Google Review Removed - Anyone Seeing An Increase In Review Being Removed?

[Tim Colling]

In the past 24 hours, we are seeing a significant increase in reviews being removed from one of our clients. They had 65 reviews yesterday, and today 15 of those have been removed. Fourteen removed reviews were 4- or 5-star reviews, and one was a 1-star.

We wrote a custom app that monitors our clients' Google Business Profiles and notifies us with the details of any reviews that are removed. That app runs every 24 hours, and we're seeing more reviews being removed one at a time but 15 out of 65 is a major escalation.

I can't help but wonder whether someone is targeting these clients with a malicious campaign to remove their favorable reviews.

Does anyone have anything similar happening right now with their clients?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I don't know how widespread it is. I haven't seen any drops from clients of ours yet.

 

[rustybrick]

I see review complaints at Browse the Google Business Profile Community but I suspect there are always complaints about missing reviews in that forum? Missing reviews, in general, is not new. But it being more widespread, like you said, would be.

Keep me posted please.

 

[mblumenthal]

From where I sit, there is no indication that anything has changed.

The large number of reviews removed from this particular location seems to reflect the episodic google assessment of older reviews as the filter works its way through each listing. I am guessing that Google looks at these older listings in order of their perception of review abuses in the category.

As this review "flyby" uses the new filter, a bunch of reviews surpass the threshold needed for takedown. And go poof.

I am quite sure that these reviews are real but false positives where real reviews are ID'd as fake is a real and unpleasant side affect of Google's new review spam filters.

 

[mblumenthal]

Many months I tabulate the total forum complaints about missing reviews.

I just did a mid month check and over halfway through the month there are 113 reports of missing reviews. This is consistent with the past year or so when it has been running 200-250 a month.

 

[keyserholiday]

So are we seeing reviews being removed in masses?

I am unable to corroborate it.

 

[localboss]

Regarding the missing reviews, we can see when a Localboss user has less reviews that the previous visit, which happens occasionally, but we are not seeing any users loose reviews lately.

In case you wonder, we can't identify what specific review was removed (GBP's api doesn't allow to store the review for more than 30 days) but we are thinking of a way to be able to pinpoint a review that was at some point published in the profile.

 

[Lahsa H.]

I'm tracking what's going on with reviews activity for approximately 20 SABs and 35 storefronts. I haven't seen anything strange recently. Sometimes, reviews go missing, but it's been like that for 5-6 months. If we ask Google about the missing reviews, in 90% of cases they help us get them back.

 

[RobSEO]

Following up and bumping this older thread. Have a client in the legal niche whose reviews stay at a particular number. It's as if, when he gets new reviews, older ones are deleted? The problem being of course competitors have a higher number or reviews, which can be a ranking factor.

Any guidance on this? Noting these reviews are all legitimate clients.

 

[keyserholiday]

Following up and bumping this older thread. Have a client in the legal niche whose reviews stay at a particular number. It's as if, when he gets new reviews, older ones are deleted? The problem being of course competitors have a higher number or reviews, which can be a ranking factor.

Any guidance on this? Noting these reviews are all legitimate clients.

I am sorry but review counts are not a ranking factor.

 

[RobSEO]

I am sorry but review counts are not a ranking factor.

Seems there's some discrepancy here. Sterling Sky has it as a ranking factor with diminishing returns over a certain number. Does the Number of Google Reviews Impact Ranking? [Case Study]

 

[mblumenthal]

1- With missing reviews the best thing to do is track all incoming reviews and when they go missing request that Google restore them. If new clients are leaving reviews that are not showing then ask them for a screen shot of the review so that their efforts don't go to waste. See A Guide: Why Are My Reviews Missing on Google? for details.

2- If you read the article you referenced you will see that a few reviews (10 or so) impact ranking but beyond that have no measurable ranking result. That being said NearMedia's current consumer search behavior research clearly shows that conversions are directly impacted by review volume with some frequency.

 

[JS Girard]

Past ten review, it is review freshness that impact rankings, maintaining review freshness will naturally drive review numbers up, but this is a side effect.

Google seems significantly more likely to block ratings (reviews without text) at the moment. Editing these reviews (as was noted on these very forums) has a very high chance of making them show again. I've tested this just last week with a three-months old review by a coworker that was not showing. Add a little commentary and it's showing up now. A client just asked for my help fixing reviews not showing and I had to put my foot as these where individuals leaving no-comment reviews for 10-some franchises at a time (I saw the screenshots), but I did notice these were ratings and not actual reviews.

Speaking of, we talk about "reviews", but google use two different terms: "reviews" and "ratings". Indeed, if you look at user profiles, only reviews with text are counted as "reviews:

To us Local SEOs, that user has left 41 reviews, but to Google, only 28 are part of that category.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Past ten review, it is review freshness that impact rankings, maintaining review freshness will naturally drive review numbers up, but this is a side effect.

Could not agree more. Review recency is something I feel like not a lot of people talk about. We did some testing around this one as well but it was a different article than the one mentioned earlier: Does Review Recency Matter for Google Rankings?

I see this often with core algorithm updates too - businesses without recent reviews take a hit.