Google’s Q&A feature sunset: Ask Maps

Google officially discontinued the Q&A API in 2025, and the feature has since been phased out from Google Business Profile.

What replaced it: Ask Maps

In its place, Google introduced Ask Maps, an AI feature powered by Gemini. Instead of relying on other users to answer questions about a business, often inaccurately or with outdated information, Ask Maps generates answers itself, pulling from your business website, your reviews, your listing attributes, and other trusted sources across the web.

Results are personalized based on things like places a user has previously searched for or saved in Maps, to help surface the most relevant recommendations.

Ask Maps doesn’t just answer questions. It can take action: booking a restaurant reservation, saving a place to a list, or sharing it with friends.

Ask Maps launched in the U.S. and India in March 2026. As of August 2026, Google has expanded the core experience to over 150 countries and territories in English, on Android, iOS, and desktop. The newer action features, like food ordering and hotel booking, are rolling out in the U.S. first, with other markets to follow.

What this means for your restaurant or hotel

You have real influence over what Ask Maps tells potential guests, through the sources it actually pulls from:

• Your Google reviews and how you respond to them. Google’s AI uses them to answer prospective guests’ questions.
• The content and accuracy of your own website. Make sure your site clearly answers common questions, like parking, menus, services, and pricing, so the AI can find and use it.
• Your listing details being current and complete. Regularly update your Google Business Profile’s hours, attributes, and details.

This is exactly why review management matters more now, not less. Every response you write to a guest review is now potential source material for the AI answer a future guest sees.

Tell Maps

Google has also rolled out a related feature called Tell Maps, a chat where anyone can suggest changes to a business listing simply by typing or speaking: reporting new opening hours, marking a location as closed, editing attributes, leaving tips, or uploading photos. AI reads the suggestion, finds the listing, and submits the edit, no form required.

It’s currently U.S.-only, with more countries expected to follow. Google says built-in checks review each suggestion before it goes live, though early reports describe mixed results: some changes go through immediately, others get held back.

For your listing, this is one more channel shaping how your business appears online, alongside reviews and Q&A. As it becomes easier for anyone to “say something” about a business, how well Google filters good-faith edits from bad-faith ones becomes a real question, and one worth watching closely as it reaches Europe.

We hope that you found this overview helpful. If you’d like the full picture of setting up and optimizing your listing, check out our complete Google Business Profile Guide.