Google Confirms Review Stars’ Mysterious Disappearance In Search Results Was A Bug
Google review snippets are now back after a bug that caused them to drop out of much of the search results for about a week.
Barry Schwartz on February 26, 2016 at 10:02 am | Reading time: 1 minute
Earlier this week, we reported that the review stars began dropping out of the Google search results. Within 24 hours of that report, the review stars started showing up again in the Google search results.
This morning, in a Hangout, at the 56-minute mark, Google’s John Mueller confirmed they are coming back, and the reason they dropped out was a bug. Google said they fixed the bug, and the reviews should all come back soon.
Here is the Mozcast feature report tool showing us they are now back to normal in the search results:
The reviews initially dropped out on February 16, then starting coming back a few days ago, after we reported the issue to Google.
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Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.
In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.
Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.
In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.
Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.