Prior to May 23rd, 2018 there were numerous reviews from an anonymous source, which, really, was any user that wanted to leave a review but was not wanting to be “Put out there” and thus stayed anonymous by using the “A Google user” as their review tag. After May 23rd, 2018, Google removed a large number of these reviews which sent the review ratings of many people and companies down because of the removed reviews.

Key Takeaways:

• The removal of these reviews seems to be a permanent act by Google, not an error.
• It is unlikely that these anonymous reviews will ever return due to Google trying to reduce spam.
• Depending on what the reviews said, this could be a positive or negative thing for the businesses affected.

“Reviews designated by this language came from a variety of scenarios, but are chiefly fallout from Google’s rollout of Google+ and then its subsequent detachment from local.”

Read more: https://moz.com/blog/lost-anonymous-google-reviews