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?

 

[BrandonSchmidt]

I'm seeing a significant number of employee reviews removed from GBPs in the home service industry. Reviews from as far back as 2017-2018. All of them have one thing in common: they mention their job, boss, coworkers, or that they love working there.

 

[ibweb]

It certainly appears to be their spam filter adjusted for what they "think" is employee reviews like others have said on this thread. I'm sure it'll successfully remove employee reviews, but it's also filtering out some customer reviews too that use select language.
For example, we saw two reviews on our own agency's Google Business Profile that are legit reviews from customers. However, both removed reviews had phrases within the review body that could be misconstrued by an automated detection system that they are an employee, and they both got removed even though they've been on our profile since 2016 and 2018.
The following is example wording within the reviews that we think may have triggered this updated filter for employee reviews:
"I work in..."
"I've served as the most tech-savvy staff member for the past few years at..."
Both of which were talking about their roles at their own company in context of engaging our firm.

Fascinating! I think some unique trigger word studies on the review filter may come out of this latest update.

 

[JoyHawkins]

It certainly appears to be their spam filter adjusted for what they "think" is employee reviews like others have said on this thread. I'm sure it'll successfully remove employee reviews, but it's also filtering out some customer reviews too that use select language.
For example, we saw two reviews on our own agency's Google Business Profile that are legit reviews from customers. However, both removed reviews had phrases within the review body that could be misconstrued by an automated detection system that they are an employee, and they both got removed even though they've been on our profile since 2016 and 2018.
The following is example wording within the reviews that we think may have triggered this updated filter for employee reviews:
"I work in..."
"I've served as the most tech-savvy staff member for the past few years at..."
Both of which were talking about their roles at their own company in context of engaging our firm.

Fascinating! I think some unique trigger word studies on the review filter may come out of this latest update.

I would contact Google support with those ones and you should get them back.

 

[ibweb]

I would contact Google support with those ones and you should get them back.

Yep, we already did earlier today! It's just fascinating to see which employment oriented words Google's filter is now triggered by in this suspected Google review filter update.

 

[sixthcitysarah]

Seeing this too recently, some only one or two removed but others upwards of 6