Google Business Profile Reviews Disappear – Fix in the Works
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On Friday, reports of a reviews outage started to appear, impacting local listings on Google Search and Google Maps. The Google Business Profile issue isn’t widespread but some businesses have seen a drop in their review count. This glitch comes after mass GBP suspensions in September 2024 and new guidelines for service-area businesses in November.
Google responded at the start of this week to say the issue is actively being worked on. As of February 13, a fix hasn’t been rolled out.
Was Your Small Business Affected?
Your Google Business Profile shows accurate information about your business in local search results. Unfortunately, many businesses have noticed that the number of reviews they previously had has dropped. The bug could result in a loss of brand trust, sales, and traffic, especially if positive reviews have gone missing.
Search Engine Roundtable reported that some business owners have seen increases in their review counts since the bug was first announced, but there has been no official communication from Google yet.
Top Tip 💡
What can you do if your business has been impacted by the reviews count bug? I recommend continuing to ask customers for reviews through email and social media since this is a great way to gather valuable feedback about your business. It’s also important to set aside time to reply to Google reviews to keep up engagement and improve your brand’s reputation online.Google Responds to Issue
A Google employee, Victoria Kroll, shared an update in the Google Business Profile help center:
“We’re aware of an issue affecting some Google Business Profiles, causing some profiles to show lower-than-actual review counts due to a display issue. The reviews themselves have not actually been removed. We’re working hard to resolve this and restore accurate review counts as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and will share updates on this thread as they become available.
Before reporting missing reviews, please note that there are several reasons why reviews may be removed from maps. Usually, missing reviews are removed for policy violations like spam or inappropriate content.”
The post then advises businesses to review Google’s Review policy guidelines and to read Google’s guide on missing or delayed reviews. So, if the outage has impacted your business, check if your reviews could’ve been removed for any other reason first before flagging the issue to Google.
I’ll update this page with further updates once a fix has been rolled out.
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