There are numerous reports of Google doing some mass pruning and removals of reviews from the local maps results, from Google Business Profile listings. This is done every now and then, it is unclear if this is a bug or some new filter being applied to already approved reviews.
Jason Brown posted a chart in the Local Search Forum showing the number of reviews he spotted being removed over the past few days:
Joy Hawkins posted on Twitter referencing that saying "Google appears to be doing waves of review takedowns again." Jason Brown added on Twitter that the reviews are being removed between 10am and 12pm PST and "Today's Google review removal sweep just hit. One business lost 32 reviews."
Here are some of those tweets:
It appears that most of the reviews are being removed between 10 am and noon pacific. https://t.co/JqlcYNPA6p
— Alt Tag Jason Brown 🇺🇦 (@keyserholiday) October 20, 2022
Others are noticing this as well, are you?
Note, this came shortly after Google published more reviews out of the blue. I wonder if it is related?
Forum discussion at Local Search Forum.
