Reviews Completely removed (including stars) from GBP & Rankings Gone

[Jaimie S]

Hi There,

We are seeing accounts have the ability to have reviews totally removed from their listing and getting the following notifications from Google.
The client went from 3rd position to 9th once this happened pretty much immediately.

Is anyone else seeing this and have you had any success with the appeals?

When we appealed - the response was

 

[JoyHawkins]

I have never seen Google alert a business about this before.

What was the business doing to gain reviews?

 

[Jaimie S]

I have never seen Google alert a business about this before.

What was the business doing to gain reviews?

We have so far about 7 different accounts. Most are not doing anything (no review software or incentives) and have a low number of reviews.

This particular business is only a few months old and has just been asking customers for reviews verbally.

 

[Jaimie S]

We have so far about 7 different accounts. Most are not doing anything (no review software or incentives) and have a low number of reviews.

This particular business is only a few months old and has just been asking customers for reviews verbally.

GBP

 

[JoyHawkins]

Are the businesses connected in any way?

 

[Jaimie S]

Are the businesses connected in any way?

No - they are totally different industries, in different areas, and our access is under separate users too.

 

[JoyHawkins]

What country are the businesses in?

 

[Tim Colling]

I'm [maybe not very] sorry to say this, but this sort of arbitrary high-handed behavior from Google is becoming increasingly common.

 

[Shihab]

It also can be a spam attack.

 

[Jaimie S]

What country are the businesses in?

All in the UK at the moment. And I was mistaken - these are under the same Agency ID not on our other individual user access. That would the thing in common. May other businesses under the same agency haven't had any issues as yet.

 

[JoyHawkins]

@timcapper you see any of these yet?