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

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@Will_GMBEverywhere Your tool is amazing and extremely helpful

I've turned on monitoring GmbAlert for several companies that I know are buying positive reviews for a year.

One company started on October 13 with 183 5-star reviews.
On October 21, out of 183, they received 51 reviews.

We are probably seeing a really big overclocking of the algorithm to fight unfair opinions. Finally!
Let only honest opinions not get hit by the way.

Thank you for sharing this data. Ya, agree, big changes going on with reviews and rating. Hope a lot of legitimate GMBs are not affected here.

Glad you liked the platform. We are still in beta. A lot of exciting additions coming next couple of weeks here.

 

[keyserholiday]

In order to support multi-location clients, we needed to build processes that identify removed reviews. It's incredibly system intensive, but it provides a record of all removed Google reviews at any scale.

We hope to be putting together some reporting across clients that shows relative spikes in review removal over time. I'll share here when the data is available.

Thanks to everyone here who does some an amazing job of sharing insights.

I just cracked the code today and the results can't be shared at all. It would make it easier for review sellers to post fake reviews.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I had someone tweet at me this morning that said they just lost 70.

 

[keyserholiday]

I had someone tweet at me this morning that said they just lost 70.

It’s unrelated. They lost their reviews during the reinstatement process.

 

[Tim Colling]

...The goal is to get a steady flow of new reviews on a weekly basis.

Yes!

 

[keyserholiday]

Thanks for the tip on places scout- I've never heard someone claim to "Crack the code" when it comes to google. Do you have any insight as to why legitimate reviews are getting reviewed and what I can do about it? If they are violating the TOS any idea on what terms they're breaking? The last time I did this google reinstated most of them so I'm pretty sure it's not a TOS issue - but I haven't cracked any code yet so I'd appreciate your wisdom

I started monitoring several businesses that were losing a high rate of reviews on a daily basis. I grabbed exports of their reviews and manually checked each review one by one to see if the review was still live or removed. Once I made notes as to which reviews were removed, I was able to see the clear-cut pattern. If my analysis wouldn't be used by spammers to continue spamming Google and change their tactics I would share my findings.

 

[keyserholiday]

It's hard to say without knowing the business profile. Did they use a marketing company that played fast and loose with online reviews? I have seen lots of businesses with less than 20 reviews and they are all fake. This business has 16 reviews and the 10 most recent appear to be fake and purchased. Here is another business that is engaging with fake reviews and they have 30 reviews currently. They got up to 47 reviews until Google started removing the reviews. Their fake review seller offered me fake reviews on LinkedIn. I have partnered up with The Transparency Compay and we scan business reviews to see if they are real or fake. Online reviews are my wheelhouse. I got into the world of battling fake online reviews because one of my clients purchased 15 fake reviews to help boost his local SEO. That was in December 2016. Most businesses don't go hog wild and purchase hundreds or thousands of reviews. They get enough to boost their rating or combat a negative review. The lead generation businesses and personal injury lawyers are a different story, they go hog wild and Google comes in and removes the reviews, and they buy more. I lost a friend because one of her clients was complaining about losing the reviews. They stated that all the reviews were real. We scanned the business profile and I pointed out how they still had countless fake reviews and that Google was correct in the assessment of removing reviews.

I may have become jaded after hearing countless stories about how these are all real reviews from real customers or the stories of how the negative review is fake and not from a real customer. Here is a prime example. On the business profile, they replied to the two negative reviews that they were not customers of theirs. Here is a 5-star review from a person using an alias and they didn't respond to it stating that they were not a customer. This is the world and line of work I with on a daily basis. Here are all of my thoughts about Google reviews.

 

[keyserholiday]

Hey Jason, shouldn't this review have remained filtered out as it was left by an employee? I thought it was against Google's TOS for employees/ex-employees to leave reviews due to bias?

That’s exactly my point. I am highlighting how bad Google is at moderating reviews.

 

[keyserholiday]

I

I haven't seen much from others about reviews disappearing lately so I'm assuming this is just an issue with some of my stores, but I've gotten a few reports this week from locations about reviews that were posted not appearing. They say they had customers tell them they left reviews or a customer left one after scanning a QR code that links to our GBP, but the reviews never show up. Has anyone else experienced similar recently?

I have heard of issues when using a QR code to request reviews. The GBP help forum is filled with complaints about reviews not being published. Sadly negative review attacks seem to be working just fine.

 

[thebizguy]

From what i understand.... google WILL NOT reinstate reviews because they love to say it violated their TOS or whatever the case may be...

 

[Greg Schueler]

It seems they tend to be filtering "new" reviewers and "1 and done" reviewers. Similar to Yelp.
Perhaps if these people continue to leave reviews elsewhere and build up their profile, they may get unfiltered?

I know when I see "1 review" on a profile, I question it as legit, so perhaps that is part of Google's filter?

It's not 100%, but a high percentage.

 

[SeoSaur]

@JoyHawkins - I'm having similar issues with at least two of my clients. Clients are very upset and starting to blame us as digital marketers for the issue. What can do we do here to fix the problem?

 

[JoyHawkins]

@SeoSaur details on what to do are here: Why Are My Google Reviews Not Publishing? - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[SeoSaur]

@SeoSaur details on what to do are here: Why Are My Google Reviews Not Publishing? - Sterling Sky Inc

Thanks Joy! Unfortunately I'm having no luck with the Google team - but the main crux of the problem is this - I have clients getting legitimate reviews that abide by all known policies and these reviews are not even getting posted to the profile. My client is a SAB - Garage Door Repair, and so obviously works on location. I'd just like to ensure all future legitimate reviews are posted.

 

[SeoSaur]

You can try the thing I posted above:

Hi @JoyHawkins - thank you for your reply and attention on this. Unfortunately, we have tried this technique and had no luck. I'm wondering how to ensure the Google team knows the value of this issue? We've also been asked to ask clients to copy and paste their reviews and send them to Google for review directly... but surely Google understand how bad this is for business?

 

[obcted]

@JoyHawkins thanks for the tip about having the client search for the business. The client has been sending links which I generated for him:

Criminal Defense Lawyer Paul R. Moraski - Google Search

&
The Law Office of Paul R. Moraski - Google Search

I'll have them tell clients to Google his name instead. Thank you for the tip. If after you hear back from Google, if they have any insight I'd love to hear. Thank you for all your help

 

[SeoSaur]

@JoyHawkins I know in the past you've had some luck with getting reviews reinstated. Could you let me know the process and what we'd have to do to ensure my client is able to show the legitimate reviews they've received?

 

[SeoSaur]

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

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.

 

[obcted]

Have your client do what I asked mine to do - gather evidence by having reviewers screenshot reviews they wrote. If they won't do it then at least it takes it off you (since you're doing everything you can).

 

[ibweb]

@thebizguy even though Google's standard policy/response is that they won't reinstate any reviews, that is not entirely true from our experience. The process that Joy has outlined has worked for us to re-instate reviews for both our own firm and some of our clients.
That said, it's not a perfect process, and thankfully the GBP product experts, like Joy, are helping escalate these issues and get past the canned responses from Google stating that there's nothing they can do.
@SeoSaur you might want to start backing up the reviews locally if you're not already doing so. That way you can compare published reviews against live reviews. There's plenty of 3rd party software that monitors total number of reviews, so hopefully someone soon will roll out a feature that automates checking to see if any previously published reviews are "removed."
Also, check out our blog that covers some additional aspects of how Google's filtering is working at a high level.