Missing Reviews/ Reviews Disappearing

[obcted]

So I've been following this topic for a while now, here and elsewhere. I understand that google is working on it but this has been going on for a client of mine for about 6 months and we now have some good documentation.

I've read the post here:

Why Are My Google Reviews Not Publishing? - Sterling Sky Inc

If you are a business that is frustrated by Google not publishing your reviews, you are not alone. We are seeing more and more reports of businesses that are complaining about missing Google reviews or reviews not publishing when customers post them. In this example from the forum people...

www.sterlingsky.ca

I've submitted a ticket here: Sign in - Google Accounts
and opened a post here: Sign in - Google Accounts
Here's the post: https://support.google.com/business/thread/166543588?hl=en

In short my client tells me 10+ have gone missing Since February 2022. After a while he started having his clients send screenshots because they would tell them they left reviews but they wouldn't show. I have proof of 3 but client is insisting it's many many more.

If I could get at least some of these restored it would go a long way.

Client has 2 offices (Boston MA and Salem MA)

Here are the respective profiles:

Paul R. Moraski - Google Search

&

Paul R. Moraski boston - Google Search

Name	Location	Review Date	Screenshot?
Bryan Dawley	Boston	4/28/22	Yes
Andrew Rich	Salem	2/28/22	Yes
Madeline Delgado	Boston	2/12/22	Yes

@JoyHawkins any tips or tricks aside from what I've done so far? These are all clients of my lawyer clients and they are not posting from his office or anything to trigger an IP issue. I'm at a loss for what to do and client is getting frustrated. Any advice you or anyone in the community has would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Ted

 

[JoyHawkins]

Not only has the filter got stricter, but they also have been doing waves of takedowns lately so I'm hearing tons of reports of businesses losing reviews in the last week that were published before but then got removed recently.

One thing to try is instead of sending customers a link to review you with, tell them to search for you on Google and leave a review. That *might* help - it's worth testing.

I'll go escalate your thread on the Google forum now.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Thank you! But there's a bit of a snag there. Actually a couple: if the company doesn't receive any notification of the reviews, how do they know how many are missing? Secondly, which company is going to bother their customer to ask for evidence of their review? My client has no way of knowing exactly how many reviews are missing - they just know they can't receive them. They know they have at least four missing - so surely it's not a review content issue - as they are four unique reviews. Any guidance you can provide would be fantastic.

I didn't say it was a good process . In my opinion, it's stupid that Google requires this info but all the cases I've escalated that have been successful have provided this information. I agree with what @obcted posted above.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yes, their filters are definitely still filtering out legit reviews. The action steps are still what's listed here: Why Are My Google Reviews Not Publishing? - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[keyserholiday]

I have a divorce lawyer with 4 locations and all of them have in the last couple of days lost many reviews from legitimate clients. In total probably over a dozen removed. We didn't keep copies of all the reviews but we know the total counts.

Google is targeting lawyers on the new review AI removal. I'd love to take a look at their profiles to see I can see what is causing the reviews to be removed. Here is one Personal Injury firm's review count. I got the numbers on Tuesday am. You will see the Wednesday morning count and the count in the afternoon.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I just checked a business (moving company) that told me a month ago he was buying reviews. He went from 151 (4.1 rating) to 118 (3.9 rating).

Sterling Sky also lost 2 reviews but honestly I'm happy to take a 2 review loss if it means Google is actually catching businesses that are buying reviews.

 

[keyserholiday]

Google released this review that was previously filtered out.

 

[JoyHawkins]

You can try the thing I posted above:

One thing to try is instead of sending customers a link to review you with, tell them to search for you on Google and leave a review. That *might* help - it's worth testing.

 

[JoyHawkins]

The process is listed in that article I linked to, at the end in blue.

 

[keyserholiday]

Hi guys,
I am having the same issues with the reviews not showing on my Google Profile. I had 4 customers leave reviews for our business in 2022 and neither one of them was published (publicly at least.)

One of the customers sent me a screenshot of the review that he can see on his end, I have review dates and review text from the others (but no actual screenshot.) It's so frustrating. I've spent hours talking to Google My Business support with absolutely no result.

@JoyHawkins I used your suggestion from the article to post in the Google Product Form. Is it possible for you to escalate the issue to Google Support to take a look?
Here is the link: New customer reviews are not showing up - Google Business Profile Community

There has been an update to the forum rules and this forum is not meant for people needing help from the GHF. Please either remove your link or your post to comply with the new rules.

 

[pilatesqueen]

@keyserholiday I removed the link. Local search forum is the only place online where I can find some time of help for Google Business listings and recommendations of what to do next. Unfortunately, Google Support or their forums are absolutely worthless in providing any type of help or assistance.

 

[keyserholiday]

@keyserholiday I removed the link. Local search forum is the only place online where I can find some time of help for Google Business listings and recommendations of what to do next. Unfortunately, Google Support or their forums are absolutely worthless in providing any type of help or assistance.

That forum is staffed by volunteers. It is people answering questions. Sadly the number of threads drastically outnumbers the number of volunteers. I took a quick search of threads about missing reviews and 38 out of 118 threads are about missing reviews. There are 77 unanswered threads. That's 65% unanswered threads.

Google is cracking down on online reviews. Google has tightened the review filters. I am seeing cases where Google has released the reviews that were filtered. Amy had 6 reviews published on her profile. There could be a time when Google publishes your reviews.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I tracked a listing that lost the majority of its reviews and there was no impact to its ranking. I wrote about it here: What Happens When Google Removes 98% of Your Reviews | A Case Study | Sterling Sky Blog

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@keyserholiday @BenFisher @JoyHawkins

This is interesting.

So, I just did some analysis of data in the GMBAlert.com database. Here are some interesting data:

Below is based on the data we tracked between October 18th and October 20th afternoon EST.

- Around 13 business we track lost reviews in these 2 day period. We only track around 100 business now.
- This seem to be happening in different sectors, not restricted to specific one. Some of which we seen includes tourism, restaurants, public places, locaksmiths and so on.
- This is not just a changes in number of review, this is also affecting the rating for some of the business. This means that when the review number changes, the rating also changes. Check specific example of business 1, business 2 and business 3 below.
- We did notice these happening for unmanaged businesses too. These means businesses that have a very low probablity of fake reviews. A good example of this is Googleplex (Google Headquarters), which lost around 400 review end of last month.


Some cases where review number decreased and the rating decreased:
- Business 1:
For this Crate and Barrel lost a one star review and the rating increased. This business did not get any new review in the last week, so we can count that scenario out. This is purely from the changes in review numbers.
You can see the full history of this business here:
See history of this business here: GMB Alerts
GMBAlert.com Screenshot below:

Business 2:
For this locksmith lost 44 five star review in this period and the rating decreased.

See history of this business here: GMB Alerts
GMBAlert.com Screenshot below:

Business 3:
For this Restaurant POS system it lost 1 review and rating went down.
Screenshot:
See history of this business here: https://link.gbpalert.com/demo?placeid= ChIJn1nf4ZqRwokRXUGUTl3_zYY
Screenshot below:

Just FYI. GMBAlert.com is completely open now. So feel free to track businesses there. It is in beta, and free (we havent yet got around restricting users).

@keyserholiday
As mentioned would love to do an experiement. Will reach out.

@BenFisher
The above are some public data. These are good example of business loosing reviews.
Ironically, the most drastic example of business lossing review is their headquarters itself. Googleplex (Google Headquarters) had around 10400 review towards end of last month, now it has 10040. You can see google's data here: GMB Alerts


@JoyHawkins
I see the articles is from Feb. Our data is more recent. These trend is something we notice recently. Not sure if these are due to the same reason.

 

[keyserholiday]

@keyserholiday @BenFisher @JoyHawkins

This is interesting.

So, I just did some analysis of data in the GMBAlert.com database. Here are some interesting data:

Below is based on the data we tracked between September 18th and September 20th afternoon EST.

- Around 13 business we track lost reviews in these 2 day period. We only track around 100 business now.
- This seem to be happening in different sectors, not restricted to specific one. Some of which we seen includes tourism, restaurants, public places, locaksmiths and so on.
- This is not just a changes in number of review, this is also affecting the rating for some of the business. This means that when the review number changes, the rating also changes. Check specific example of business 1, business 2 and business 3 below.
- We did notice these happening for unmanaged businesses too. These means businesses that have a very low probablity of fake reviews. A good example of this is Googleplex (Google Headquarters), which lost around 400 review end of last month.


Some cases where review number decreased and the rating decreased:
- Business 1:
For this Crate and Barrel lost a one star review and the rating increased. This business did not get any new review in the last week, so we can count that scenario out. This is purely from the changes in review numbers.
You can see the full history of this business here:
See history of this business here: GMB Alerts
GMBAlert.com Screenshot below:

Business 2:
For this locksmith lost 44 five star review in this period and the rating decreased.

See history of this business here: GMB Alerts
GMBAlert.com Screenshot below:

Business 3:
For this Restaurant POS system it lost 1 review and rating went down.
Screenshot:
See history of this business here: https://link.gbpalert.com/demo?placeid= ChIJn1nf4ZqRwokRXUGUTl3_zYY
Screenshot below:

Just FYI. GMBAlert.com is completely open now. So feel free to track businesses there. It is in beta, and free (we havent yet got around restricting users).

@keyserholiday
As mentioned would love to do an experiement. Will reach out.

@BenFisher
The above are some public data. These are good example of business loosing reviews.
Ironically, the most drastic example of business lossing review is their headquarters itself. Googleplex (Google Headquarters) had around 10400 review towards end of last month, now it has 10040. You can see google's data here: GMB Alerts


@JoyHawkins
I see the articles is from Feb. Our data is more recent. These trend is something we notice recently. Not sure if these are due to the same reason.

One of the businesses I am monitoring had 1221 reviews. Google wiped out almost 600 of them. They then bought 350 more reviews. Today they sit at 615 reviews. They finally lost a point and are at 4.8. Today's review removal sweep just started rolling out now.

 

[Zdenek Horak]

Silly me. Yes, I do mean October. Till yesterday.
I have updated the original post now

Interesting things I put in Google Prague to watch gmbalert

 

[keyserholiday]

Very interesting. Infact it seems to have gotten better eeh.

Will be good to see if ranking changes in a week or so. For category changes and some other things, have heard it takes a week or so for ranking to reflect the change. Would be great to see here. Great you have benchmarks.

Was curious, what is the tool you are using for grid search?

I will run another report on November 1st. I am using Places Scout for my heat maps.

 

[keyserholiday]

This is interesting. I scanned a business at 9:10 AM PT. The Google Business profile stated that they had 471 reviews, the count was wrong. The real count is 466 reviews. I am not seeing the sweep between 10:00 AM PT and 1:00 PM PT, I see the updated review count well after the reviews were removed.

 

[keyserholiday]

Hi @keyserholiday
I might ask what are you using to scan these companies and such reports?

I use Places Scout they are the best tool for my spam fighting efforts.

 

[keyserholiday]

Today's review removal was extremely low. I only saw 3 businesses lose reviews. I expected to see more businesses get hit and lose reviews.