Hundreds of business got 5 star reviews removed

[localboss]

Hi all!
I guess you all noticed that hundreds of business owners are seeing that they lost between 10 and 50 (all 5 stars reviews) today.
It's clearly a change of the algorithm that impacted businesses from all over the world, and probably related to the push from countries like Italy and the UK to strengthen the fight against fake Reviews.

CMA secures important changes from Google to tackle fake reviews

Google has agreed to make significant changes to its processes for tackling fake reviews – meaning people can have more trust in the reviews they see.

www.gov.uk

Some initial hypothesis would be that they either changed the geoolocation parameters, maybe to make them narrower to the business location or that they detected a new pattern on the review that triggered it to be considered fake or spam.

I'd love to have. your thoughts on that!

Xavier

 

[keyserholiday]

Where are people talking about this?

 

[rustybrick]

covered it in a lot more detail at Google Local Reviews Decreasing

 

[keyserholiday]

I looked at some of those threads and can see why Google is removing reviews. For this thread, people are reviewing several of their locations. This thread, the latest review, has a stolen photo with the watermark. Why do people engage in fraudulent review schemes and then play the victim? Google needs to place warnings on these GBPs to alert consumers that a large number of reviews were removed.

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@keyserholiday - ICYMI, Google is showing review fraud warnings on GBPs in the UK!

 

[keyserholiday]

@keyserholiday - ICYMI, Google is showing review fraud warnings on GBPs in the UK!

I saw that. We need those warnings everywhere.

 

[keyserholiday]

I cracked the code!!! One client I am looking at lost all 13 reviews which were left in 2018. I heard from somebody that GBPs under 3 years lost less than 1%, and GBPs older than 3 years lost the most.

 

[BSDChicago]

I cracked the code!!! One client I am looking at lost all 13 reviews which were left in 2018. I heard from somebody that GBPs under 3 years lost less than 1%, and GBPs older than 3 years lost the most.

Which would hurt long established businesses the most. I lost two reviews on a 6 year old GBP since over the last couple of days.

 

[petercanthropus]

I see the imperative need to hire a review software, is there one that alerts when a review disappears? I would really appreciate your recommendations.

Backing up manually is laborious, considering that a GBP can have thousands of reviews.

 

[keyserholiday]

As much as I don't like them, Birdeye posts the reviews on their profile. It's a great way to grab proof. I use Yext, and they are supposed to have a tab for removed reviews. I'll DM you my favorite tool.

 

[keyserholiday]

The left side is the client's export, and the right side is mine. The last 15 reviews were removed.

 

[keyserholiday]

I was wrong. These two different tools are unable to see reviews past a specific date. It sounds like it is a bug.

 

[Marcin Karwowski]

I see the imperative need to hire a review software, is there one that alerts when a review disappears? I would really appreciate your recommendations.

Backing up manually is laborious, considering that a GBP can have thousands of reviews.

My team and I use Localo to monitor reviews and deleted reviews. At this point, it shows me deleted reviews that were posted even 7 years ago. But most of the last 24 hours.
For now, we are not appealing and we are waiting for official announcements.