Google on a Review Takedown Tear
Legitimate reviews appear to be collateral damage from a stepped up Google effort to address review spam.
Google Product Experts Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher and Amy Toman have pointed out a recent anecdotal uptick in complaints from businesses that Google is taking down their reviews. A number of Google Product Experts, myself included, have received out-of-forum emails asking for help.
This led me to update my tracking of missing review complaints in the Google Business Profile Forums. Small business complaints about Google taking down too many reviews or not catching fake reviews tend to be a very good proxy for how aggressive Google's algorithm is towards spam reviews.