Losing GMB Reviews at a high rate.

[Jezcor]

Anyone else having similar issues? What do you guys recommend we do? We lost 7 reviews over the weekend and have lost more than 30 total over the past few weeks.

They are legitimate reviews for real customers we have served.

Thank you!

 

[keyserholiday]

Google has been removing reviews since earlier this year. It appears that they are continuing to perform more sweeps on a daily basis.

 

[Jezcor]

Google has been removing reviews since earlier this year. It appears that they are continuing to perform more sweeps on a daily basis.

Even legitimate reviews? What do you recommend I do now? How can I fight this?

 

[keyserholiday]

I would focus on getting new reviews. Consumers discount reviews older than 3 months.

 

[Johndavid]

I would focus on getting new reviews. Consumers discount reviews older than 3 months.

I beg to differ… When people see 505 star reviews versus 150, that is what makes the difference. A lot of people don’t read 150 reviews. They look at the successful history of the company which is usually determined by the overall quantity of reviews

 

[Johndavid]

Anyone else having similar issues? What do you guys recommend we do? We lost 7 reviews over the weekend and have lost more than 30 total over the past few weeks.

They are legitimate reviews for real customers we have served.

Thank you!

Hey everyone, you guys do an outstanding job, work hard to get reviews, and then we will take them away for no reason whatsoever. So, we should work hard to get more reviews? Why as they’ll just be taken away.

 

[keyserholiday]

I beg to differ… When people see 505 star reviews versus 150, that is what makes the difference. A lot of people don’t read 150 reviews. They look at the successful history of the company which is usually determined by the overall quantity of reviews

I really wish people understood the true power of reviews. Sadly people have become too fixated on A. the number of reviews they have B. their average rating and C. how they compare to their competitors. Reviews are about learning from your customers. They will tell you what you are doing right and areas that you can improve in. I have seen too many cases where businesses with the most reviews, were horrible companies. Why? Because they bought them, review-gated to prevent negative reviews, or ran a review contest to get reviews. Consumers are reading the reviews and the business' replies to those reviews. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said: "a real customer" I would be retired and living on a private island that I bought. Here is a tweet from Aaron Weiche, who is my friend and mentor. He spoke at a LocalU event and completely changed my mind about reviews. He founded Get5Stars which rebranded to GatherUp which he sold 2 years ago.
Here is another example of somebody thinking that by having a higher review count and 4.9 rating their client should be ranking. Here is the BrightLocal review study breaking down the power of reviews. I will end with this last point, I am including a screenshot from a business that complained because 4 reviews weren't posted. They are in a mad frenzy to get new reviews to increase their count and rating. They are not getting quality reviews. They went from 133 reviews on Wednesday to 248 today. They completely missed the point. It reminds me of a No Fear shirt I saw, The one with the most toys wins. Sadly this is the mentality I see with reviews. Rant over.

 

[BenFisher]

Hi All,
Google is asking for examples of profiles affected by this. Please DM me a list of affected profiles and how many reviews have been removed and I can open a case about this.

 

[keyserholiday]

Anyone else having similar issues? What do you guys recommend we do? We lost 7 reviews over the weekend and have lost more than 30 total over the past few weeks.

They are legitimate reviews for real customers we have served.

Thank you!

When do you first notice that reviews were being removed?

 

[keyserholiday]

OK, I cracked some of the code. On October 10th/ 11th. Google released reviews that had been filtered out. As this happened, Google started removing reviews. @TomW noticed reviews being removed on the 11th/12th too.

 

[Jezcor]

Hi All,
Google is asking for examples of profiles affected by this. Please DM me a list of affected profiles and how many reviews have been removed and I can open a case about this.

PM sent. Thank you.

 

[Jezcor]

Hey everyone, you guys do an outstanding job, work hard to get reviews, and then we will take them away for no reason whatsoever. So, we should work hard to get more reviews? Why as they’ll just be taken away.

My thoughts exactly. "Just move on and get new reviews" is something someone who has never owned a small family business would say...

 

[keyserholiday]

My thoughts exactly. "Just move on and get new reviews" is something someone who has never owned a small family business would say...

Please read my reply to Johndavid. While I am not a small business owner, I know a lot about online reviews, local rankings, and best practices. There is more to business and rankings than just review counts. Please read the BrightLocal review study as you can learn about customer sentiment and how they feel about online reviews. If online reviews are so important, do you have them displayed on your website as social proof? Are they part of your advertising strategy? Is only your focus on Google, Yelp, and Facebook? Those are rented platforms, you don't own them. You own your website, and you get to make changes and add content there. Are you? I have been working in SEO for 16 years, I see the downsides to putting all your eggs in one basket and relying solely on Google. Times change and companies come and go. You have to adapt if you want to survive. I just looked at another business that claimed to have lost "real customer" reviews. I saw patterns of abuse and reasons for Google to remove the reviews. I have focused on online reviews for the last 5 years. One of my mentors' Mike Blumenthal passed the torch over to me as I had surpassed him. I don't own a small business, I just managed 2000 business profiles for 4 chains. I volunteer my time to give back, help out, and share my knowledge.

 

[Jezcor]

Please read my reply to Johndavid. While I am not a small business owner, I know a lot about online reviews, local rankings, and best practices. There is more to business and rankings than just review counts. Please read the BrightLocal review study as you can learn about customer sentiment and how they feel about online reviews. If online reviews are so important, do you have them displayed on your website as social proof? Are they part of your advertising strategy? Is only your focus on Google, Yelp, and Facebook? Those are rented platforms, you don't own them. You own your website, and you get to make changes and add content there. Are you? I have been working in SEO for 16 years, I see the downsides to putting all your eggs in one basket and relying solely on Google. Times change and companies come and go. You have to adapt if you want to survive. I just looked at another business that claimed to have lost "real customer" reviews. I saw patterns of abuse and reasons for Google to remove the reviews. I have focused on online reviews for the last 5 years. One of my mentors' Mike Blumenthal passed the torch over to me as I had surpassed him. I don't own a small business, I just managed 2000 business profiles for 4 chains. I volunteer my time to give back, help out, and share my knowledge.

I understand there is more to ranking than reviews; I never stated otherwise. But I do know they matter to business owners, specially small ones.

It does bother to lose reviews for no reason. That is not something I would expect Google or any other company to actively engage on, removing users review that do not go against their policies. I know Google messes up from time to time so I figured this could be another one of their slips. I hope it is and I hope they bring those reviews back... but lets see.

Thank you for the help you have provided to this community. It is invaluable.

 

[Jezcor]

Hi All,
Google is asking for examples of profiles affected by this. Please DM me a list of affected profiles and how many reviews have been removed and I can open a case about this.

Any updates?

 

[keyserholiday]

Any updates?

He won't know anything for several weeks.

 

[Jezcor]

He won't know anything for several weeks.

Noted.

 

[keyserholiday]

Noted.

If you want to DM the links to the clients that you are concerned about, I can take a look to see if there is a reason for the reviews to be removed.

 

[Jezcor]

If you want to DM the links to the clients that you are concerned about, I can take a look to see if there is a reason for the reviews to be removed.

Done! Appreciate it.

 

[keyserholiday]

Done! Appreciate it.

So I scanned the reviews for Jezcor's client and discovered that 37 businesses were all reviewed by the same people that reviewed his client. In my opinion, Google is correct to remove reviews and will remove more. His client is dominating their market. The loss of reviews is not hurting their rankings.