Disappearing Reviews

[Scott Rawlins]

Anyone else seeing the number of reviews has gone down for clients? Had a client contact me about it. Just yesterday, the listing had 71 reviews and today, down to 58. However, in the dash, it still has 71 reviews. Bug I hope?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It's totally possible that they had some reviews filtered and the dashboard just hasn't caught up yet.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

 

[Scott Rawlins]

Yes, I suppose that's possible. This client is aware of the review guidelines and what NOT to do when getting reviews, so I can't see a reason why they might be filtered. We'll see.

 

[Scott Rawlins]

Just found out they use Podium. Could be a review gate issue?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It's possible. Are you able to share the listing here Scott?

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

 

[Scott Rawlins]

Sure.

https://goo.gl/DxN4bq

 

[Scott Rawlins]

I spoke to Podium and tested it for my client. No review gating happening, so hopefully just a bug that G will fix soon.

 

[Scott Rawlins]

This may having something to do with it per Mike Blumenthal and one of his clients.

GOOGLE STOPS COUNTING ANONYMOUS REVIEWS?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Good pickup Scott! I had not seen Mike's post yet, but seems like that may be it.

 

[Conor Treacy]

Thanks for posting the thread Scott, and the link to Mike's article.

We've also noticed a drop in Reviews (today, which is why I came into the forums today). I had initially thought that it was similar to Yelp in that if a user reviews less than "X" places, (5 I think), then the review is not featured.

But the anonymous reviews makes even more sense! For the most part, the reviews that we've seen being dropped are all from 4+ years ago with most of our clients. I think that 2-3 years ago was about the same timeline as when Google required users to have an account to post a review.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Nice find Scott! That makes sense.

And the numbers add up too. Your client lost 13 reviews from the total count which is equal to the number of "Anonymous" Google reviews they have.

 

[Martin Briggs]

Hey guys,

I noticed this morning (my morning, when most of you would have been sleeping I guess ) and notified Mike. A client dropped from an average rating of 4.8 to 3.7 - they obviously didn't have many reviews to begin with, but not many do in this particular industry. Still, they've been hit harder than their competition with this and having the lowest rating in the local finder isn't good.

Of course it's a kick to get a review process in place but, as Mike mentioned in his post, a warning would have been nice.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Nice find and thanks for sharing Martin.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yes Martin, thanks so much for sharing with Mike and here.

 

[djbaxter]

This may having something to do with it per Mike Blumenthal and one of his clients.

GOOGLE STOPS COUNTING ANONYMOUS REVIEWS?

I just read that... came here to post the link and Scott had beat me to it.

That does seem like a likely explanation and, if true, a welcome move by Google in my opinion.

 

[Cherie Dickey]

I saw this yesterday when I returned from vacation. In the article it says that the reviews can still be viewed, but he posted a couple of updates down in the comments saying otherwise:

5/28:
"Today I am looking and not only have they stopped counting them, they have been removed."

and 5/29:
"It was a long weekend and its still early in Mountain View.
We learned over the weekend that the A Google User reviews have now been removed.
My personal guess is that it is a feature not a bug but we are awaiting word from Google."

*sigh* Google.