Google Business Profile changes, 2024 to 2026: what’s gone, what’s new, and what a Denver business should do now

What changed on Google Business Profile between 2024 and 2026?

Here is the short version, in date order. Every item links to Google’s own help page, developer page or blog post in the sources at the end. Red dots are features Google removed, green dots are new ones, and blue dots are rules that changed.

None of these are ranking-factor changes. Google’s help page on local ranking still says results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and still says prominence partly reflects reviews and links. What changed is how customers reach you through the profile, who (or what) answers their questions, and how hard Google now leans on fake reviews. Those are the things that cost a Denver service business calls if nobody notices.

What happened to Business Profile chat and call history?

Google turned both off. Its help page says: “As of July 31, 2024, the chat and call history features are no longer available in your Business Profile.” Past chats and call logs could be exported through Google Takeout until August 30, 2024, and after that they were gone. The Calls API that let third-party dashboards read call history had already been discontinued on May 30, 2023.

The replacement is narrower. Google’s help page for messaging says businesses “with a claimed and verified Business Profile can add a WhatsApp or text messaging option to their contact info,” that the option is “available for select regions,” and that if you add both, “only the text message option will be shown.” In practice that means a customer who taps the message button now lands in their own texting app or WhatsApp, talking to whatever number you entered.

What to do: if you add a text number, make sure it reaches a phone a person actually watches during the hours on your profile. Check for the obvious failures: a text option pointing to a desk line that cannot receive texts, or to a cell phone nobody answers on job sites. Also remember that call history is no longer in the profile at all. If you want to know how many calls came from Google, you need call tracking on your own side; our call tracking guide covers how to do that without breaking your name, address and phone consistency.

What happened to Questions & Answers on Google Business Profile?

This is the change most often misreported, so precision matters. What Google has published: its developer sunset page says “The My Business Q&A API was discontinued on November 3, 2025,” with support having ended September 15, 2025, and lists no replacement. The Q&A change log also retired the new-question and new-answer notifications.

What Google has not published, as far as we can find, is a help page that says the public Q&A section on profiles was removed or replaced by AI. Owners and local SEO forums widely report that the “Ask a question” box has disappeared from profiles, but you will read many articles stating as fact that “Google replaced Q&A with Gemini.” Google has not said that in any document we could find.

What to do: the questions did not go away; customers still want to know your price range, whether you serve Aurora, whether there is a warranty and whether you do weekends. Those answers now need to live in places Google can read: your business description (750 characters), your services list, your posts and, most of all, your website. A plain-language FAQ and a public pricing or price-range page on your site are the closest thing to Q&A you control now.

What is Ask Maps, and why does it matter for a local business?

Ask Maps is Google’s Gemini-powered question box inside Google Maps. Google’s March 12, 2026 announcement calls it “a new conversational experience that answers complex, real-world questions a map could never answer before,” drawing on information about “over 300 million places” and reviews from “more than 500 million contributors.” It began rolling out in the US and India on Android and iOS, with desktop described as coming soon.

The practical consequence: a customer can ask Maps something like “which roofers near Lakewood handle hail claims and answer on weekends” and get a conversational answer instead of a list of pins. That answer is assembled from what Google already knows about each business: profile details, reviews and what people say in them, and other sources. Google’s announcement does not describe a ranking formula for Ask Maps, so anyone claiming to know one is guessing. What is safe to say is that a profile with vague services, old photos and reviews that never mention the actual work gives the system less to quote.

What to do: ask happy customers to mention the job and the neighborhood in their review (asking for honesty and detail is fine; telling them what to write or paying for it is not). Make your services list specific: “hail damage roof replacement” beats “roofing.” Our post on Google Maps ranking versus AI Mode goes further into how the two surfaces differ.

Is Google calling businesses on customers’ behalf?

Yes. Google’s help page says “Customers can ask Google to confirm the pricing and availability of in-store products,” and Google then calls or texts the business. The calls are recorded, they are limited to select regions (in the US the page lists Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana and Nebraska as excluded, so Colorado is included), and owners can opt out under Settings, Advanced settings, “Google automated calls and text messages.”

The help page describes products and availability; Google’s 2026 announcements extended the idea of calling on a searcher’s behalf to local services, which we covered in detail in Google’s AI is calling Denver businesses for quotes. The decision for most service businesses is simple: leave it on, and make sure whoever answers the phone can give a straight price range and a next available slot. A business that opts out is not in the answer at all.

What changed with reviews and fake-review enforcement?

Two things: the penalties became visible to customers, and the scale of enforcement went up.

Google’s help page on fake engagement lists what can happen to a profile that receives policy-violating reviews: it “will not be able to receive new reviews or ratings for set period of time,” existing reviews may be “unpublished for set period of time,” and Google may “display a warning to let consumers know that fake reviews were removed.” Owners get an email first and can appeal. A warning banner on your profile is the kind of thing a customer screenshots.

On April 16, 2026, Google added protections that cut the other way, for businesses targeted by fake reviews. When there is a sudden spike in spam reviews, Google says it will remove the fake content, pause new reviews on the profile and “display a notification banner to let consumers know why contributions are temporarily paused.” The same post says Gemini now screens edits before they publish and that Google is rolling out “proactive email alerts so verified and active owners have a way to easily review important edits.” It also published the 2025 enforcement totals:

What to do: run a clean review program. Ask every customer, the same way, after the job is done; do not offer discounts for reviews, do not ask only the happy ones, and do not let employees or relatives post. Those are the patterns that get profiles paused. Our guides on getting more Google reviews and responding to them lay out a system that stays inside the rules.

What can Gemini do with a Business Profile now?

On June 10, 2026, Google announced that owners can “securely connect your Google Business Profile to Gemini with a single tap,” after which Gemini can use “customer reviews, customer questions and performance data.” Google’s help page lists what it can do: edit hours and attributes, draft review replies, create posts and show performance metrics. It was rolling out globally that month except in the European Economic Area and the UK.

The requirements are narrower than the announcement suggests. The help page says you must “Be an owner or manager of only one verified Business Profile on Google,” be 18 or older, use a personal Google account and have Keep Activity turned on. Agencies and multi-location owners will not see it, which is why some owners have it and their marketing company does not.

Our take: it is a useful shortcut for single-location owners who never got around to posting. Read every reply before it goes out. BrightLocal’s 2026 survey found 50% of consumers are put off by templated replies, and an AI draft that sounds like every other AI draft is a template.

What stayed the same on Google Business Profile?

A surprising amount, and these are the parts people get wrong most often:

For the full list of what moves the map pack here, see Google Business Profile ranking factors in Denver.

What do customers expect from a Google Business Profile in 2026?

The profile features changed, and so did the people reading them. BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults, published February 11, 2026) shows the shift in a single year:

Read those together and the picture is clear. Google is still the biggest review platform, but its share fell twelve points while Apple Maps nearly doubled, so a Google-only strategy is thinner than it was. The bar for stars rose: 68% now want at least four stars and 31% want 4.5 or better. And the share of people using ChatGPT or other AI tools for local recommendations jumped from 6% to 45%, with 82% reading AI-written review summaries. The same survey found 74% want reviews from the last three months and 89% expect owners to respond.

That last group of numbers is the real reason the profile changes above matter. When the questions box is gone, the chat is gone and an AI summarizes your reviews for the customer, the raw material is your reviews, your replies and your website. Our 2026 review thresholds post turns those numbers into targets for a Denver business. If you also publish your own site, the Denver Web Design team’s piece on whether a Business Profile can replace a website explains why the profile alone is not enough.

How do I check my profile against the 2026 changes?

Use the checklist below. It takes about half an hour with the profile open in another tab. The weights are our own judgment of what matters most, not a Google metric.

If the score is under 60, start with the top two items the tool lists and leave the rest for next week. If you would rather hand it off, our Google Business Profile management service does this monthly, and the optimization guide covers every field in detail.

What we are watching next

Three things are unsettled as of October 2026. First, whether Google publishes anything official about the public Q&A section; until it does, treat forum reports as reports. Second, how Ask Maps chooses which businesses to mention, which Google has not documented. Third, how the automated calling program expands beyond product pricing for service businesses. We will update this page when Google publishes something, and the date at the top will change when we do.

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