GMBapi posted data that looks at tens of thousands of Google Business Profiles across multiple countries and showed that review deletions have increased significantly over the year, compared to previous periods. Michel van Luijtelaar wrote on LinkedIn, "Google Reviews are disappearing, and it's not random." He said: Review deletions are accelerating 5-star and 1-star reviews are most affected In English-speaking markets, positive reviews are disproportionately removed. In Germany, legal takedowns are erasing negative reviews at scale.
The Google August 2025 spam update touched down very quickly and is already stirring things up. Google is testing rounded snippet designs. Google Business Profiles NMX shows a new Profiles button for some. Google added guidance for JavaScript-based paywalls. Bing Webmaster Tools sitemaps sometimes is not showing the index coverage button. And I posted the weekly SEO video recap. Search Engine Roundtable Stories: Google August 2025 Spam Update Impact Felt Quickly
We're seeing a huge surge of Google updating social media links on Google Business Profiles in our Whitespark Local Platform software. Hundreds of locations (maybe thousands). It's like: "We gave you the chance to update these yourself, but you didn't, so we're taking matters into our own hands."