Back in 2019, a lot of local businesses did fine without a website. They had a Google listing, a Facebook page, and a phone that rang. For a roofer, a tow company, or a concrete contractor, that was enough.

That is not true anymore, and it is not because websites got better. It is because Google changed where it gets its answers. This year Google took several features off the business profile, and now Google and the AI tools read those answers from your website. Here is what changed, and what your website needs to have now.

How it used to work

Your Google listing did most of the work. You set your hours, added a few photos, and collected reviews, and Google put you on the map. When customers had questions, the Q&A section on your profile answered them. A Facebook page covered everything else. If you had a website, it was like a brochure that almost nobody read.

1. Google removed Q&A and now answers for you

Google is removing the Q&A section from Business Profiles. On November 3, 2025, it shut off the connection that other software used to manage Q&A, and the section has been disappearing from listings through 2026. Old questions are frozen, and new profiles never get the feature at all.

In its place is Ask Maps. It is an AI feature that answers a customer’s question by itself. People ask things like “Do they do residential?”, “Are they open Saturday?”, and “Do they work in Warren?” Ask Maps answers from what it can find, which is your services list, your reviews, and most of all your website.

If the answer is not written anywhere Google can read it, the AI will guess, say it doesn’t know, or send the person to a competitor whose website does say it.

2. AI tools build their answers from web pages

Try asking ChatGPT who does concrete work in Jamestown, NY. Then ask Google’s AI the same thing. Both build their answer from pages they can read. They can’t see much of a Facebook page. A Google profile only gives them a name, a rating, and hours. A website gives them your services, your towns, how long you have been in business, and the sentences they end up repeating.

A business with only a profile and a Facebook page gives the AI tools almost nothing to say about it.

This is the new part. A website used to help you rank. Now the website is what gets read, quoted, and recommended. A business without one can’t be found by a growing number of the people who are asking.

3. Fewer people see your listing, and the ones who do are ready to choose

Birdeye’s 2026 report on Google Business Profiles found that the number of times each listing was seen dropped 53.8%. But calls, direction requests, and website clicks only dropped about 5%. Fewer people see profiles now because AI answers sit above them. The people who still click have already narrowed it down, and they are ready to decide.

They decide on your website. If it loads fast, looks current, and says what you do and where, they call you. If it loads slowly, looks like it was built in 2016, or doesn’t fit their phone, they go back and call the next business. That click was hard to get this year, and your website is where you keep it or lose it.

4. Your website helps your map ranking

Your Google profile and your website work as a team. Google says that links to your website from other sites help show how well known your business is, and that is one of the three main things it uses to rank local results.

From what Moovlin has seen, the pages on your site matter too. It helps to have a page for each service on your profile, to name the towns you work in, and to use the same business name and phone number as your profile. A strong profile with a thin website behind it is only doing half the job.

5. Google owns your profile. You own your website.

Google can suspend a profile, and this year it has been doing that more often, many times to businesses that made several edits in a short time. Anyone can suggest changes to your listing. Google can also remove a feature overnight, which is what it did with Q&A. Its built-in chat is going away too.

Your website is the one part of your online presence that you really own. Nobody can suspend it, and nobody can edit it but you. When Google changes the rules again, your website will still be there saying what you want it to say.

What your website needs now

You don’t need a bigger website. You need one that answers the questions Google and the AI tools are now asking for your customers.

• A page for each service you list on your profile, not one page that mentions everything.
• The towns you work in, written in the text and not only in the footer.
• The same name, address, and phone number as your profile, spelled exactly the same way.
• The five questions customers always ask, answered in plain sentences. This takes the place of Q&A.
• Real photos of your work, not stock photos.
• A site that loads in under three seconds on a phone, fits the screen, and shows the lock icon in the address bar.
• A website link on your profile that goes to the page that matches the search, not always the homepage.

In 2019 your website was a brochure. In 2026 it is where the answers come from. Your profile still gets the click, but your website is what Google and the AI tools read to decide if you get it.

Moovlin builds websites and manages local SEO for service businesses across Western New York and beyond.