Yesterday we reported on a major bug impacting lots of Google Place business page holders and their reviews. The reviews within Google Maps went missing and for many, have still not been recovered.

At first, I thought the issue had to do with a new reviews spam algorithm that went bad. I was wrong. It is another type of bug, although Google won’t say exactly what it was.

Joel Headley from Google said “I have confirmed that this isn’t a spam issue. It’s a problem on our end we’re actively working to fix.”

Vanessa from Google updated the Google Places Help and Google Maps Help threads saying:

We think we’ve discovered the core problem and we’re actively working on a fix. Again, thank you to all the helpful individuals who posted details about what you were seeing. I’ll keep you posted as I hear more.

So I hope you all get your reviews back soon!

Forum discussion at Google Places Help and Google Maps Help.