GBP Q&A
The public question-and-answer thread on a Google Business Profile, where anyone can ask and anyone — including you — can answer.
Last reviewed: 2026-05-07
Definition
GBP Q&A is the public Q&A section on your Google Business Profile. Customers can ask any question; anyone (including other customers) can answer; the questions and the top answers appear directly in the knowledge panel.
The under-appreciated fact is that you can both ask and answer questions on your own profile. Seeding 5-10 high-frequency questions yourself — "Do you take reservations?" "Is there parking?" "Do you have vegan options?" — controls what shows up in the most prominent Q&A slot.
Beyond seeding, the work is monitoring. Real customers ask questions and competitors sometimes ask gotcha questions. Unanswered questions can sit on your profile for months and the top-voted answer is sometimes wrong. Reviewing Q&A weekly and answering what is unanswered is the maintenance.
Q&A also affects relevance signals. The text of questions and answers becomes part of what Google reads when matching your profile to queries. Mention "vegan", "outdoor seating", "private events" naturally in your seeded answers and you get a small but real relevance boost.
Why it matters for restaurants
An unmonitored Q&A section is a reputation risk and a missed marketing opportunity. The top-voted answer to 'Do you have parking?' might be a misinformed customer's wrong guess from 2022. Five minutes of weekly maintenance prevents this and adds another channel of relevance signal.
Example
A new sushi place in Brooklyn seeded eight common questions on their GBP — reservations, vegetarian options, outdoor seating, dietary restrictions, kid-friendliness, parking, private events, gift cards. Two months later they noticed three real customer questions had landed; they answered within a day. No competitor in their pack had done either, and they suspect the activity helped them hold position 2 against a more-reviewed rival.
Related terms
See your restaurant's SEO score
Apply this on your own restaurant. Free Nuxa SEO scan grades your Google Business Profile, citations, schema, reviews, and Local Pack rank in about 10 seconds.