GBP: Q&A Section

This KB Entry has been superseded by the SEO for Salons Course

The Q&A section of the GBP can be very useful or very damaging depending on how it in managed. It is a ‘user-generated’ section and anybody with a Google account is able to ask a question. Unfortunately there’s no real filtering here and it’s possible to people to leave comments that aren’t questions or to say rude or offensive things.

Responding to Questions

When a new question has been left, the owner will be alerted via email. If the business owner answers the question it is clearly marked in the response section as such:

However, anyone else with a Google account may answer the question, and of course, we have no control over their response. We want to make sure that these questions are answered as quickly as possible for several reasons:

• It ensures that an accurate answer is given
• It will be written professionally, with good spelling & grammar
• It shows both the customer and Google that the business actively engages with its customers
• It gives us the opportunity to answer in a more in-depth way, including with (appropriate) links back to the website.

One of the issues with this feature is that there is nothing to prevent somebody else from answering the questions poorly. One thing you’ll often find is answers by a ‘Local Guide’. Sometimes these people will try to answer any question they can, even when they have absolutely no clue like in the image below!

Local Guides get points and rewards for their activities which is why we get stupid responses such as the one above.

Unfortunately we have no direct control over either the questions or the answers that are posted. However, for every question and every answer there is a ‘Report’ option. In the example above, the question is a good one and should most definitely be answered by Monaco themselves. In this situation I would report the answer from the local guide and put in a new answer. It is then up to Google whether or not they take any action.

Both questions & answers can be upvoted by clicking the Like button and this will help push those to the top. Again, anyone with a Google profile can do this (which means there is the opportunity to for manipulation here!)

One thing I have seen on Monaco’s profile is that some people are using this space to leave a review, instead of actually leaving a proper review. Whilst positive feedback is always nice, we’re missing out on the benefits of an actual review. What I would suggest in this situation is to reply, thanking them for their kind words and then asking them to leave a review and include the link to the review page. 

One other thing to watch out for is questions which are time based, such as questions about opening hours around a national holiday or questions about a specific offer that won’t be around for long. The questions on the GBP will stick around for years and you don’t want information about a promotion that was run years ago to be there. In these cases, answer with a link to a page on the website where they can get the most up to date information which will always be accurate.

Creating our own questions

The business owner is also able to ask their own questions and answer them. This has obvious benefits such as being able to put in a few keywords into the questions or the answers but this is also very easily abused so please, as always, write primarily for the customer first, only taking into account SEO second.

One thing to think about is that the FAQ section of a webpage, when it has been correctly marked up with schema, has the possibility of appearing directly in the SERPS. We don’t want to repeat the exact same questions and answers on the website and the GBP as that just causes duplication which of course Google don’t like.

Q&A’s on both the website and the GBP are beneficial so when building out both, decide ahead of time what questions you want to put on which asset. 

Also, if a customer asks a particularly good question on the GBP (such as the example above about bringing in their own extensions), that could be a consideration to include some information about that on the website.

Unlike update posts, there’s no benefit to adding more questions over time. Instead, create some questions for a new client when we first setup the GBP for them, and after that, simply ensure that customer questions are answered quickly.

In the case of Monaco that I have used for the examples here, very few questions have been answered. So as part of any initial GBP work, such questions should be answered.