How to Delete Your Google Business Profile: Steps, Considerations, and Alternatives

I got 9 new reviews and was stoked, but then something happened. A few days later, some were just gone.

With business like our museum, Miles Through Time Automotive Museum, where patrons you don’t know leave reviews, and there are hundreds of reviews, you’d never really know if a review went missing.

But for smaller, more one-on-one businesses, like service-based businesses with no location, like my Agency, Lake Shark Media, if you get a review from a client, and then it disappears, you definitely notice.

We’ve worked hard to get Sean reviews for Miles Through Time and Vintage Garage, but for Lake Shark, I had to start completely over when we moved to GA. All my past reviews were gone. I pretty much gave up on it. I filled my profile out, but that was about it. But recently I decided to give it another go and be more active with my profile. And that meant getting some reviews.

Now, many clients had already left us reviews on our past Google Profile, so we didn’t want to ask everyone again. So I sent out an email to a handful of great clients, asking them to leave an honest review if they had time. And I got 9 reviews back. Super.

I didn’t want to do too many at once, so I figured I let those sit for a bit, and next month I would send another email. But then something happened, some of my reviews went missing. They were just gone. Most of the clients left detailed reviews, and I did nothing that would be against Google policies, so I was on a mission to get my reviews back.

I’m Torie Mathis, marketing agency CEO, digital marketing coach at the Smart Arsenal, and I was ticked off my reviews were gone.

In this video, I’ll go over:

• Why Google removes reviews from your profile
• How to request review reinstatement
• What happened with my request to get my reviews back
• And what steps you can take if it happens to you.

Let’s get started.

What I found was that delayed and missing reviews are common.

Understanding Missing Reviews

There are several reasons why reviews may be removed from your Google Profile. Usually, missing reviews are removed for policy violations like spam or inappropriate content.

Google doesn’t reinstate reviews that are removed for policy violations. These removal measures help make sure that reviews on Google properties are relevant, helpful, and trustworthy.

Reviews can sometimes be removed from a Business Profile after a reinstatement. If you lose reviews after your profile is suspended and then reinstated, contact support for assistance.

If you are missing reviews you can take the following steps to try and reinstate them:

1. Contact support at https://support.google.com/business/gethelp

2. Select your business in the drop down

3. Type ‘Missing Review’ in the tell us what we can help with

4. Choose Review Missing under the best description of this issue

5. Select Next Step (twice)

6. Fill in all required fields on the next form fill.

Note that if you select Yes on “Does the profile belong to an elementary, secondary, or high school? then you are not eligible to generate new reviews on your profile. Google has disabled reviews for educational institutions.

7. Keep in mind that the reviewer name does not match your customer name most the time.

You need the actual Google account reviewer name.

I went through this process for my missing reviews.

Here’s how it went.

Within 30 minutes I got an email…here’s what it said:

Thanks for contacting Google Business Profile support!

I understand that one or more reviews are missing from your Business Profile. From the info you gave us, we believe that the issue is one of the following:

• Review shows on Search but not Maps, or vice versa
  Sometimes, a review takes longer to show on Google Search than on Google Maps, or the other way around. Wait a few days and see if this fixes the issue. If not, you’ll know the issue is something else and you should contact us again for help.
  
• Reviews after reinstatement
  If your reviews went missing after we reinstated your disabled or suspended profile, reply to this email. We’ll investigate for you.
  
• The review had prohibited or restricted content
  • To protect you and your customers, and to provide a fair environment for both business owners and users, we remove reviews that violate our policies, such as reviews that contain inappropriate content, advertising, are abusive, off-topic, or have a conflict of interest. Learn about our review policies and our Maps user generated content policy .
  • We also reserve the right to temporarily disable user created content for business profiles and business categories to prevent abuse.

So I responded to the email:

If I click the link from the email I received saying I got the review, it says the review is not there, so it is not showing in some places and not in others.

My account has never been suspended.

There was no prohibited or restricted content. It only stated how they worked with me and their experience.

I would like the reviews to be back on my account.

After 3 days, I got this email back:

Hi,

Thank you for contacting us about the missing reviews you want to appeal. We’ve now reinstated all the reviews that don’t violate Google’s policies. Learn more about our policies.

To protect business owners and customers, we have systems in place that remove reviews which include any of the following:

• Inappropriate content
• Advertising
• Spam
• Off–topic reviews
• Conflicts of interest

Our policies help protect the integrity of reviews for you and your customers.

This email address can’t accept replies as the request is complete. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thanks,

And, sure enough the reviews were back.

If you’re a service based business, if every review is personal and matters to your business, then go through this process. We’re not like Sean, we may never get hundreds upon hundreds of reviews from people we don’t know, so reach out to Google like I did and get your reviews back.

As always if you have any issues you have a few options.

First, you can drop a comment right here, and I will do my best to help you out.

Next, you can hop on over to the Google help community where other Google pros can offer up some advice.

Or if you’d prefer you can contact Google Support or set up an appointment with a Google Advisor, I will put all those links in the description for you.

Whether you’re a service-based business like mine, or a brick-and-mortar biz like Sean’s, how about we get you more reviews on Google and all across the web?

I  have a FREE review boosting bootcamp happening right now. You can join for free and get step-by-step easy peasy instructions on how to get your business set up for reviews, how to get more reviews, and even how to deal with negative reviews.

You also get a ton of DFY templates and scripts, tools to automate your review process, and I’m giving you a professionally designed review landing page that will get you more reviews today!