A bug in Google is reportedly causing incorrect product reviews to appear in Google Search for a retailer. The system is extracting text that contains the Google Business Profile reviews, even though product reviews are absent and not marked up on the page.
Brodie Clark identified the problem and shared it on the SERP Alert channel on X, providing a detailed explanation and stating, “discovered a pretty massive flaw with Google’s review snippets that a client of mine is taking advantage of.”
Here is the web page that shows the Google Business Profile link and reviews:
He then also showed the Google product retailer reviews listed in Google Search:
The site does not have PDP reviews enabled and does not mark up any review-related content on the page (which is the correct approach). Instead, it places a link to its Google Business Profile at the top of every PDP, showing the review count and average rating.
Unexpectedly, Google is ignoring its usual review snippet mechanisms for PDPs—normally driven by structured data or feed information—and is using the visible text on the page.
This creates a significant vulnerability for Google, because any site could fabricate an average rating on its PDPs, and Google would display it in search results for all products, without violating any explicit guidelines.
No, the data isn’t being taken directly from the GBP listing. I know this because the snippet shows an exact count of 3,000 reviews, while the GBP listing actually has over 4,000 now.
Meanwhile, my client is gaining a notable advantage from this glitch, so I have no complaints.
I assume Google will fix this soon?
Forum discussion at X.
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