Blog · 29 October 2026 · 8 min read
What the Q and A Section Really Does for Your Listing
The questions section is the only part of your profile that strangers can write in, that you cannot delete, and that sorts itself by popular vote. Most owners ignore it.
The least managed part of the profile
Of everything on a Google Business Profile, the questions section gets the least attention and causes the most avoidable damage.
It sits below the reviews, it fills up with questions from people who have never been your customer, and anyone can answer them, including your competitors.
I audit it on every account I take on, and roughly half the time I find at least one wrong answer sitting there with upvotes, being read by every prospect.
The myths below are the ones I hear most. Each is followed by what is actually the case.
Myth: only customers can ask questions
Anyone with a Google account can ask, and they do not need to have visited, bought, or ever heard of you before that morning.
The reality is that a good share of the questions on a busy listing come from people comparing options, and some come from nobody useful at all.
That is not a reason to ignore the section. It is the reason to read it, because those questions are a free list of the objections standing between a search and a call.
A plumbing client of mine found three separate questions asking whether he worked on weekends. He did. It was nowhere on his profile.
Myth: you can delete a question you do not like
You cannot. You can report it, and reports succeed only when the content breaks a policy, such as spam or offensive language.
A question that is merely awkward, or that reveals something you would rather not discuss, stays. The only control you have is the answer underneath it.
This is why answering fast matters more here than anywhere else on the profile. The first good answer sets the frame for everyone who reads it afterwards.
Treat an awkward question the way you would treat it on the phone. Answer it plainly, in one or two sentences, and move on.
Myth: whoever answers first wins
Position in the section is driven by upvotes, not by order of posting. The most upvoted question appears at the top, and the most upvoted answer appears under it.
So a wrong answer with four votes outranks your correct answer with none. That is the mechanic almost nobody knows about.
The fix is unglamorous. After you answer, upvote your own answer once, and if the question matters, ask a colleague or a satisfied customer to upvote it too.
Do not buy votes or run a vote campaign. A handful of genuine votes is enough to settle the order, and anything larger looks exactly like what it is.
Myth: it is a ranking factor
There is no evidence that activity in the questions section moves your position in the map pack, and I would not sell it as a ranking tactic.
What it does affect is the decision a person makes once they are already looking at you, which is a different and often more valuable thing.
This is the same honest framing I use for profile posts. They earn their place through conversion, not through position.
If you want the parts of the profile that do affect position, that is the category, the primary information and the corroboration behind it, which is the substance of GMB optimization.
Myth: seeding your own questions is against the rules
Google explicitly allows a business to post and answer its own questions. It is one of the few places where you can write the content and the response.
The reality is that most businesses do it badly. They seed questions nobody asked, in marketing language, and it reads like a brochure.
Seed from your own call log instead. The three questions your phone answers most often are the three worth putting there, in the words the caller used.
A locksmith I work with seeded one question about whether he could open a car without damaging the lock. It is now the top question on his listing, and he says it comes up on calls.
A ten-minute monthly routine
Open the section and read every question, including the ones already answered. Answers can be added by anyone after yours.
Correct anything wrong by posting your own answer and upvoting it, rather than arguing in a reply.
Add one seeded question per month from your call log. Four a year is plenty and keeps the section looking like a real conversation rather than a campaign.
Check it after any menu, price or hours change, because old answers become wrong answers without anyone touching them.
Where it fits against reviews
Reviews are social proof. Questions are objection handling. They do different jobs and the second one is cheaper to fix.
If I had to choose where an owner spends attention, reviews would still come first, and the steady pace that matters there is covered in my piece on review velocity.
But reviews take months to accumulate and the questions section can be fixed this afternoon, which makes it the better first move for anyone impatient.
If you would rather hand the whole profile over and get the monthly routine done for you, that is included in the way I work with local clients.
How to write an answer that actually works
Answer in two sentences. The section is read on a phone, usually by someone deciding between you and two competitors, and length loses them.
Lead with the answer rather than the context. Yes, we open on Sundays, from ten until four, beats three sentences explaining your scheduling policy.
Write as the business, not as a brand voice. A short, plain answer reads as a person who knows the business, which is the impression you want.
Never answer with a link alone. A question answered only with a URL reads as an evasion and performs like one.
The questions that signal a bigger problem
Some questions are not information requests. They are complaints that found the nearest public box to sit in.
If three people ask whether you answer your phone, the problem is not the questions section. It is the phone.
If people ask whether you are still open, your hours are wrong somewhere, or your profile looks dormant because nothing has been added to it for a year.
Treat the section as a free diagnostic. The pattern of what people feel they have to ask in public tells you what your profile and your service are failing to communicate.
A real cleanup, start to finish
A clinic I took on had nine questions, four answered, and one of the answers was wrong about whether they accepted a particular insurance.
The wrong answer had been posted by a member of the public two years earlier and had three upvotes, so it sat at the top.
We posted the correct answer, upvoted it once, and asked two staff members to upvote it. Within a day it was the visible answer.
We then seeded three questions from their own call log and left the rest alone. Total time, under an hour, and the most common objection in their enquiry calls stopped appearing.
Written by Waseem Abbas. More about how I work, or see client results with the screenshots.
Want this checked on your own account?
Send your business name and city and I will run a geo-grid check and a profile audit, then tell you what is actually wrong.