Google removes replies from old reviews and marked as new

[Alex Avellaneda]

Hi there. For a couple of weeks, we've discovered plenty of new Google reviews that are not pulled in our monitoring tools. We've investigated and found out that they actually are old reviews (some going back to 2017) that we replied to. Google removed our replies, marked them as new, and moved them to the front on the queue in the knowledge panel. Note that these reviews are NOT reviews revised/updated by the users. So far, it appears that only no-text 4 or 5 stars are affected and most of them are from local guides. Do you have any insights?

 

[studentoflife]

I can’t provide any insight as to what’s happening in your situation, but I just wanted to add that it seems like things have been screwy when it comes to review responses.

Inside of the GMB app it has told me that I have 14 unresponded reviews for years. Within the last couple weeks (same timeframe as you) that changed to 10 unresponded reviews.

In that time I did not respond to any reviews, so it just seems like something is screwy on Google’s end

 

[JoyHawkins]

Can you list a screenshot showing the issue and a link to the listing on Google Maps?

 

[Alex Avellaneda]

Hi, Joy. We haven't received new ones, but here is a recent example. It was posted in 2019 and engaged the next day.

It then showed up on the knowledge panel as new, and without the reply, about a week ago. We re-engaged it natively 4 days ago.

Our monitoring dashboard only pulls the one posted in 2019.

 

[JoyHawkins]

If this is happening to tons of reviews, I would suggest you contact GMB support about it. If it's just 1 or 2, it's possible the user updated their review (clicked the edit button etc) which changed the date on it.

 

[Alex Avellaneda]

We normally receive notifications from Google's API when reviews are revised by the user. The ones we discovered are also exactly the same rating with no change whatsoever. So, I don't believe they are updated.

We didn't get tons of them, perhaps 20+ the past couple of weeks, and across many locations for 2 clients. Hopefully, it's just a momentary bug. I'll open a ticket with Google if I receive another one to see what they say.

Thanks, Joy!

 

[HoosierBuff]

I'm seeing the same thing. A 1-year old review just popped back up, now showing as "new", even though there don't appear to have been any changes.

 

[Alex Avellaneda]

We opened a ticket with Google as we keep receiving them, though fewer than before. They asked for examples, which we sent along with screenshots etc. They've "...routed our query to a specialist on another team to reply..." Let's wait and see!

 

[zigojacko]

We're seeing the same issue for one of our clients as well.

I mean, the review is only about a month old but it was a poor and unjustified review, we responded for our client within a week of it being left and it wasn't marked as new and has since had several more reviews left after it and now it has been flagged as 'New' again and is pinned to the top of the reviews, presumably because it is permanently marked as new. It even shows that our response was left BEFORE the review was.

Something definitely seems to be broken in Google's system with this...