Google is switching off reviews for businesses because real guests got too enthusiastic too fast. To the algorithm, the QR code on the counter looks like bought stars.
I've recommended the little cardboard stand with the QR code for Google reviews myself. More than once, usually in a first meeting, when someone wanted to know how to climb up in Google Maps: “Put a stand next to the till. Costs ten euros, brings in more than any ad.” Thought that was clever. Now I'm reading at Sterling Sky, a local SEO agency from Canada, that this very stand is currently knocking businesses' profiles out. And not because of bought stars, but because of honest guests who simply write too many reviews too fast.
What Sterling Sky observed
Claudia Tomina from Sterling Sky spent about two months collecting cases in which Google switches off reviews for a profile entirely. Anyone who then tries to leave a review only gets the notice: “Posting reviews is turned off for this place.” In every case she tracked, the block lasted the full 30 days, no matter whether the business appealed or not. The pattern behind it was always the same: reviews written while the customer is still standing in the shop, QR codes at the till and on the tables, and days with ten or more new reviews.
One case from her analysis is particularly nice, because it starts out so harmless. From January to August 2025 the business averaged 72 reviews a month. Then it took off: 179 in September, 235 in October, 181 in November. That's 595 reviews in three months. Google deleted 342 of them, more than every second one, and shut the place down for reviews.
Sure: this is a handful of cases and one agency's observation, not a Google rule. Google says nothing official about the 30-day block. Google hardly ever says anything. But there is a second signal pointing the same way: since September, Google has been sending profile owners an email with the subject “Protecting your Business Profile from spam reviews”. It says Google detected a spike in spam reviews, removed them and temporarily paused new reviews, according to the email usually for a few days. That's a different, shorter mechanism than the block Sterling Sky describes. It just shows where Google is looking right now: at the pace.
The algorithm sees the pace
The logic behind it is easy enough to follow. Ten five-star reviews between noon and one, all from the same place, look ordered. Even if it was the lunch crowd that genuinely loved their pasta.
And now to you, review optimisers. “More reviews, faster, ideally right at the table while the excitement is still warm, blah blah blah.” Yeah, yeah. It's true, the excitement is highest at the table, and I argued exactly that way myself. It's just that Google has been flooded for years by people whose reviews look exactly like yours: lots at once, all from the same place, all five stars. The algorithm can't tell enthusiasm from an order. It only sees how fast it comes in.
Wild, really: the stand works right up until it works too well. A restaurant where three people scan the code in an evening won't notice any of this. The packed place on a Saturday, where the waiter points at the code once more while clearing the table, is the problem.
What to do instead
For you this means surprisingly little work. The link to your profile still exists, you just hand it out differently: later, spread across the week, and to people who are already back home.
- Take the stand off the counter and the tables.
- Send the review link the next day, via WhatsApp or at the bottom of the invoice email.
- A handful a day, no more.
- Don't give anything away for reviews, no discount, no drink on the house. Google prohibits that anyway.
Then the review comes from the sofa, spread over days, and looks like what it is. If you already have the block: Tomina recommends appealing anyway so the case is documented, even if it doesn't change the 30 days. After that, start again slowly, and don't put the stand straight back on the counter.
Sources to read up on: Sterling Sky's analysis from 28 September 2026 and the Search Engine Roundtable report on the Google email.
Now open your profile and look at the last ten reviews. If they're all from the same Saturday, you know where your stand is ;)
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