Google investigates missing reviews on Business Profiles

Google is investigating a wave of missing reviews on Google Business Profile listings, and has confirmed it is temporarily pausing new reviews on affected profiles while it works on the issue. Complaints surged in the Google Business Profile Forums in early July 2026, with some businesses reporting thousands of reviews gone within a day. Google says reviews removed in error will be restored.

What happened

In the first days of July, business owners and local SEO practitioners flooded the Google Business Profile Forums with reports of review counts collapsing. One business owner reported roughly 4,651 reviews collected over many years dropping to 63 within about 24 hours. Others described listings showing zero reviews and a zero rating, with no suspension notice attached.

A recurring pattern in the reports: a listing gets hit with a burst of fake or spam reviews, or the owner reports fake reviews, and shortly afterwards all reviews on the profile disappear and new ones stop being published. Amy Toman, a volunteer Google Product Expert, wrote on LinkedIn that Google has been alerted and says it is aware of the missing reviews issue and working to resolve it. Google has not given a timeline for a fix.

Why it matters

Reviews are the trust layer of local search, and this incident freezes it without warning. A profile showing zero reviews, or a fraction of its real history, loses the social proof that drives clicks, calls, and visits from Google Maps and Search. The pause on new reviews also means genuine customer feedback earned during the outage may never be captured, and the pattern suggests that being targeted by spam attacks, or even reporting spam, can trigger the block.

Google’s own review restriction documentation describes pausing reviews as an anti-abuse measure, but the current reports include long-standing profiles with organically earned reviews.

What this means for multi-location brands

For an enterprise brand, the first job is knowing whether any of its locations are affected, and that requires monitoring at estate level rather than waiting for a franchisee to notice. A central team responsible for hundreds of Google Business Profile listings should check review counts and ratings across every location now, and set up alerting for sudden drops. Reputation management software that tracks review volume and rating swings across the whole estate turns a silent incident like this into a same-day alert.

Document what each affected local business listing has lost, including approximate review counts and dates, so there is evidence if restoration is incomplete. Keep responding to the reviews that remain through your normal review management workflow, and hold off on review-generation campaigns for affected locations until Google lifts the pause, since new reviews are not being published anyway.

“When our systems detect suspicious reviews, we take a range of actions including removing reviews and temporarily pausing reviews on the profile to prevent further abuse. We are investigating the issue and will restore any reviews that were incorrectly removed.”

Google spokesperson, statement to Search Engine Roundtable

The bottom line

Google says incorrectly removed reviews will come back, but has not said when. Until then, multi-location brands should treat review counts as an actively monitored data point, not a given, and make sure the central team, not a support forum, is the first to know when a location’s reviews disappear.