"There has been an uptick in complaints from businesses around Google local reviews disappearing or being removed. We had something similar last October and it was fixed in December and now I am seeing more complaints about reviews going missing. There are many many threads with complaints about this across the Google forums and in the Local Search Forums - I'll embed them below."
"Hiroko Imai thinks this might be related to an update to the Google Business reviews policies, he said on LinkedIn, "The Google Business Profile policy has been updated. Here's why you may have seen a sudden drop in reviews recently." The Wayback Machine is bugging out on me, so it is hard for me to do a comparison right now but I'll post more details below of the change."
"Lost 20+ reviews a couple weeks ago.. were at 994 or so, now at 974 with 0 reviews added after the beginning of Feb. I have customers that told us they gave us a great review.. nothing shows. We ran 200+ jobs in the past 15 days and ask for reviews on all of them... Yet 0 are...- Rob Brooks (@therobertbrooks) February 18, 2026"
There is an uptick in businesses reporting Google local reviews disappearing or being removed. A similar issue occurred last October and was fixed in December, and reports increased again in February. Multiple forum threads and business reports indicate many locations lost reviews, sometimes dozens, spanning multiple years and star ratings. Some businesses report zero new reviews appearing despite soliciting feedback from customers. One report notes 76 deleted reviews for a restaurant, and others describe real, non-spam reviews being removed. A Google Business Profile policy update is suspected by some, and removals sometimes remain in place, causing reputational harm.
Read at Search Engine Roundtable
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