Any options to appeal review reinstatement request?

[KieranThomas]

Hi all.

It's pretty rare (thankfully) that our clients have problems with Google reviews being removed but a client's listing was recently suspended for no legitimate reason, and whilst we were able to get it quickly reinstated, a number of reviews were subsequently missing.

The client has been working recently to grow his GBP reviews by being more pro-active in asking for reviews and following up. He's following all of the correct best practices so there are no legitimate reasons we're aware of for any reviews to have been removed. However, sadly he's dropped from 11/12 back down to 4, and those 4 are all from 2021.

I submitted an appeal as Google does mention on their website that reviews can sometimes be lost following a suspension, but can be restored following a request.

Sadly though, as is the way with Google I received a thoroughly unhelpful and uninformative reply basically saying they couldn't find any data and were closing the ticket. We had even provided them with some of the user's name for some of the reviews to help them.

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

We have checked our internal tools to investigate the missing reviews. We are unable to find any data. Hence we are unable to proceed further with our investigation. Learn more about our policies.

To protect business owners and customers, we have systems in place that remove reviews which include any of the following:

• Inappropriate content
• Advertising
• Spam
• Off–topic reviews
• Conflicts of interest

Our policies help protect the integrity of reviews for you and your customers.

This email address can't accept replies as the request is complete. We apologize for any inconvenience.

For general info about your Business Profile, we recommend our Help Center, Help Community, and YouTube channel.

Regards,

The Google Support team

Suffice to say the client is feeling extremely frustrated and angry as they've been working hard to improve their GBP, and this is what Google does in return.

As I can be a bit like a dog with a bone when I feel something isn't right, I'm tempted to submit a fresh submit ticket referencing this one, and asking for more information - but I'm curious if anyone has any other ideas or whether anyone has tried this approach previously and had any success?

Thanks
Kieran

 

[keyserholiday]

Ask the client if they have the email alerts about a new review. If they or you have them, grab a screenshot of each review and upload them to a drive folder. Then go to the help forum. Make sure you include the case ID where support asked for assistance.