New surge of Google review removals

[Tim Colling]

In the past week, we have seen a higher than normal number of legitimate favorable reviews removed from many of our clients' Google Business Profiles. There is no apparent connection between the clients nor the nature of the reviews, except as noted below. Before this, there were only occasional review removals, a small number each week.

The clients are all based in the USA. They are all involved in some aspect of providing care to the elderly or other services to them or their families.

Has anyone else noticed a new, distinctive surge like this recently?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I will ask around.

 

[GMBapi.com]

@Tim Colling - We will have a look as well. In the graph below are all the deleted reviews for three US based customers. Problem is that in these graphs, we assign the deleted review to the date of the review, not the date they were deleted. I will ask our dev team to see if there was a spike, might actually be an interesting metric to track as well, when the review is actually deleted. I will reply tomorrow with our findings.

 

[JoyHawkins]

ohhh that will be fascinating to see. I would definitely want to see it based on when the review disappeared.

 

[Ben Seidel]

@GMBapi.com I would also love to see that data. The timing of this with Google's updated Fake Engagement policies is likely not a coincidence.

 

[liftmarketinggroup]

Without scientific measurement, in the last week or so we've noticed an increase in unassisted review removals for US- & Canada-based towing businesses.

The pattern we've seen is they tend to have language ripe for indicating a policy violation. For instance, "my wife" or "don't work" or "thieves."

I'm excited to see the chart from @GMBapi.com.

 

[GMBapi.com]

Hi all. Interesting - we will be adding these insights to our software if everyone wants to monitor that. We checked for five US accounts with a total of 604 locations and slightly more than 75k reviews. Since the 10th of July 1500 reviews were deleted from these five customers. Most of the days look "organic" but there are a few dates that stand out. See graph below.

So it looks like @Tim Colling was right - in the past week, on september 17th to be exact, Google deleted a lot of reviews.

2024-09-17	585
2024-07-27	217
2024-07-18	121
2024-07-19	115
2024-07-31	64
2024-09-14	29

 

[JoyHawkins]

Wow - very insightful. Did you mean to attach a graph? I don't see one.

 

[rustybrick]

Yea, the data above seems to be missing stuff or in the wrong order? Month of August? Not fully understanding maybe @GMBapi.com

 

[GMBapi.com]

Hi sorry - the date format is in European dates and I ordered it by the number of deleted reviews per day. Perhaps a bit confusing without further context. Those lines are visible for me (Google sheet copy past) - not for anyone else? I will write it out:

On the 17th of september 585 reviews were deleted. On the 27th of July 217 deletions, on the 18th of July 121 deleted reviews, on the 19th of July 115, on the 31st of July 64 and on the 14th of September 29 deletions. It might be easier if you see it in the graph. I have published the deleted reviews on our blog, and added the graph below (hoping everyone can see this - now added as an attachment).

Any questions let me know!

 

[GMBapi.com]

Yea, the data above seems to be missing stuff or in the wrong order? Month of August? Not fully understanding maybe @GMBapi.com

Date range is from the 10th of July till the 25th of September.

 

[Claudia]

I think the peak was in July for deleted reviews and now they are coming to the forums or they are sweeping different categories at different times.



July - 266 deleted reviews out of 5,505 (4.83%)

August - 178 deleted reviews out of 6,062 (2.94%)

Sept MTD - 58 deleted reviews out of 4,683 (1.24%)

 

[GMBapi.com]

I think the peak was in July for deleted reviews and now they are coming to the forums or they are sweeping different categories at different times.



July - 266 deleted reviews out of 5,505 (4.83%)

August - 178 deleted reviews out of 6,062 (2.94%)

Sept MTD - 58 deleted reviews out of 4,683 (1.24%)

Yeah that is absolutely possible. The sample size for my graph was just five clients. Five different categories.

 

[Tim Colling]

New information:

This morning, our lost review detection tool reported lost reviews for ten or fifteen clients. For all but three of them, the reviews all included wording that indicated that they were left by persons who had worked at the clients' companies. Some of them were recent, some were a year old or older.

I speculate that Google may have improved upon its ability to detect and hide reviews left by employees (which are disallowed by Google's TOS).

Is anyone else seeing this?

 

[TheSearchSherpa]

@Tim Colling I have no quantitative data, however I had this issue in late July Early August with a chain of med spas. The employees had written things like "I love working here" or "I was a client before i worked here" These reviews are gone now.

 

[Tim Colling]

More information: this morning, there are another ten or so client reviews that have become hidden or removed, and all of them have text that indicate that the reviewer is a current or former employee of the company being reviewed.

This is apparently now a "thing" with Google. That is fine with me. I have always encouraged clients to NOT ask employees to leave reviews for them, for many reasons.

 

[Ben Seidel]

More information: this morning, there are another ten or so client reviews that have become hidden or removed, and all of them have text that indicate that the reviewer is a current or former employee of the company being reviewed.

This is apparently now a "thing" with Google. That is fine with me. I have always encouraged clients to NOT ask employees to leave reviews for them, for many reasons.

It use to be a publicly stated policy with Google too! Reviews from employees actually used to be listed in Google's prohibited content policies for reviews. I wish I took a screenshot back in the day as they eventually removed it. Even after the removal, we've been able to get Google to remove reviews that are left by employees simply citing them as a "conflict of interest." I wouldn't be surprised if employee reviews gets added back into prohibited content either directly stated, or at least indirectly via a conflict of interest.
But we are with you on that one; we encourage our clients to never have employees leave reviews on GBP. Glassdoor, Indeed, etc. are a better place for employee reviews.

 

[Claudia]

It use to be a publicly stated policy with Google too! Reviews from employees actually used to be listed in Google's prohibited content policies for reviews. I wish I took a screenshot back in the day as they eventually removed it. Even after the removal, we've been able to get Google to remove reviews that are left by employees simply citing them as a "conflict of interest." I wouldn't be surprised if employee reviews gets added back into prohibited content either directly stated, or at least indirectly via a conflict of interest.
But we are with you on that one; we encourage our clients to never have employees leave reviews on GBP. Glassdoor, Indeed, etc. are a better place for employee reviews.

It is hit or miss with me. Recently I have not had as much success removing reviews from employees even after escalations.

 

[Ben Seidel]

It is hit or miss with me. Recently I have not had as much success removing reviews from employees even after escalations.

Agreed, it's definitely hit or miss. I'm curious though if the success rate for removing employee reviews will increase soon if Google is tweaking their systems for employee reviews based on what @Tim Colling and @TheSearchSherpa are noticing.

 

[Tim Colling]

Agreed, it's definitely hit or miss. I'm curious though if the success rate for removing employee reviews will increase soon if Google is tweaking their systems for employee reviews based on what @Tim Colling and @TheSearchSherpa are noticing.

I speculate that indeed that is what they have done.