By 2025, Google is removing updates at unprecedented rates – and it’s not happening by accident.
Our industry analysis of 60,000 Google Business Profiles shows that removals are driven by a combination of:
- Automatic balancing.
- Risk factors across the industry.
- Adding enforcement versus incentivized reviews.
- Local control pressure.
Together, these forces have significant implications for the business and visibility of local search.
Update removals are increasing worldwide
Data collected from tens of thousands of Google Business Profile listings in many countries by GMBapi.com shows a significant increase in updates removed between January and July 2025.
Operations began to pick up in late Q1 and peaked in the middle of the year, with a growing share of monitored sites experiencing at least one update removal in a given week.
This is not limited to negative feedback.
While one-star reviews continue to be dropped, five-star reviews now account for the majority of removals.
That pattern suggests that Google uses strong enforcement, including positive reviews, as it works to maintain authenticity and trust.
Recently, Google has started asking members of its Local Guide community whether businesses are encouraging reviews, which may turn on AI-driven flags of suspicious activity.
Dig deeper: Google review removal: Why 5-star reviews are disappearing
Not all industries are treated equally
Review clearance patterns vary widely by business category.
Restaurants have the highest number of removed reviews, followed by home appliances, brick and mortar retail, and construction.
These categories generate a large volume of updates, and deletions occur on both recent and old posts.
That distribution points to ongoing enforcement, not one-off clean-up efforts.
In contrast, medical services, beauty, and professional services saw fewer removals overall.
However, a closer analysis reveals distinct and consistent patterns among those categories.
What review ratings reveal about industry bias
Looking at deleted updates as a share of total deletions within each category reveals different moderation patterns.
For restaurants and general stores, the removed reviews are evenly distributed in one to five star ratings.
In contrast, medical services and home services show a strong skew in the removal of five-star reviews, with very few removals in the middle of the rating spectrum.
That imbalance suggests positive reviews in high-risk or regulated sectors facing scrutiny, which may be associated with concerns about trust, security, and compliance.
These differences do not appear to stem from class-specific policy decisions.
Instead, they show how Google’s automated systems adjust usage based on industry risk considerations.
Dig deep: 7 local SEO wins you get from keyword-rich Google reviews
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Time is of the essence: Early versus retroactive removal
The age of the update plays an important role in its removal.
In medical and home services, the majority of deleted reviews disappear within the first six months after being posted.
That time points to early intervention with automated systems that check for language, reviewer behavior, and other signs of vulnerability.
Restaurants and brick-and-mortar stores show a different pattern.
Many of the updates removed from these categories are more than two years old, suggesting that rollbacks were used as detection systems improved or new suspicious patterns emerged.
It may also indicate attempts to update old update profiles.
For businesses, this means updates can disappear long after they’re posted, often without warning.
Geography adds further complexity
Industry alone does not tell the full story. Location is important.
In English-speaking markets such as the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, removed reviews are mostly based on five-star ratings.
That trend coincides with the rise of AI-driven moderation aimed at reducing review spam and encouraging positive feedback.
Germany is different.
An analysis of thousands of German business listings shows that the highest share of deleted reviews has a low rate, and most are deleted within weeks of posting.
This pattern is consistent with Germany’s strict defamation laws, which allow businesses to legally challenge negative reviews and require forums to take action when notified.
In summary:
- AI-driven reinforcement dominates in many English-speaking markets.
- Deregulation plays a very large role in Germany.
What does this mean for local SEO and small business owners
The rise of update removal creates two main challenges.
- Erosion of hope: When official reviews, whether good or bad, disappear without explanation, confidence in the foundations of review begins to weaken.
- Data distortion: Deleted reviews affect star ratings, performance benchmarks, and conversion indicators that businesses rely on for local SEO and reputation management.
For SEO practitioners, small businesses, and multi-site brands, review monitoring is no longer an option.
Understanding when, where, and what updates are being deleted is now as important as generating them.
Dig deep: Why Google reviews will boost your local SEO
Power reshapes the appearance of the update
Three developments shape the appearance of the update:
- More automatic balancing, with AI checking updates in real time and in the past.
- Greater legal impact in states with strong defamation laws.
- Increased reliance on third-party monitoring tools as businesses seek independent records of update wipe activity.
Since moderation is automatic and heavily influenced by local law, sentiment alone will not guarantee the visibility of a review.
In local SEO, reviews – especially recent ones with detailed content – are always an important authority signal for both users and search engines.
Staying ahead now means not only collecting new updates, but also following closely and understanding the removal.
Reputation management is increasingly demanding attention from both parties.
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