4500 plus reviews suspended for a 26-year-old hotel business.

[Antonio]

Hello,

In summary, a hotel property that we manage for a hotel chain, all of their reviews have been suspended.

A little background on all cases open for this hotel:

On August 24th, we reported a duplicate profile for the Hotel Riu Palace Macao (Case #9-2309000030810) and provided hotel signage for further verification as asked.

On August 27th, we get confirmation that the correct Hotel Riu Palace Macao profile is active (Case #4-7161000030343)

We are an agency that oversees almost 500 GMB profiles and almost 100 profiles for this hotel chain. On November 23rd, after a review of various GMB profiles, we noticed that “ALL” reviews for the Hotel Riu Palace Macao have gone missing. We then opened another case to query the GMB missing reviews (Case # 7-7792000030724)

The Hotel Riu Palace Macao has been opened since 1994 for about 26 years and recently ALL the reviews have gone missing. This hotel belongs to a hotel chain that has several hotels in Dominican Republic averaging 4500 reviews per hotel and even having 8500 reviews (Hotel Riu Bambu) in a single hotel in Dominican Republic.

Hotel information:
Hotel Riu Palace Macao
Playa Arena Gorda, Av. Punta Cana 23302, República Dominicana
Hotel Riu Palace Macao

Google customer supports has indicated that the reviews have been taken because they have violated Googles policy. After several escalations to their “specific specialized team”, they continue indicating that all reviews have been identified as any of the following: Spam and fake content, Off-topic, Restricted content, Illegal content, Terrorist content, Sexually explicit content, Offensive content, Dangerous & Derogatory Content, Impersonation, or Conflict of Interest”

On November 30th, Google continue to indicate that “Reviews has been automatically removed for policy violations hence the reviews cannot be retrieved.”

I am aware that recently Google is having issues with missing reviews but in my case, I feel that they are too many missing reviews. How is it possible that ALL reviews get flagged for violating Google policy? I cannot understand that all of them are flagged as any possible policy violation combination. As an indication, in other Online reputation platforms, the hotel has 5387 and 5375 reviews respectively.

I am really lost for words and possible avenues to resolve this issue let alone explain to the hotel chain all 4500 missing reviews.

Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance,

Antonio

 

[keyserholiday]

Hey @Antonio can you create a thread on the GMB forum and ping me the link. Something is not adding up here. I want to investigate this further.

 

[Antonio]

Hello and thanks for your time...
It is already created...it has the same info as here.
The link is:

https://support.google.com/business/thread/86638401

Update: Above link is no longer active. ~ @djbaxter

Regards,

Antonio

 

[keyserholiday]

Thank you, I have sent this over to Google to investigate it.

 

[Lluc]

@keyserholiday the emails we crossed with Google were very disappointing. We would have no problem sending them to you.

 

[keyserholiday]

Let me preface this by saying Google is stupid and some reps need a ton of training. With that being said, it was determined that during the reinstatement process, all of the reviews were merged with another hotel. The goodness is Google identified the issue and they are currently moving the reviews.

 

[Lluc]

Thank you so much @keyserholiday!!! That's a huge relieve!

We've had all sorts of issues with this hotel since August and when we saw the reviews disappear 15 days ago we could not believe it!

Do you know which hotel the reviews were transferred too? Was it another hotel of the same brand? @Antonio exchanged several emails because he was concerned that support was mixing up the hotels (Hotel RIU Taino/Hotel RIU Palace Punta Cana) and he was very specific about the issues we were experiencing and which hotels were duplicates and which had changed name.

This is the email we got 4 days ago... after 9 other emails!

Here is a screenshot from GSC for this year's impressions (GMB UTM filter applied).

Also, the Knowledge Panel of the hotel is not appearing for branded searches (we see the corporate profile show up or the Hotel Finder) which means that Hotel Ads is not being displayed either on Search.

I really hope this solves the issues this hotel has experienced since August (and that Google allocates more resources to the GMB Help would also be great!!!!)

Hopefully, we get a follow-up email from GMB Support explaining what has actually happened as our client is expecting an explanation.

Once again, thank you very much for your help Jason!

 

[keyserholiday]

The reviews were added to Hotel Riu Bambu. They now had a total of 8,554 reviews. Now that it was identified, Google can now fix it. We will see how long this takes.

 

[david.victor]

You are a badass, KH!

As they say in all the buddy-cop flix, “I’m glad you’re on our side!”

 

[Lluc]

Hello and thanks for your time...
It is already created...it has the same info as here.
The link is:

https://support.google.com/business/thread/86638401

Update: Above link is no longer active. ~ @djbaxter

Regards,

Antonio

Why is the link no longer active? The problem has not been solved. Can we make it public again?

 

[Lluc]

Hi @keyserholiday, we are still struggling with the reviews issue and was wondering if you had any further information as it has been impossible to obtain any updates from Google Support.

Last Wednesday the 9th of December we contacted Google Support again to ask for an update (after you contacted Google) and their response was that there were no changes, that the reviews will not come back as the violate Google'd policies (See screenshot).

Today, we just saw that the RIU Palace Macao has exactly 1,000 reviews and that the RIU Bambu has gone down to 7,586 reviews. From our register, this is still incorrect.

We have also learned there are issues with the review ID via API and we are concerned that we won't be able to identify the reviews. Our client uses ReviewPro and has contacted them to see if it's possible to export the original reviews of each hotel, so as to not to have to review them manually. Our client has their own reputation department and we do not manage reviews, we only oversee metrics and values.

We have also identified 3 other hotels that might have the same issue. We are waiting for confirmation to post it on the Google GMB Forum.

Thanks again for taking a look at this, we still hope we can solve this issue before the end of the year as it is a key time for bookings (pre-covid, of course).

 

[djbaxter]

Why is the link no longer active? The problem has not been solved. Can we make it public again?

That is on Google's end, not here. The link was just reported by a bot as being 404.

 

[keyserholiday]

I thought that you delete the thread. It must have been taken down by Google. I have asked for a status update on this. I will let you know.

 

[Lluc]

I thought that you delete the thread. It must have been taken down by Google. I have asked for a status update on this. I will let you know.

No, we did not... @Antonio has inquired about it. Once again, thank you very much!

 

[keyserholiday]

Google advised me that they fixed this. However, I am seeing 1000 GMB reviews. Please let me know there are more missing.

 

[Lluc]

Hi @keyserholiday, sorry we are on holiday at the moment. We got the same reply from Google and they insist that the missing reviews have been deleted because of policy violations. It is obvious this is not the case because we see users mentioning the RIU Palace Macao in a review in the RIU Bambu. As reviews are managed by their reputation department we are waiting for them to give us feedback on the number of reviews missing. They use ReviewPro as a tool and have contacted them for help on the matter.

I have exported the last 16 months of review data and can share with you privately if that helps (I'll have a Data Studio finished by next week with all the data and a timeline of events and Google's response). Let me know if you want me to send you access to the spreasheets and report.

Macao

Bambu

This is an example from the reviews in the RIU Bambu. The user is literally mentioning the RIU Macao on their review.

We also have examples of the replies to those reviews from the reputation department that actually sign-off with the hotel name, as in the example below.

This is the last response we got from Google, basically exactly the same as the 5 previous ones. We requested to speak to a supervisor because the situation is quite unbelievable and our client would like to make a formal complaint but they have just ignored it for the moment.

Thank you for looking into this Jason. I promised my wife I would not work the next few days... but I'll be back on Monday.

¡¡¡¡¡Felices fiestas y Año Nuevo!!!!

 

[keyserholiday]

You can stop speaking with Google support. It's beyond pointless as they can't or won't see the issue. I have sent additional feedback and examples to the team. They need to associate the hotel.com reviews too. I will let you know when I have another update to share.

 

[Lluc]

Hi @keyserholiday, sorry for the late reply. Spoke to the client yesterday, they are very happy that we are up to 2,914 reviews !!!!!! They feel (Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get actual review numbers) that there are still reviews missing. They have inquired ReviewPro about the reviews but they only have two years of data (up to 2018). They are manually reviewing the reviews but it will take time as staff and resources are on hold at the moment. I have an Excel file with 10 reviews that have been identified as incorrect, how should I pass them on to you?