Is Google Removing Reviews From Local Business Listings?

I am seeing a spike in the number of complaints around reviews going missing from Google local business profiles. This week, there are tons of new complaints that reviews that were once on a local listing in Google Search is now missing or gone.

I cannot share all the threads with these complaints but if you go to the Google Business Profiles Help Forum and do a control find for “reviews” and expand the number of threads to the past few days, you will see tons of complaints of “missing reviews” or “reviews disappearing” and variations of those types of posts.

Amy Toman, who is super helpful in those forums, also tweeted about it:

Based on recent forum posts, it appears that there may be a sweep of Google reviews going on. Keep an eye on your review counts, all. pic.twitter.com/iUaJRllNog

— Amy Toman 🐚🩴🐚 (@BubblesUp) August 17, 2023

Here are just a few of the threads with those complaints in the Google Business Profiles Help Forum:

We have seen Google remove reviews before, in fact, once Google reinstated a bunch of reviews.

I am not sure if something changed with the Google review policies or enforcement or if there is some sort of bug but something seems different and not the norm.

Forum discussion at Twitter and Google Business Profiles Help Forum.