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Google Review fiasco: "we’ve seen genuine Google Reviews disappear overnight"

ended 10. February 2025

A lot of small businesses, especially financial services companies, have been saying they have had numerous authentic Google Reviews suddenly disappear in recent days. Newspage asked business owners if they've been affected and what's going on. Their views will appear below until midday.

6 responses from the Newspage community

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Scott Gallacher
Director at Rowley Turton
Google Reviews are vanishing and firms are being left in the dark. Like many in financial services, we’ve seen genuine Google Reviews disappear overnight—without warning or explanation. That’s a real problem. Businesses work hard to earn these reviews, and they’re crucial for building trust with future clients. Google’s silence is unacceptable. If we can’t stop Google from removing them—or even get notified when they do—we can at least be proactive. We keep a register of all our reviews, which means we know precisely which reviews have disappeared and we've successfully reinstated at least one. Most firms don’t have that luxury. They could be losing hard-earned feedback without even realising it. If Google won’t fix this, maybe media pressure will force them to.
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Clive Read
Owner at Goldmanread
As a small business, Google reviews are essential to establish our reputation. We have recently noticed that several hard earned, genuine reviews have been removed from our Google profile. Unfortunately, as with most social media companies, Google does not provide any information on why specifically these reviews have been taken down. The only response is the usual generic standard email providing a list of reasons why the reviews "may" have been removed. This is frustrating as given the importance of these reviews to our buisness we have done nothing to game the system and would never consider submitting fake reviews. Unfortunately I think the real reason behind these removals will be an "Algorithm Update" that will just be applied on a blanket basis and about which there is absolutely nothing we can do. Welcome to the new world of AI.
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Chris Barry
Director at Thomas Legal
Over the weekend we have lost 10% from our client review headline number, which has in turn affected the score. The reviews themselves are still there for people to read but client behaviour suggests the headline number of reviews and score is the first thing clients check before digging deeper. I’m hopeful this will not negatively impact a client's decision to use our services, however it is most frustrating when this drop has taken us below a milestone that clients have spent time helping us to achieve.
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Rohit Kohli
Director at The Mortgage Stop
As a small business, losing nearly 10% of our authentic, verified Google reviews in 72 hours is alarming, especially with Google remaining silent on what appears to be a technical issue. Reviews are critical for building trust and attracting new clients, and their sudden disappearance risks damaging our reputation. While we understand Google’s need to monitor content, legitimate businesses like ours are being unfairly affected. We’ve reached out but received no explanation. Google must address this quickly, provide clarity and implement solutions to prevent further harm to small businesses relying on its platform for credibility.
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David Stirling
Independent Financial Adviser at Mint Wealth
Our business heavily relies on word-of-mouth referrals, with our reputation reflected in the number of 5-star Google reviews we receive. However, over the weekend, the total number of reviews dropped unexpectedly from 140 to 106. This is frustrating, as we put in a lot of effort to serve our clients, and their positive feedback often serves as one of the first impressions for potential customers. It’s disheartening that Google would make such a change without any notice, and it makes me seriously consider exploring other review platforms, like Trustpilot
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Stephen Perkins
Managing Director at Yellow Brick Mortgages
We like many small businesses lost plenty of genuine client reviews from our google profile over the weekend, without notice or explanation. This is incredibly frustrating after the effort that goes in to obtaining client feedback. Additionally Google is incredibly difficult to engage with to resolve such issues or remove spam fake reviews when requested also.