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

 

[Chris Baker]

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.

Hey Ben,

I just tried dm you and it didnt work so here is an account I have with this issue.


I just saw your response on the thread here Missing Reviews/ Reviews Disappearing. I wanted details on a customer that lost 12 reviews in the past week. one major change I saw was they signed up with PulseM a reputation management company. So I am not sure if this has anything to do with the issue but here is the link to their profile

Update your browser to manage your Business Profile - Google Business Profile Help

If you've been redirected to this page, your Business Profile doesn't support your browser. If you’re not using the latest version of your browser, your Business Profile may not display or function

business.google.com

STOP Restoration - Google Search

 

[Chris Baker]

Does anyone have PulseM attached to their profile? or a reputation management company attached to the GMB Page?

 

[keyserholiday]

Does anyone have PulseM attached to their profile? or a reputation management company attached to the GMB Page?

Who are you using for review soliciting?

 

[Chris Baker]

I am using PulseM #1 Online Review Management Platform for Home Services | pulseM

 

[JoyHawkins]

@Will_GMBEverywhere that's super interesting. Do you have any numbers from this month? People are saying there are a lot more takedowns in the last week or so.

 

[keyserholiday]

Who are you using for review soliciting?

How long have you been using PulseM?

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@Will_GMBEverywhere that's super interesting. Do you have any numbers from this month? People are saying there are a lot more takedowns in the last week or so.

Hi @JoyHawkins
Do you mean from the beginning of the month? The above data is just from the last 2 days, October 18th beginning to October 20th noon EST time.

We dont have data going a lot back in time, but we we have been noticing this trend since the end of last month. A business that exemplifies this trend is Googleplex: GMB Alerts

As you can see, since 25 September, it has been loosing reviews in multiple phases. It is still happening.

 

[keyserholiday]

Hi @JoyHawkins
Do you mean from the beginning of the month? The above data is just from the last 2 days, September 18th beginning to September 20th noon EST time.

We dont have data going a lot back in time, but we we have been noticing this trend since the end of last month. A business that exemplifies this trend is Googleplex: GMB Alerts

As you can see, since 25 September, it has been loosing reviews in multiple phases. It is still happening.

I have a hunch and need help. What was the first date that you noticed that the reviews started 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.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hi @JoyHawkins
Do you mean from the beginning of the month? The above data is just from the last 2 days, September 18th beginning to September 20th noon EST time.

We dont have data going a lot back in time, but we we have been noticing this trend since the end of last month. A business that exemplifies this trend is Googleplex: GMB Alerts

As you can see, since 25 September, it has been loosing reviews in multiple phases. It is still happening.

Do you mean October? It is October right? Lol

 

[Chris Baker]

How long have you been using PulseM?

Hey we actually just added them last week and a few days later boom! reviews went down.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

Do you mean October? It is October right? Lol

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

 

[keyserholiday]

Hey we actually just added them last week and a few days later boom! reviews went down.

It is completely unrelated.

 

[keyserholiday]

Google removed more reviews overnight. They removed reviews from business profiles that hit in the midday sweep. I am curious to see if they do another sweep today.

 

[keyserholiday]

@Will_GMBEverywhere that's super interesting. Do you have any numbers from this month? People are saying there are a lot more takedowns in the last week or so.

Joy, one of the businesses that you are familiar with started off with 1222 reviews, Google removed 656 reviews. They then bought more fake reviews and jumped up to 861 reviews on July 25th. . They currently sit at 597 reviews. Another business gained 401 reviews right after they were verified. They jumped up to 516 reviews. Today they have 268 reviews. Each day they add more fake reviews and Google removes them again. On the 18th they lost 159 reviews.

 

[keyserholiday]

Please see this before and after a business that engaged in fake reviews.

 

[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 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.

Here is the business that went from 1221 reviews down to 597. Their rankings didn't change much.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

Here is the business that went from 1221 reviews down to 597. Their rankings didn't change much.

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?

 

[Marcin Karwowski]

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.

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

 

[Marcin Karwowski]

@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.