Why Are Your Google Business Profile Reviews Missing?

Last Updated on 3 December 2025 by Dorian Menard

If you woke up, checked your Google Business Profile and saw the review count drop for no good reason, you’re not going crazy. It’s happening to a lot of businesses right now.

I work on Google Business Profiles every day. A few weeks ago, our own agency, Search Scope, lost around half of our legitimate reviews overnight. No fake reviews, no dodgy tactics. Just gone.

We managed to get roughly half of them back, but only because we already had screenshots, logs and tools that store every single review. Most business owners don’t have that. They just see years of social proof vanish and a copy-paste answer from Google support.

This guide is for you if:

Your Google reviews are missing or not showing
You know they were real customers
You’re getting nowhere with copy-paste support replies

I’ll walk through what is actually going on, what still works to recover missing reviews, where you’re wasting your time, and how to protect future reviews so this hurts less next time.

Let’s start with the ugly truth.

This wave of missing Google reviews is not in your head

Over the last couple of years, Google has quietly turned up the dial on spam filtering and review moderation. They have public help pages that explain reviews can be removed for things like spam, inappropriate content or conflicts of interest. Google Help

That’s the official line.

On the ground, what we’re seeing is different. There are system-wide waves where:

Legitimate reviews disappear in bulk
Star counts drop suddenly
New reviews never show up at all

Industry trackers and forums reported huge spikes in complaints about missing local reviews in February 2025, with “dozens and dozens” of posts in a single day from businesses losing reviews. Search Engine Roundtable

Then in October 2025, another bug or filter sweep removed dozens of legitimate reviews per profile in a matter of hours, again acknowledged in community threads. Search Engine Roundtable

At the same time, regulators are pressuring Google to crack down harder on fake reviews. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority forced Google to commit to stronger detection, removal and even long term bans for repeat abuse. The Verge

Put this together and you get a simple picture:
Google is aggressively cleaning up fake and low quality reviews, and their systems hit real businesses as collateral damage.

Here in Australia, I’m seeing this constantly now. Local tradies, mortgage brokers, clinics, you name it. And again – our own agency was hit too.

Why are my Google reviews suddenly missing?

Let’s talk through the main reasons I see legitimate reviews vanish.

Google only gives high level reasons in their help pages. They mention spam, inappropriate content and policy breaches, but they don’t show you a neat list of “here is why we removed this one review”. Google Help

Based on real cases, patterns usually fall into one of these buckets:

Reviewer account looks weak or suspicious
Fresh Gmail, no profile photo, almost no activity, or a pattern of reviewing businesses far apart geographically. These accounts get flagged by spam systems a lot.
Review text is too thin or too generic
One or two words, emoji only, or the same copy pasted phrase across several businesses. Filters are harsher on this now, especially on clusters of 5 star one liners. Reddit
Review velocity looks unnatural
Ten 5 star reviews land in a day, after weeks of silence. Even if they are all real, Google’s systems can treat it like a campaign.
Listing has a history of review problems
If your profile has had fake reviews removed, review gating, or any weird patterns, Google sometimes clamps down harder for a period and blocks or hides new reviews for weeks. Reddit
System-wide sweep or bug
This is the painful one. You can do everything right and still get hit when Google rolls out an update or a fix to its filters. That is what we saw with the February and October 2025 events. Search Engine Roundtable

The annoying part is that Google is using heavy machine learning for all of this. They use similar approaches in other spam systems, like email filtering. spamresource.com

So you’re not dealing with one human making a judgement call. You’re dealing with patterns across millions of profiles. That is why you see “good” reviews vanish while obvious junk sometimes stays up.

How common is the missing review problem in 2025

You’re not the only one seeing this. Far from it.

Public threads on Google’s own Business Profile forum, Reddit, and industry blogs have been full of complaints since late 2023. People report drops of 10, 50, even 100 reviews from otherwise clean profiles on R e ddit and Google Help

A few points worth noting:

Several agencies and SaaS providers have confirmed that multiple client profiles were hit at the same time
Some businesses had reviews vanish, then reappear days later, which strongly suggests bugs or over-zealous filters being tweaked behind the scenes
In 2025, Google support threads were updated with fresh guidance on missing or delayed reviews, which is usually a sign that they know it is a real problem.

From what I’m seeing with Australian clients, this is especially rough on:

Newer businesses still building up trust
Service area businesses who already sit under more scrutiny
Any business that relies almost entirely on Google reviews and has weak profiles elsewhere

The main thing to understand is this: you are currently operating in an environment where reviews can disappear without warning, and you are not guaranteed to get them all back, even if you prove they were real.

So the goal is twofold:

Recover what you reasonably can
Change how you collect and store reviews so this hurts less in the future

Google review filters vs real policy violations: what is the difference

There is an important distinction here, because it affects your chances of getting reviews reinstated.

Google has public policies around fake and misleading content, offensive content, and conflicts of interest. Those reviews are meant to be removed and support usually will not put them back. Google Help

On the other side you have:

Real customers
Real experiences
Clean wording
No incentives offered

These reviews are the ones we care about. When they go missing, it is almost always because they tripped a pattern:

Weak reviewer profile
Sudden spike in 5 star reviews
Similar phrasing across several reviews
Location behaviour that looks odd at scale

You will not get far arguing “but this person is real” if the review clearly breaks written policy, for example by mentioning discounts in exchange for reviews, sharing private info, or using abusive wording.

You do have a shot if:

You can prove the customer exists and used your service
You have screenshots of the review as it appeared
The text is clean and fits the rules

That is exactly what we did when Search Scope lost half of our own reviews. We had screenshots and logs from software like LeadSnap that stores every review the moment it lands. We sent those to Google, pushed through the first useless reply, and recovered roughly half of what we lost.

Not perfect, but far better than zero.

What actually works to recover missing Google Business Profile reviews

Let’s get practical now. There are a lot of myths and outdated “tricks” floating around. Here is what still works in real life.

Step 1: Check whether your reviews are really gone

Before you start sending messages in every direction, make sure the reviews have actually been removed and it is not just a delay or a display glitch.

Quick checks:

Log in to your Google Business Profile in incognito and in a normal browser
Compare the total review count over a few days
Ask one or two customers to screenshot what they see on their end
Check for duplicate listings or old profiles that might be holding some reviews
Look through your email for review notifications that no longer match what you see now

If you confirm that published reviews are gone or brand new ones never show up after several days, move to the recovery process.

Step 2: Use Google’s missing reviews support form properly

There is no magic “review reinstatement form” hidden somewhere. What we have is a support flow that now includes a “missing reviews” option.

Multiple guides from agencies and SaaS tools point to the same process:

Log in with the account that owns the profile
Go to Google’s Business Profile support form at support.google.com/business/gethelp
Select your business, then type “missing reviews” in the help box
Choose the option that matches missing or delayed reviews and submit your case

In that form, you should give Google as much concrete information as you can:

How many reviews you lost
Rough dates when they were posted
Names or initials of reviewers
Screenshots of the missing reviews
Any proof that the reviewer is a real customer

Most guides say Google replies within about 7 to 10 business days, although sometimes you see earlier or slower responses.

Step 3: Reply to the first automated email

Here is a detail that many business owners miss.

The first message you get back is usually a template. Something like “we have checked and your reviews were removed according to our policies”.

If you stop there, the case often dies.

In my experience, the actual human review only starts once you reply to that first email. That is your moment to:

Politely push back
Attach better screenshots
List specific missing reviews
Explain that they are real clients and there was no incentive

That is how we dealt with our own missing reviews at Search Scope. The initial reply was worthless. The follow up, with proof, got results.

Step 4: Follow up with extra examples and screenshots

Most of the independent guides that document successful recoveries say the same thing: persistence matters. Hook Agency or Digital Shift

If support restores some reviews but not all, or they seem to miss certain customers, send:

A shortlist of remaining missing reviews
Extra screenshots from your tools or CRM
Clarification if some customers changed names or images

There is a line you do not want to cross though. Sending ten near identical emails per week will just get treated as spam. Each new reply should add something useful.

After two week of wait, we managed to get half of our missing reviews reinstated:

We then contacted customers that left the reviews that are missing and asked them to repost them using pictures or with better wording.

Step 5: Ask customers to repost their reviews

Sometimes, Google will not restore the original reviews. You hit a wall.

In that case, your best move is to go back to the reviewer.

You can say something like:

“Hey [Name], thanks again for leaving us a review recently. Google seems to have removed it during one of their filter updates. Would you mind reposting it, maybe with a bit more detail about what we did for you and, if you can, a photo of the result? That seems to help reviews stay live.”

Key points that help:

Ask them to rewrite, not copy paste
Suggest they mention the service, location or staff member
Gently encourage them to upload a photo

From what we see across clients, reviews with images and more detail stick far better than thin one liners.

Why is my Google review not showing up even though the customer posted it

This is probably the most common question I get from business owners.

A customer tells you “I left you a 5 star review” and you never see it. Sometimes they can see it on their end, but it does not appear in your public total.

Most of the time this is filter behaviour, not a bug.

Here is what tends to block fresh reviews from appearing:

Brand new Google account
The customer created a Gmail on the same day and left exactly one review. High risk in the eyes of the filter.
Thin text like “Great job”
Short, generic comments are heavily discounted and often filtered. They look similar to fake review patterns.
IP or device patterns
Reviews coming from the same house, same office or same device in a short time can look suspicious, even if it is just a family or a workplace cluster.
Temporary filter clamp
If your profile had spam removed recently, Google can quietly pause new reviews for a couple of weeks. Reddit
Policy issues
Reviews that mention discounts, refunds in exchange for positive feedback, or private info about staff are more likely to be filtered. Google Help

My usual advice is:

Ask the customer to screenshot what they see
Check that they posted on the right business
Wait a few days
If it still does not appear, include that screenshot in a support ticket under the “missing reviews” flow

Do not try to force it with fake reviews to “replace” the missing one. That is one of the fastest ways to get your whole profile in trouble.

How to protect future reviews so they actually stick

You cannot control Google’s filters, but you can make your review profile look more natural and more trustworthy.

Here is the playbook we now recommend and use ourselves.

Get customers to write specific, detailed reviews

Thin reviews are the first to go. When you ask for reviews, coach customers a little:

Ask them to mention the service they bought
Suggest they describe one part of the experience they liked
Encourage them to mention a staff member by name if that feels natural

You are not telling them what to write. You are just nudging them away from “Great service!” and toward something that looks more like a real story.

Encourage photos where it makes sense

We now ask some clients to include a quick photo:

Roof before/after
Finished kitchen
Dog with a new cut
Cleaned driveway

Reviews with images tend to stick more and often carry more weight for local searchers.

We even started asking some clients to attach a screenshot which shows that a real service happened. If Google ever questions the review, that screenshot can help your argument.

Space out review requests

If you send a blast email to 200 customers in one go and 40 reply within 24 hours, it might look unnatural to a filter, even if every review is real.

Try to:

Add review requests into your everyday process (after job completion, after check out, after handover)
Spread manual review campaigns over several weeks instead of one hit

From what we see, profiles with steady review growth tend to suffer less in these sweeps.

Store every review outside of Google

This is non negotiable for us now.

At Search Scope we use tools like LeadSnap that keep a copy of every review that lands on a profile, including the text, star rating and date. You can do the same with other review tools or even manual screenshots.

So when something goes wrong:

You know exactly what you lost
You have screenshots ready for support
You are not relying on memory

If we did not have those logs when our own reviews vanished, we would probably still be arguing with support with nothing to show.

Should you keep relying only on Google reviews

No.

Google reviews matter for local rankings and conversions, but putting 100 percent of your social proof there is asking for pain.

We now suggest clients spread reviews across at least one or two other platforms:

Facebook
Trustpilot
Industry directories
Product review tools linked to their website

A simple rule that works well:

Out of every 10 reviews you ask for, try to send 6 or 7 to Google and the rest to other platforms.

There are a few upsides:

You are not wiped out if Google runs a harsh filter update
Prospects who research you deeper will find proof in more than one place
LLMs and other AI tools that summarise your brand tend to pull from multiple sites, not just Google

This does not mean you ignore Google. It just means you stop treating it as the only place that matters.

What you should stop wasting time on

Here is a short list of things that look tempting but rarely help.

Buying reviews or using “guaranteed review” services
These services often use fake accounts or shady tricks. With stricter enforcement and regulator pressure, this is only going to get more risky. This can actually get your listing suspended for good!
Opening a brand new profile to escape the problem
Google is very good at spotting attempts to dodge enforcement. You can end up with more bans, not less.
Firing off daily emails to support with no new evidence
This just gets your ticket treated like noise. Every reply should add screenshots, names or fresh detail.
Editing half your profile while a case is under review
Changing name, category or address during a support case can confuse things. Fix the review issue first, then polish.
Ignoring the problem and hoping reviews “come back”
Occasionally some do. But many never return unless you push.

Key takeaways for stressed business owners

Missing Google Business Profile reviews are sadly very common now. Between stricter spam filters, pressure from regulators and the use of heavier AI systems, a percentage of legitimate reviews will always get caught up.

Here is the short version of what to do:

Treat Google’s “missing reviews” support route as your main official path
Always reply to the first template email with better proof
Keep tools or screenshots that store every review outside of Google
Ask for detailed, specific reviews and, where appropriate, photos
Space out review requests so growth looks natural
Spread social proof across Google, Facebook, Trustpilot and others, not just one platform

Most important: stop thinking this only happens to “dodgy” businesses. We play by the rules and still got hit. The question is, are you going to keep whingeing about Google and how little it cares about small businesses, or are you going to do something about it and start bulletproofing your online reputation?