Google will stop showing reviews and ratings on school listings in Google Search and Google Maps. Google Business Profiles said, "Starting April 30, 2025, your school's associated Business Profile will no longer allow reviews and ratings."
Not only will new reviews and ratings not be allowed after April 30th but Google will remove all reviews and ratings that were historically left for the school. "Existing reviews or ratings for your school will be removed, and users will not be able to submit new reviews or ratings," Google wrote.
Google explained that this was to prevent pranks and bad actors. "This is a change for general education school listings all over the world to prevent unhelpful or prank reviews," the email from Google said.
This only impacts those Google Business Profiles that have been categorized as "general education." If you remove that categorization, you will retain your reviews. Google said, "General education schools provide primary or secondary education (including elementary, middle and high schools), but do not include pre-schools or higher education institutions (such as colleges, universities, vocational schools, and postgraduate schools)."
This email was posted by Vinay Toshniwal on X and Chris Jackson, the SEO Priest, on X:
Chris, the SEO Priest (what a great name), said:
Google just dropped a bomb that will have huge fallout for churches that run schools.Lots of churches, especially Catholic and Lutheran churches, operate schools. For a long time, Google was very protective of their review system for schools - automatically deleting the majority of reviews.
I should note, Google tested dropping reviews for some schools in 2019.
Forum discussion at X.
