What happened with Google+ local review star rating?

[TheCTC]

Across the board in our local area, it seems that Google is showing a new star rating lower than it was several days ago.  For my company, we have 67 5-star ratings with no negative reviews.  Until last week, we had a 5-star overall rating being displayed on the local search, but as of this week we have an overall 4.7-star rating.  There have been no negative reviews added, but the drop is painful.

I've looked at the competition as well, and it seems to be a universal change.  Other companies that also have perfect 5-star ratings with no negative feedback are also showing a drop in their overall rating.

I should also mention that last week several reviews were deleted, only to reappear this week; however,  when the deleted reviews were added back it came with the unfortunate drop in the overall rating.

Any ideas?  I've searched on Moz and haven't seen a discussion about this yet.  I know that Google is updating it's local platform, and suspect that this has something to do with it, but overall, I'm curious if this will be a permanent change, or a growing pain while they revamp the system.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi TheCTC,

You're really on the ball to have noticed this, and I'm actually surprised we haven't had multiple threads on this here in Q&A. This is a known issue, being reported by multiple businesses - both the review thing and the drop in stars. Mike Blumenthal has been covering this. Recommend you read:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/12/04/google-reviews-new-quirks/

As to when/how this may be 'fixed', nobody but Google knows, but at least you can know you're not alone in experiencing this fluctuation. Hope this helps!