Over the past several days there has been an issue with reviews being posted to Google business profiles. A Google spokesperson confirmed that the maps team is “aware of this issue and is actively working to fix it.” Google did tell us that new reviews that do not violate its policies should appear now, while reviews that were posted over the past week will be reprocessed and posted by the end of this week.
Google’s statement. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land “our team is aware of this issue and is actively working to fix it. New reviews that are not in violation of our policies should now be appearing on Google Business Profiles as normal. Reviews submitted over the last week that were not appearing on Google Business Profiles due to this issue should be posted by the end of this week.”
The issue. There were numerous complaints throughout the local SEO community over the past week about reviews not posting in Google Maps or Google Search on business profiles. In fact, there is one specific company that has over 700 locations which saw their review count go from about 200 review down to 16 reviews in the past couple of weeks.
If you scan through the Google Business Profile forums you will see numerous complaints about reviews not posting.
Customers who leave reviews are able to see the review was posted in their view but when a searcher or business owner looks to find that review, it is not visible.
Fix coming. Google said new reviews should start to appear now but reviews that were not posting over the past several days should start to appear by the end of this week. So do not worry, hopefully you will soon see those news reviews coming up again.
Why we care. Reviews in local business listings are very important to businesses, many seek out positive reviews from customers to help improve their star ratings and build trust with prospects. Searchers look for those reviews when making purchasing decisions.
So having fresh and new reviews is important both for searchers and for the businesses that want to acquire new customers.
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Source: Search Engine Land