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

 

[Henry LocalClarity]

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.

 

[keyserholiday]

Is anybody else seeing more reviews being removed in mass? One of the businesses I am monitoring lost around 200 reviews overnight. This also appears to follow up with negative reviews being pushed out the past day.

 

[IMP]

We haven't seen that kind of volume but have limited clients at that level of reviews but are seeing large % of real client reviews go missing.

 

[keyserholiday]

We haven't seen that kind of volume but have limited clients at that level of reviews but are seeing large % of real client reviews go missing.

Where the reviews removed in the past 24 hours?

 

[keyserholiday]

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

Can you ask them to contact me? I’d love to dig deeper.

 

[keyserholiday]

I hope this case study by @JoyHawkins will finally end the myth that by having more reviews, you will see increased rankings. This also means that if you lose reviews you won't see decreased rankings. The goal is to get a steady flow of new reviews on a weekly basis.

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[ibweb]

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?

 

[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?

 

[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?

 

[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.