Google Introduces Moderation for Review Replies

For years, a review reply went live the second you hit send. That's no longer true.

Google has introduced a new status field, ReviewReplyState, on every reply submitted through the API. Each reply now moves through one of three states before the public ever sees it.

What the three states mean

• Pending: Google is screening the reply's content.
• Rejected: Google has blocked the reply from going live.
• Approved: The reply is cleared for public view.

This matters because a rejected reply doesn't fail loudly. Without visibility into the API, a business could reply to a customer and never know the response was quietly blocked.

What this means for your workflow

Any tool built on the Google Business Profile API now needs to surface the actual state of a reply, not just whether it was submitted.

At GMBapi.com, we track ReviewReplyState directly, so you always know whether a reply is pending, rejected, or genuinely live.