Widespread Google Reviews Bug

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Colan Nielsen

Colan Nielsen

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Looks like there is a pretty widespread Review Bug going on as we speak. I am seeing the issue on all the listings that I have checked. Review count and review summary is accurate but when you click through to read the reviews, they are gone, or at least a good chunk of them are.

Here are some other places it's being reported:

https://www.en.advertisercommunity....how-up-when-I-click-to-read/m-p/509613#M2904 

https://www.en.advertisercommunity....how-up-when-I-click-to-read/m-p/509613#M2904 

Whar are you seeing?
 
Yep- my 12 reviews don't show, even when I am managing the page... Ross NW Watergardens Reviews.jpg

Ross NW Watergardens Reviews.jpg
 
Annoying. Just looked at 10 accounts and all are missing the actual review count for about 90% of reviews. I feel like Google is holding G+, Maps, GMB, GA, and GSC together with duct tape and crazy glue. Data isn't reliable on all of it. Spam plagues/ruins all stats. Data sample sets instead of comprehensive data further dilutes the numbers. Now reviews are gone..... We have at least a dozen clients with 100+ Google reviews. I'm going to not even mention this. They will lose their $#!^.

I'm not advocating yet another mass shooting but if it were going to happen....Mountain View. I kid.
 
I'm seeing this too, and it looks like there's threads starting to pop up on the GMB forums about it. Interestingly enough, it looked like Helmut (in Germany) was still getting all the reviews showing for businesses though.
 
I am also seeing the same thing. Says there are 25 reviews, but when you click on them to see all, only 5 are showing. This is from the KG.
 
Here's the thread in question I mentioned earlier:
https://www.en.advertisercommunity....nly-2-show-up-when-I-click-to-read/m-p/509589

Here's the quote that made me decide to come back and link it directly:

"I spoke to Google on the phone. After an escalation, they did say that their engineers are now aware of the issue and that many businesses are suffering from it. They said it might take up to 1 week (from 2/3/2016) to fix this problem. Let's hope it's quicker than that."
 
Appears we have several shakeups going on.

Between this and Cori's issue with all her locations disappearing from 5 accts, and then the # of locations all changing on every page refresh...

My spidey senses are tingling, making me wonder if an update is in the works.
 
I've seen this as well with our clients, really disturbing. Would calling google, and reporting them help? This is serious bug. I searched some random businesses, same thing, shows 30+ reviews and only displaying 3 - 5...!!
 
It wouldn't suprise me either way, that is, either:

  • It's a bug and they will fix it soon, or else...
  • It's part of the evil Google plan to make us pay more and more ad money to them


Sheesh. Who knows?

[set cynic mode on]
Here's the interesting thing: This is all sort of like the ways that changes in the tax laws are for lawyers and accountants. Every new tax law can be secretly thought of as "the lawyers' and accountants' full employment act". The same goes for Google changes, in a sort of sad way. Every time Google changes the rules or plays hide-the-ball, it results in new work for SEOs. It really, really annoys clients and that annoys all of us, of course, since we have to deal with the clients and help them get over it.
[set cynic mode off]
 
It looks like this bug has been squashed?

I agree that this reeks of duct tape and crazy glue--with easily millions of $ of business at stake during a 5-6-hour reviews outage.

On the other hand, I share Linda's excitement for a potential update: As we like to say in the product biz, if you're not occasionally breaking things, you're not moving fast enough.
 
Thanks Jon. That was quick!

I never got a chance to bring it up to Google directly today but, I CCed them in a Tweet so hopefully Liz saw this thread. She's pretty on the ball! We are lucky to have her for a CM!
 
Good to have the reviews back, we are going to back them up religiously from now on :)
Definitely begs the question, whether Google is trying to experiment with controlling display of reviews, perhaps like Angie's list. Just provided a previe or 10% for free, give access to more on premium. They need to be careful though, I'm sure bing, yahoo, and yelp and others can see this as opening and adjust their strategy.
 
Thanks for this. Client ask about their reviews and this thread came to rescue.
 
Hi Miriam,

If you take that query and do a regular Google search you'll see it's the branded display style we talked about this week that's been around for awhile. But Barry from SEroundtable did a big post about it this week and some people talking on Twitter thought it was all some new thing. It's been around, but think it's just starting to show in more industries.

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/39701-gmb-display-update-no-reviews-but-b-cs.html">GMB Display Update? NO Reviews but A B Cs</a>
 
Hi Linda,
Thank you so much for the speedy reply. Like you, I sometimes forget what I've seen. I think we've both seen too much in Google land :p Good to know this is explicable! I hope you're doing well.
 
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