Across online communities where local business owners talk shop, one problem keeps coming up again and again: Google Business Profile reviews are not showing up, or they disappear after a short time. Customers say they left reviews, but the business can’t see them. For service-based local businesses, this is a serious issue. Reviews help people decide who to call. When reviews vanish, visibility and leads can drop fast.

“The customer posted it… but it’s not there”

Many business owners are sharing the same experience. A customer says they left a review. Sometimes they even show proof. But when the business checks their profile, the review is missing. In other cases, the review shows up for a day or two, then disappears without warning.

What makes this frustrating is that nothing seems unusual about the reviews. These are not fake accounts or spam messages. They are real customers using normal Google accounts. The reviews sound natural and honest. Still, they do not stay visible.

The tone in these discussions is clear. Business owners feel confused, stressed, and worn down. They feel like they are being punished without knowing why. There is no clear message saying what went wrong, or if anything went wrong at all.

Why this hurts service businesses more

For service businesses, reviews do more than look nice. They help turn searchers into callers. People looking for a contractor, surveyor, or engineer often read recent reviews before reaching out because they want to know they’re choosing someone reliable. This matters even more for work like masonry, where people are often searching for masonry services people trust, not just a business name.

Several business owners say their rankings did not change, but their phone stopped ringing as much. This creates a strange problem. The business still shows up on Google, but customers pause when recent reviews are missing or outdated. Without that reassurance from other customers, visibility alone is not enough to move someone to make the call.

The biggest complaint: no clear answers

The most common complaint is not that reviews are filtered. It is that no one explains why. There are no alerts, no warnings, and no clear reason given when reviews disappear. Support replies are often vague and do not solve the problem.

This leaves business owners feeling powerless. Automated systems seem to decide what shows and what does not. The rules are unclear, and there is no easy way to check or fix the issue.

What this means for the future of local SEO

These conversations show a shift in how local SEO problems feel. The worry is no longer just about ranking higher. It is about whether important trust signals, like reviews, are even visible.

For service-based businesses, especially in competitive areas like Huntsville, this creates new risk. Even when customers are happy and leave real feedback, that feedback may not appear. The frustration seen in these communities reflects a hard truth: local visibility is now shaped as much by platform decisions as by how well a business performs.