Issue with Schools Not Being Able to Get New Reviews on GMB

[JoyHawkins]

I ran across a thread yesterday on the GMB forum where multiple schools were reporting that they were unable to get new reviews on their Google listings. One of them said:

"We have been trying since the middle of the summer and several parents have told us their review appeared to go all the way through the process and was even confirmed, but the reviews just don't show up".

Another user chimed in and said:

I was told on October 1 that Google will remove ALL REVIEWS for any Google My Business Page in a SCHOOL category because they do not feel that educational institutions should compete with each other.

We tried leaving reviews ourselves and were able to replicate the issue. Reviews left for schools in Canada were not showing up yesterday but are today. Reviews that were left in the USA are still not showing up.

I have reached out to Google to find out what is going on and will let you know when there is more I can share on this.

This is not the first time this has happened with schools. Earlier this year, Mike Blumenthal helped with some cases and found that he also wasn't able to leave reviews on several school listings but Google ended up fixing/correcting the issue.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Update: Google confirmed that new reviews are disabled for education institutes for now.

 

[Digitaldar]

Wow! Schools should not be able to compete against each other? Perhaps plumbers and marketers should not either.... smh..#googlefail

 

[Monica Simpson]

My guess is people who tend to write reviews probably fall into a select demographic and Google wants to even the playing field. But its still feeding from other sites. I worked in the boarding school market in my past life so I know admissions were competitive. Phillips Exeter is one of the top ones and reviews from niche.com and boarding school review are posted there, but no Google. Reviews are extremely high. Lake Forest Academy, a boarding school in Illinois has reviews from those two and FB. Reviews are extremely high. Madison West High School in Madison, WI feeds from FB and greatschools.com Reviews, low to mediocre. Reviews for South Milwaukee Middle School are middling. This is telling. Simply do an incognito search for your school and see where your reivews lie and work from there

 

[Henry LocalClarity]

I just wrote a Google review for my daughter's private HS in Chicago to test. At first, I thought it was accepted and published. Double-checking in incognito mode, however, confirmed that it has not been published.

 

[keyserholiday]

Sadly, Google is experiencing an issue with the photos that are being uploaded to school listings. Buzz feed wrote about the listings are getting pranked with silly and vulgar photos. Jenny Halasz just posted a link on Twitter to a school that receding a sexual explicit photo. The user post the same photo on two local schools’ GMB listings.

 

[TheRD]

Hi, I can see this is an older post...is there any sense in 2023 if reviews are still disabled for schools?

 

[keyserholiday]

Hi, I can see this is an older post...is there any sense in 2023 if reviews are still disabled for schools?

Reviews and photos should still be disabled.