🔍 What Is Happening
Some Search Atlas users have noticed that new reviews posted on Google Business Profile (GBP) do not appear in their Search Atlas dashboard until 7–8 days after the review was published. This delay is not caused by a settings error on your account — it is a known platform issue currently under active investigation by our engineering team.
⚙️ Why the Delay Occurs
Search Atlas uses two syncing processes to pull new GBP reviews into your dashboard:
- Real-time / daily sync: Designed to check for new reviews every 12 hours using Google's pub/sub notification system.
- Weekly full sync: A comprehensive sync that runs every Saturday and catches anything the daily sync missed.
For a significant portion of connected locations, Google's pub/sub notifications are not being delivered reliably to Search Atlas. This means the daily 12-hour sync does not detect new reviews, and those reviews only surface when the weekly Saturday sync runs — resulting in a 7–8 day gap.
Our engineering team has confirmed this affects approximately 75% of active GBP locations and is not isolated to a single account or region.
📊 How to Check Your Reviews in Search Atlas
While our team works on a fix, you can manually check for newly synced reviews by navigating to Left sidebar → Local → Reviews (GBP Reviews). Reviews that have completed the weekly sync will appear here. If a review you are expecting is not visible, it is likely waiting for the next Saturday full sync to complete.
🛠️ What Our Engineering Team Is Doing
This is being actively worked on. Here is the current status of related fixes:
- Real-time sync fix (In Progress): Engineers are investigating why Google pub/sub notifications are not delivering for the majority of locations and are working to restore reliable daily syncing.
- 7-Day no-sync alert (In Development): A health monitoring feature is being built that will automatically alert you if a location has not synced within 7 days, so you are never left wondering about a delay.
- Edited reviews not updating (Under Investigation): A separate but related issue has been identified where reviews that are edited on Google after their initial posting are not being updated in the Search Atlas dashboard. This is also being tracked and investigated.
✅ What You Should Do Right Now
- Be aware that new reviews may not appear in Search Atlas for up to 7–8 days if your location is affected by this sync issue.
- To verify a review exists, check directly on your Google Business Profile in Google Maps or Google Search.
- Check your Left sidebar → Local → Reviews (GBP Reviews) after each Saturday to confirm recently synced reviews have appeared.
- If a review has not appeared after more than 8 days, contact our support team so we can investigate your specific location.
💡 Important Notes
- This is a backend sync issue — there is nothing wrong with how your GBP account is connected to Search Atlas.
- Reviews are not lost; they will sync on the next full Saturday sync at the latest.
- Edited reviews (reviews that were changed after being originally posted on Google) are subject to a separate known issue and may not update in the dashboard even after a full sync. Report these individually to support so they can be tracked.
💬 Still Need Help?
If your reviews have not appeared after more than 8 days, or if you suspect your location may have a different issue, we want to hear from you. If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.