A review link that used to work fine is suddenly sending customers to a dead page, a sign-in loop, or someone else's business entirely. Before you assume Google broke something on its end, it helps to know that a dead review link is almost always one of six fixable causes, not a mystery. Here is how to tell which one you have, and get a working link back out the door in under a minute.
The 60-second fix
If you just need a working link right now, skip straight to a fix: generate a fresh link from your Business Profile's current Place ID rather than trying to repair the old one. Every Google review link is built entirely from that one identifier, so a correct new link is never more than a couple of clicks away.
Is it broken for everyone, or just you?
Before chasing causes, answer one question first: does the link fail for an actual customer, or only when you test it yourself while signed into your own business account? That single check splits almost every report into two very different problems, and it's the step most troubleshooting guides skip straight past.
- Test it in a private or incognito window, signed out. That is what a real customer sees. If the review box loads fine there, the link was never broken, only your own test was.
- Ask the customer to try again on a different device. A link that fails on one phone but works on a laptop points to a cached page or an old saved shortcut, not a genuinely broken link.
- Note whether it fails immediately or only after sign-in. Failing before any sign-in prompt usually means the link itself is bad. Failing right after signing in is almost always Google's own account rules, not the link.
6 real reasons a review link stops working
Once you've ruled out testing it as the owner, a link that genuinely fails for customers comes down to one of these six causes, roughly in order of how often each one shows up.
- 1. The Place ID changed. Editing your business name, address, or category, or merging a duplicate listing, can shift the underlying Place ID your old link was built on. The old URL keeps pointing at an identifier that no longer resolves the way it used to.
- 2. A shortened link or old QR code broke. A URL shortener that expired, a QR code printed months ago, or a link pasted into a saved text template is a second point of failure that has nothing to do with Google itself.
- 3. The profile is unverified or mid-review. A newly claimed listing, or one that was recently edited, can have review collection temporarily limited while Google re-checks it.
- 4. The customer isn't signed into a personal Google Account. Google requires reviewers to be signed in before the review box will load at all. Someone browsing signed out, or signed into a work-only account, hits a wall that looks exactly like a broken link.
- 5. A browser cache or extension is serving a stale page. This is the one that shows up as “it worked yesterday and not today,” usually on one specific device for one specific person.
- 6. It's pointing at a duplicate or wrong listing. If two Business Profiles exist for the same location, an old link can be built on the version of the listing that isn't actually the one you manage.
“A link that fails while you're logged in as the owner isn't proof that something is broken. It's proof you tested it the one way it was never meant to work.”
Build a link that won't break again
The durable fix isn't patching the old link, it's changing how you generate the next one. Build every new link, QR code, or printed sign straight from your current Place ID instead of copying forward a URL that might already be a year old.
- Look up your current Place ID with the free Place ID finder if you're not certain it has stayed the same since your last edit.
- Generate a correctly formatted link and a fresh QR code with the review link generator, so you're never hand-typing a URL.
- Turn that link into a print-ready sign for the counter or checkout with the QR poster maker, so the printed copy in the drawer is never the stale one.
Sorry about that, our review link had an issue on our end. Here's a fresh one, it should only take a minute: [new link]
Test it before you hand it out again
A link that works for you doesn't guarantee it works for the next customer tapping it from a text message on an older phone. Run it through this short checklist before you reprint a sign or resend a template.
- Open the link in a private or incognito window, signed out
- Scan the QR code with a phone camera app, not a dedicated QR reader that may cache it
- Test it on both a phone browser and the Google Maps app
- Re-test after any edit to your business name, address, or category
- Trust a link just because it worked once, months ago
- Keep re-sharing a shortened link you can't personally re-test
- Assume a customer's complaint about a dead link is the customer's mistake
- Wait until reviews visibly slow down before you notice the link is broken
Getting the link right is only half the job. What happens once those reviews start landing is the other half: replying to them consistently is what keeps people leaving them in the first place. If reviews you've already collected aren't showing up at all after being posted, that's a different, related problem, covered in why Google reviews don't show up. And if keeping up with replies is the part eating your week, see how Google review automation handles the everyday ones and holds anything sensitive for your OK.