Starting in April 2026, the Google Business Profile moderation systems began to reject responses to customer reviews. Prior to this date, every reply sent would be accepted and pushed live. 

Now, however, your well-intentioned reply can be removed from public view and given an internal status of “rejected”, (a state visible only within Google’s API record) without any notice provided to you. But why are these responses getting removed if business owners utilizing Google are trying to follow their rules? A comprehensive analysis conducted by GMBapi and released in June 2026, examined over 12,000 rejected responses and uncovered a ground-shaking trend for local businesses.

According to the study, 92.6% of these rejected responses were initiated on positive, five-star reviews. This high concentration is primarily attributed to the use of boilerplate language or generic AI-generated text. Additionally, timing appears to influence Google's filtering algorithms as the average rejected response was published about 50 days after the review was received, indicating that bulk-scheduled, delayed interactions can trigger a disproportionate rate of removal.

That said, while Google’s policies do not explicitly state that AI-generated or scheduled replies are prohibited, they can still get caught by Google’s automated moderation filter which is trained to remove, among other things, replies with spam content. Because these review replies end up replying with many of the same phrases or all at the same time, Google detects them as spam and removes them. The fact that they are AI generated is not the underlying cause of their removal.

To maintain visibility and avoid silent rejections, businesses must pivot away from repetitive, templated response strategies. Crafting authentic, unique, and prompt replies remains critical to sustaining local search optimization and preserving engagement.