whitespark and BrightLocal both point to the same sources. Your profile should have complete hours and services, and your reviews give the AI more to quote when they name a specific service, which is one more reason to ask for them. Your website matters too, where a short answer to each question customers keep asking is easy to find, and it helps when your details match everywhere online.
The good news
The questions customers ask a small business are a short list: hours, parking, whether you take walk-ins, what a first visit or a quote costs. If your website answers each of those in a sentence or two, you have covered the ground the Q&A box used to, and the same page works for ordinary Google searches too.
That is the kind of page I build into every site at Red Isle Web, for Island businesses, at a one-time price with no monthly fee. If you send me a note, I will go through your website and your Google profile and list the questions a customer would ask that neither one answers yet.