Google’s latest review massacre has businesses losing their minds. The tech giant nuked millions of reviews in 2025, with 70% being five-star ratings—yeah, the good ones. Restaurants got hit worst, watching years of customer feedback vanish overnight. Google’s AI thinks it’s fighting spam, but it’s mostly just torching legitimate reviews and leaving businesses with generic removal notices. Companies are watching their credibility evaporate while customers wonder why their favorite spots suddenly look sketchy. The real damage goes deeper than missing stars.

Thousands of Google reviews are vanishing. An analysis of 60,000 Google Business Profiles reveals deletion rates hitting unprecedented levels in 2025, with the surge accelerating from late Q1 through mid-year across multiple countries. At the peak in July, nearly 1,200 monitored locations—that’s 2%—experienced at least one deletion weekly. Not exactly reassuring for business owners watching their hard-earned feedback disappear.

The damage hits where it hurts most. Over 70% of removed reviews were five-star ratings in analyzed incidents. Google’s AI-driven moderation systems are apparently on a mission, flagging suspicious patterns like sudden positive spikes or repetitive language. They’re even questioning Local Guides about whether businesses offered incentives for reviews.

Over 70% of deleted reviews were five-star ratings, with AI flagging suspicious patterns and questioning Local Guides about incentives.

The platform that hosts 57-58% of all online reviews and commands a 73% market share among review platforms is fundamentally playing judge, jury, and executioner with business reputations. Businesses perceived as less established due to decreased review counts face erosion of credibility among potential customers, directly impacting their ability to compete.

Restaurants are getting hammered the hardest, followed by home services, retail, and construction. These high-volume categories are seeing removals across both recent and older submissions. Medical services, beauty salons, and professional services are catching fewer deletions, but nobody’s completely safe. Medical and home services categories show particularly strong bias toward removing five-star reviews compared to other ratings.

This isn’t some one-time cleanup operation—it’s ongoing enforcement that shows no signs of slowing down.

The culprits behind this purge? Automated moderation systems detecting spam, conflicts, and inappropriate content. AI flags for incentivized or fraudulent activity. Local regulatory pressure. Legal takedown requests. Google estimates approximately 11% of its reviews are potentially fraudulent, and they’re removing millions annually.

Fair enough, but their algorithms are generating false positives too, and businesses get generic removal notices without specifics about what went wrong.

The ranking effects are brutal. Sudden drops in visible review counts tank local search visibility. Profiles show fewer reviews even when originals remain present somewhere in Google’s system.

With 81% of consumers checking Google reviews initially and 73% trusting only reviews from the past 30 days, recent deletions pack an outsized punch. Businesses can flag problematic reviews, sure, but Google takes anywhere from a week to a month to decide.

Meanwhile, that 87% of customers who engage with 3-4 star rated businesses might be looking elsewhere.