Key takeaways:
- Any member of the public can answer a question about your business, and the top-voted answer is the one shown
- You can post and answer your own questions, and should
- Wrong answers sit there indefinitely until someone corrects them
- Questions surface directly in the local panel, above much of your other content
Google lets anyone ask a question about your business, and — this is the part that surprises people — lets anyone answer it. Not just the owner. Any Google user. The answer with the most upvotes is the one displayed by default.
Which means your profile may currently be telling customers something wrong, in public, in a prominent position, and you would have no idea.
What goes wrong in practice
- A former customer answers "do they take card?" with outdated information
- Someone guesses your pricing and is badly off, anchoring expectations before you ever speak
- A competitor answers unhelpfully — rarely with outright abuse, usually with something subtly discouraging
- A question sits unanswered for a year, which reads as a business that does not pay attention
Seed it yourself
You are allowed to post questions about your own business and answer them. This is not a loophole; it is how Google intends the feature to be used for an FAQ.
Work out the five things people ask on the phone before booking, then post each one as a question and answer it properly from the business account. Good candidates:
- Do you offer free quotes or estimates?
- What areas do you cover?
- Do I need an appointment or do you take walk-ins?
- Is there parking?
- How quickly can you come out for an emergency?
Each answer removes a reason not to call, and it does so at the exact moment someone is deciding.
Set up a way to notice new questions
Notifications for Q&A are unreliable and easy to miss in a busy inbox. Put a recurring reminder in the calendar — once a week is plenty — to open the profile and look. It takes a minute.
When a question appears, answer it promptly and factually. If someone has already answered incorrectly, add the correct answer from the business account and upvote it; the owner response carries visible weight with readers even where vote counts are close.
Keep answers short and plain
This is not a marketing surface. Answer the question, in one or two sentences, in the words a customer would use. Padding an answer with sales language makes it less useful and less likely to be upvoted.
How it fits with reviews
Q&A and reviews do different jobs. Reviews establish whether you are any good. Q&A removes practical obstacles. A customer can be entirely convinced by your reviews and still not call because they are not sure whether you cover their postcode.
Both are worth managing, and both reward consistency over bursts of activity.
Answer the questions that stop people calling, then make sure the reviews they read next are recent and plentiful. Start collecting reviews with SnappyRatings →