Google has confirmed the cause of missing Google My Business reviews, an issue that might not be resolved soon.
Several weeks ago, SEOs noticed Google My Business reviews were disappearing. In some cases, it was just one or two reviews, while in others, all of a business’s reviews vanished.
Those who contacted Google about the missing reviews were informed that it’s a bug being worked on.
Apparently, the issue is unrelated to the other recent bug with Google My Business where listings were getting suspended after adding shortnames.
There has since been an update from Google shedding some light on why reviews are going missing.
Why Are Reviews Disappearing?
Google reached out to local search expert Joy Hawkins with new information about the reviews issue.
The company stated that legitimate reviews were inadvertently removed from business listings during efforts to eliminate fake reviews. Here’s Google’s full statement:
“In our ongoing efforts to remove fake reviews from Maps, we’ve experienced an increase in reviews being removed from businesses. We are inspecting our tools and systems to ensure that any legitimate reviews are reinstated.”
What does this mean?
If taken at face value, it implies that legitimate reviews were accidentally removed and they may or may not be restored.
Hawkins interprets this differently, believing that the reviews won’t be coming back:
“In my experience, when Google adjusts something that automatically removes reviews across tons of listings algorithmically, they do not restore these since they were removed intentionally.”
Time will tell whether the issue gets resolved. In the meantime, there’s nothing businesses can do as the problem is entirely on Google’s end.
