In December 2025, businesspeople globally were shocked to learn that Google reviews—periodically, even dozens or hundreds—had disappeared from their Google Business Profiles (GBP) without any notice. This global problem is more than just a random bug or an isolated glitch; it is a clear indication of the changes in Google’s moderation, filtering, and display of reviews.
1. A Surge in Review Deletions at Record Levels
Recent reports from the industry have found that Google is at very high levels of deleting reviews across the board in 2025 with the most noticeable activity towards the end of the year. The trend has seen the disappearance of not only negative comments but also some of the glowing 5-star ratings which indicates that the company is perhaps doing more rigorous checking for authenticity and even going as far as picking up potentially fake reviews.
As per SearchEngineLand’s report titled “Why Google is deleting reviews at record levels”, this trend reached its highest point around December 22, 2025, and has been very consistent since then. The study has come to the conclusion that the embedding of automated moderation systems, the presence of different risk factors based on the industry, and global legal pressure are the main factors determining which reviews appear and which get deleted.
2. AI-Driven Moderation and Spam Crackdowns
To combat phony evaluations and spam, Google has taken a major step forward in its AI-powered moderation systems. The measures taken were:
- Sophisticated automated filters that identify review behaviour that might be considered dubious.
- Detection of trends throughout various sectors and regions, thereby marking reviews that are believed to be unnatural, even when they are real.
- More stringent actions taken against bribed or tampered reviews.
Keeping reviews reliable is the goal of these systems, however, they may also inadvertently discard authentic feedback that is deemed strange or suspicious based on the patterns.
3. A “Silent Purge” Affecting Trust and Local SEO
According to a December 26, 2025 analysis, the trend was acknowledged as a silent purge where the over-eagerness of AI moderation and legal pressure was gradually killing trust in local business reviews. Many local businesses experienced a sudden and puzzling decline in their review counts, with no clarification or openness from the platforms.
The situation happening in the local business landscape might be considered as an indication of a silent purge. The AI moderation that was applied with excessive zeal and legal pressure was slowly killing off the already low trust in local business reviews. Thousands of local businesses experienced an unexpected and silent loss of review counts, without any clarity or openness from the platforms.
Local businesses relying heavily on good reputation and a large number of reviews for customer visibility and trust could be very adversely affected by this trend. It is a decisive factor for local SEO ranking and customer perception.
4. Bug vs. Policy Enforcement – What’s Real?
In the beginning of 2025, Google admitted to the existence of a display bug that caused the review counts to show a number that was lower than the actual one. The cause was not deletion but a technical glitch that affected the number of reviews that appeared on the profiles. The bug was said to have been resolved around the middle of December.
Nevertheless, the current disappearances in December 2025 are not limited to that bug—the sign of moderation and enforcement is still there as opposed to just a technical flaw. A lot of business owners are complaining that real reviews are disappearing not only from the profile overview and the visible list but also from the count.
5. Business Owner Reports and Community Feedback
Community forums and Reddit threads from December 2025 show real business owners struggling with disappearing reviews:
- Some report new reviews vanishing within days of posting.
- Others saw dozens of legitimate reviews removed, even when customers were verified and real.
- A broader analysis across thousands of profiles found that review deletions have increased sharply since early 2025, impacting both 5-star and 1-star reviews.
These anecdotes confirm that the issue isn’t just perception—many profiles are genuinely losing reviews, not just counting errors.
6. Why Google Is Taking These Actions
Google has not made detailed public comments for the December 2025 rollout, but there are hints of the underlying drivers:
• Anti-Fraud Enforcement Measures
Google faces a variety of lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny where it is being asked to stop the practice of issuing fake reviews, engaging in misleading practices, and manipulating profiles.
• AI Moderation Increase
Review patterns in large volumes are being evaluated by machine learning systems, which sometimes results in very strict filtering in order to maintain the integrity of the reviews.
• Local Legal and Reputation Risks
In some places, the laws of the country and the rules regarding defamation require Google and the other platforms to take down the reviews that are disputed or marked legally quickly.
All the above contribute to a situation of “zero tolerance” in which even truthful reviews may get accidentally eliminated.
7. What Businesses Can Do
In case your reviews vanish in December 2025, you can take the following actions for your response:
Go through the reviews that vanished – try to find if there was something they all shared (for example, same language, similar being flagged as patterns).
Get in touch with Google Business Profile Support – tell that the reports of the missing authentic reviews via the official help form.
Get people to write reviews that are varied and sound natural – honest reviews from old customers who write in detail and attach images are not going to be removed easily.
Look at patterns across a prolonged period – employing methods like API tracking to monitor changes in reviews and analyze trends can be beneficial.
Final Thoughts
The deletions of Google reviews that were noticed in December 2025 are not mere bugs but indications of a change towards stringent moderation, AI-based enforcement, and protecting trust strategies. Although such a situation can be annoying for the companies that are losing important feedback, knowing the reasons helps you to change your review strategy and safeguard your online reputation in the future.