Review Bug Causes Google Reviews to Disappear
Date: November 17, 2022Category: Author: Kaycie Smith
In the past few weeks there have been reports of businesses losing all reviews from Google business profiles. This is a huge deal as any business owner can understand, and there are numerous complaints in the Google support forum:
“Suddenly I woke up to see the details about my profile were changes and all the reviews were deleted.”
“All reviews gone: I got an email from Google that my business profile was updated. Much of the information changed was changed to incorrect information or just removed entirely. I went to review and undo many of the changes. Today I noticed that all my reviews are now gone.”
“95 reviews have all been removed, even 5-star reviews. They also slightly changed my business. I was able to reinstate the listing but I haven’t had any luck getting my reviews back.”
What is happening
Mike Blumenthal, a leader in the local SEO community, discovered that the reviews disappeared immediately after the Suggested Edits update. These updates are found in the GMB listing and are posted by Google. Infinity Dental Web has always maintained these suggested edits for you to keep the listing up to date. Because of this bug, it is imperative that you don’t touch this. DO NOT accept the edits.
The owner of the listing can accept the updates or essentially reject them by changing the info back to what was previously there. The bug is creating a new CID number (numerical address) for the business listing which is where the glitch is happening. When the new CID is created, the old one is deleted along with any reviews attached to that CID.
Because we keep up-to-date on all the vital things happening in the SEO community, we are on top of this and have not lost any reviews for our clients. However, the updates and the listings are not just under our control but are also under the control of any “owner or managers” for your practice. We are urging you to not touch the listing right now until this bug is worked out by Google. If you have team members that also have access to your listing, please communicate and share this info with them.
What can be done
Aside from waiting for Google to fix the bug and asking people to not touch the GMB listing, it has been recommended that a copy be made of all reviews. In addition, know the CID number of your listing. On our clients’ behalf, we have made a copy of all reviews as well as a record of the CID number. There is no certainty that having this info will get lost reviews back but in some instances, it has helped. 
Questions
If you have questions about this bug, here is additional information addressing the issue. As always, we are also available to answer questions.
Kaycie Smith is a Managing Director at Infinity Dental Web.
Leave a Reply