Google pushed out hidden reviews

[keyserholiday]

I saw this tweet from @Amy Toman and when I looked at her business profile it turns out these were not new reviews but older reviews that were published. The newest one was posted 3 days ago and the oldest one was posted a year ago. Amy stated she received an email for one review that was posted 10 months ago but nothing for the other 5. She only noticed them when she click on the "haven't replied," tab.

Is anybody else seeing any new reviews showing up that are old?

 

[ElizabethRule]

I am seeing this on 1 client GBP that was having old reviews hidden suddenly over the past few months. they went from 390+ down to 380 and back to 390 recently with no intervention from me.

 

[keyserholiday]

I just saw another business go from 154 reviews to 169 reviews. None of them are new.

 

[Amy Toman]

I posted on my sidegig to see if anyone else is seeing this. So far, nothing.

 

[Amy Toman]

Update: I received an email notification of the five reviews today. 12 or so hours late, but still ok.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@keyserholiday
We do think Google is now removing reducing the review count for businesses on Google Maps. In some cases by major amounts.

Backstory: So, we are building a tool that will allow anyone to track any GMB. The product is still in Beta and it is called GBPAlert.com. Free to signup.

One of the business we use for testing here is Googleplex, and we have been continuously tracking the data for this business.

We noticed that toward the end of last month the number of reviews that shows for Googleplex went down by around 300 reviews. Have given the screenshot for the exact data change here:

As you can see, in absolute terms these value has gone down.
We have previously seen reviews getting hidden while the review count staying same, inthis case the review count is changing.

We have published the data for Googleplex. You can see the full time of the change here: GMB Alerts . Check the data toward the end of last month, you can see there.

Please note that it is in beta now. Hope this is helpful.

 

[keyserholiday]

@keyserholiday
We do think Google is now removing reducing the review count for businesses on Google Maps. In some cases by major amounts.

Backstory: So, we are building a tool that will allow anyone to track any GMB. The product is still in Beta and it is called GBPAlert.com. Free to signup.

One of the business we use for testing here is Googleplex, and we have been continuously tracking the data for this business.

We noticed that toward the end of last month the number of reviews that shows for Googleplex went down by around 300 reviews. Have given the screenshot for the exact data change here:

As you can see, in absolute terms these value has gone down.
We have previously seen reviews getting hidden while the review count staying same, inthis case the review count is changing.

We have published the data for Googleplex. You can see the full time of the change here: GMB Alerts . Check the data toward the end of last month, you can see there.

Please note that it is in beta now. Hope this is helpful.

Google has been cracking down and removing reviews at an alarming rate. I am monitoring several businesses that bought fake reviews and I keep watching their review counts decreasing on a daily or weekly basis.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@keyserholiday
This is interesting.

I wonder if there is a pattern to the reviews being removed. In this particular case the GMB is for Google's headquarters, and this particular GMB is not activelly managed. So it cannot be fake reviews I guess.

I wonder if you see any pattern? It will be fun to track many of the GBP and see how they decide which review to be removed.

 

[Marcin Karwowski]

Backstory: So, we are building a tool that will allow anyone to track any GMB. The product is still in Beta and it is called GBPAlert.com. Free to signup.

@Will_GMBEverywhere Great tool, I'm testing it right now.
How often does the tool update the profile data? I added 2 business profile for a test, the next day I changed as a guide but I still can't see them in the tool.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@Marcin Karwowski
The aim is to ultimately update data daily and alert the user intantly. We hope to reach this frequency in a couple of weeks.

At present though the frequency is a little lower, couple of time a week. We will send you an email alert summary with it every week.

Glad to hear you enjoyed the tool.

 

[Marcin Karwowski]

I checked several customers who had 100% responses to reviews and responded to all of them from the beginning. And I also found a few cases where there were a dozen reviews from 4-5 years ago.

I also asked customers about these opinions, some came from friends, so it seems that previously, according to google, accounts or reviews without the content of the review were unreliable that they were not published, but now something has changed (maybe the credibility of the account has increased).