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

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

 

[Tim Colling]

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

Yes!

 

[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 just ran a new scan now and the rankings haven't changed with the absence of reviews.

 

[obcted]

Hey All - this is still happening a ton according to the client but we're unsure of the exact reviews that have been pulled. Is there any review software that takes a snap of what reviews you have so that when they go missing we can report those specific ones to google. I checked out gmbalert.com and many of the major "Review Platforms" but I can't see anything that shows which reviews are getting deleted. Does anyone know of any software or process to figure out exactly which ones are being removed (so I can then follow up with Google on these).

Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

[keyserholiday]

Hey All - this is still happening a ton according to the client but we're unsure of the exact reviews that have been pulled. Is there any review software that takes a snap of what reviews you have so that when they go missing we can report those specific ones to google. I checked out gmbalert.com and many of the major "Review Platforms" but I can't see anything that shows which reviews are getting deleted. Does anyone know of any software or process to figure out exactly which ones are being removed (so I can then follow up with Google on these).

Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you!

I use PlacesScout to get a full scan of all reviews. I manually reviewed which reviews were being removed and I did crack the code. Was targeting a specific user type with the review removals. Of all of the removed reviews I have been monitoring, Google was correct in the assessment and removal of reviews. Sadly, Google needs to turn up the dial and remove more reviews violating the TOS.

 

[obcted]

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

 

[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.

 

[obcted]

Ok - well thank you anyway. I'm not a spammer and my clients have under 100 reviews and they are all from legit former happy clients. But I appreciate your feedback.

 

[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.

 

[Lanerizz]

I've had four clients in the last two weeks report reviews not showing up or disappearing. If it were just one I'd call it user error, but this many is strange.

Anyone else seeing this for more than one client or hearing reports of this?

 

[keyserholiday]

I've had four clients in the last two weeks report reviews not showing up or disappearing. If it were just one I'd call it user error, but this many is strange.

Anyone else seeing this for more than one client or hearing reports of this?

You are describing two different issues. Since March Google has gotten more aggressive with preventing new reviews from being published. Google is also removing reviews that violate the TOS.

 

[Lanerizz]

Okay. Definitely seeing more of the prevention of new reviews issue.

Are there any tips anyone has for getting reviews published?

I have seen via Sterling Sky googling the business and leaving the review rather than using a link helps since it seems less solicited.

Mike Blumenthal just sent me this on Twitter (Thank you Mike) so I do plan to read this soon Google's New Review Algo: What We Know

Hope this helps others!

 

[keyserholiday]

Google admitted that errored by being too aggressive in filtering out and removing reviews. Google will restore removed Google reviews

 

[Lanerizz]

Wow, thats awesome! Will tamper expectations but nice to have the validation.

 

[Ben Seidel]

Doesn't Google's statement at An update on how we moderate Google Maps reviews only apply to the more recent issue as it relates to the filtering of reviews left by LGs, and not the more strict review filtering overall?
@keyserholiday what are your thoughts on the above?

 

[keyserholiday]

Google released this review that was previously filtered out.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Google released this review that was previously filtered out.

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?

 

[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.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

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?

 

[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.

 

[Tim Colling]

We see Google reviews being "disappeared" (removed or hidden, who knows which?) occasionally.

We created a tool that notifies us whenever a review disappears for one of our clients, and it's almost always a mystery to us why Google decided to remove them.