Google Confirms Business Profile Reviews Outage via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google confirmed an outage in business profile reviews that has resulted in missing reviews for many local business profiles and is working toward fixing the problem.

Google Business Profile

Google Business Profiles are a way for local businesses to add their business to Google and have it show up in local search and Google Maps. It also allows businesses to manage how their site shows up in search, enabling Google to show accurate information about hours, website, contact information, images and reviews.

The reviews is a feature that allows users to share their experiences with businesses. It’s a useful way for businesses to increase earnings through positive word of mouth.

GBP Reviews Outage

Google Business Profile reviews have gone missing, which is bad news for businesses because of how influential reviews are for building trust.

A Googler acknowledged the outage and committed to updating the community about fixes to the system. She did however ask businesses to read their guidelines about reviews, which could be seen as implying that some businesses with missing reviews may have had reviews removed for a reason.

She wrote:

“GBP Review Count Known Issue Update

Known Issue
We’re aware of an issue affecting some Google Business Profiles, causing some profiles to show lower-than-actual review counts due to a display issue. The reviews themselves have not actually been removed. We’re working hard to resolve this and restore accurate review counts as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and will share updates on this thread as they become available.

Before reporting missing reviews, please note that there are several reasons why reviews may be removed from maps. Usually, missing reviews are removed for policy violations like spam or inappropriate content.

Read more about our Review policy guidelines here before proceeding. You can also refer to the Help Center Article for more information.”

This is a developing story, this article will be updated with additional information once it becomes available.

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SEJ STAFF Roger Montti Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com

I have 25 years hands-on experience in SEO, evolving along with the search engines by keeping up with the latest ...