Google dropped Q&A in Search results but not Question Hub

Google officially dropped Q&A on Google in search results but The Google Question Hub is not affected by this and will remain active according to Google.

Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land^[1]Q&A On Google Officially Going Away But Question Hub Not Impacted that it is doing away with the Q&A on Google search feature. This launched initially in India for searchers there in 2019 and now Google is telling those who submitted questions or answers that it will be going away.

On April 25, 2021 Barry Schwartz^[2]Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine … Continue reading reported on Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable.^[3]Google officially dropped Q&A on Google in search results

A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that this does not impact the Google Question Hub feature, but this does impact simply the ability of users to contribute answers in Google Search when people submitted questions.

Google Question Hub is a portal for publishers to see questions submitted by searchers and provide answers for those questions by creating new webpages answering those questions.

What is going away is the ability for users in Google search to contribute answers directly to those questions but Question Hub is not going away.

Ujesh @ujeshkrishnan shared a screenshot on Twitter at Apr 24^[4]Shocked to see that @Google decided to turn down the “ask and answer” feature on Search., of the notice he received from Google about this going away.

In May 2018, Google began asking users in India to submit questions in a box in the search results page when the search results did not have those answers. Then in 2019, Google began to show the Q&A on Google, here are some screen shots of it:

Google told Search Engine Land that this feature was only available in India for a select set of topics. Again, this is not impacting the overall Question Hub feature according to Google. Google said that users who submitted answers were notified so they can download their contributions via Google Takeout.

This was a popular feature for India based Google Search users. We believe this grew into what we now call the Question Hub, which is a great source of content ideas for publishers.

That being said, Google is constantly testing new features, and adapting those features based on how searchers use them. Since the Google Question Hub is not going away, I suspect some of the Q&A on Google might be replaced with the Question Hub functionality.