Solution for Missing Google Reviews?

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

Hey Everyone,

I'm having trouble with reviews going missing or never appearing for some clients. Does anyone have a contact at Google (GMB) I could reach out to? I've tried the normal support routes and am not getting anywhere.

Also, if these reviews are getting filtered, does anyone have a system that makes sure reviews don't get filtered? I know the normal stuff, the review shouldn't be abusive or posted from the business IP, etc. Are there certain things to avoid saying or some other tips we can give people who want to post a review?

To give you an idea of the history, I had one client contact me last month saying he had received 2 reviews which were missing. He had received a notification for one, but not the other. The pictures the reviewers posted were still on his GMB listing, but no review. All my efforts with Google just led to canned response over and over that they automatically filter some reviews for spam/abuse violations, which didn't fit either review.

Then last week I heard from another client who got a new review. They got an email from the reviewer letting them know they had posted it, but no notification and nothing was on their listing. I contacted the person who posted the review to doublecheck they had posted it. They said couldn't find it so assumed they must have messed up. So, they posted it again and double checked to make sure it posted and sent a screenshot, but when I check the listing and the GMB admin for the listing, there's nothing. There was also no notification email sent indicating their had been a review posted.

I encourage clients to try to get legitimate reviews from happy customers, but they get very frustrated when they do and then those reviews are removed or don't ever show up.

I'm at a loss at this point and can't find a contact in Google who will give me more than the canned responses.

I'd love it if someone could put me in touch with someone at Google who could actually help.

Thanks!
Kurt

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

@Kurt Steinbrueck that post isn't live. Looks like it got flagged. See this post on how to get the thread to go live: How to Get Help on the Google Business Profile Help Community (Forum) - Sterling Sky Inc

Thanks Joy!

I looked at your article and I think I've followed the steps properly. Here's a link to the next post in the Google Support community.

Review Missing Again - Google Business Profile Community

Please let me know if you can see it and if there's anything I need to change about it.

Thanks.
Kurt

 

[JoyHawkins]

On it

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

On it

You're awesome!!

Thanks.

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

Hi Joy,

Thank you! I checked the account today and the review is back.

You are the best!

Kurt

 

[JoyHawkins]

Awesome to hear

 

[0001q0X]

Hi Joy,

I have the exact same issue, here. Funnily enough, with a similar category (swimming pool contractor). I made a Google Doc similar to Kurt's (thanks Kurt!), and have made a thread in the Google Business Profile help forum.

Here's the thread link: Reinstate deleted review - Google Business Profile Community

Here's the accompanying Google Doc: All Seal Exteriors deleted review doc

I appreciate any and all assistance.

Thank you very much in advance,

D

 

[Ryan Steinolfson]

Hello @JoyHawkins!

We have been going back and forth with Google with the exact same situation with one of our clients, they opened up a new location in Ramona in San Diego and none of the reviews are getting posted, they have about 5 clients that made a review and showed them proof of it and they are not appearing on our side and we are not getting emails or notifications from those reviews.

Reviews Missing - Google Business Profile Community

Any help will be appreciated

 

[WilliamGMBE]

Sorry if I am a little late to this discussion.

We do think Google hides the review. This is also not there just for the new reviews, but also for the old ones. We have come across this.

We are from the GMB Everywhere chrome extension team, and some months ago we were building a feature where we can show you the review of a business at a particular point in time. If you are new, GMB Everywhere chrome extension has a Review Audit feature where we provide the review at that particular point in time.

We did build this feature by calculating backways from the present rating. It is true that Google Rating is not just the average of rating, but the changes should still match month to month. So that is why we though of building this.

One problem we came across very frequently for many businesses is that in some months the math just did not match. Isolating the different reason that could have caused this, the possible conclusion we came out with is that that Google had hidden reviews in that month only. This was happening way too frequently for many businesses when we tested it. We do extensive testing before deploying, so it was very obvious. Anyway, at the end we felt this data wont be that reliable, and hence updated the feature to show the average review for that particular month.

So, to your question, I think it happens a lot for many businesses. It also happens for older reviews too.

@Kurt Steinbrueck Just curious to know. Even though the review was hidden, I am guessing your Google Rating would still be reflecting the new review rating, right?

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

Sorry if I am a little late to this discussion.

We do think Google hides the review. This is also not there just for the new reviews, but also for the old ones. We have come across this.

We are from the GMB Everywhere chrome extension team, and some months ago we were building a feature where we can show you the review of a business at a particular point in time. If you are new, GMB Everywhere chrome extension has a Review Audit feature where we provide the review at that particular point in time.

We did build this feature by calculating backways from the present rating. It is true that Google Rating is not just the average of rating, but the changes should still match month to month. So that is why we though of building this.

One problem we came across very frequently for many businesses is that in some months the math just did not match. Isolating the different reason that could have caused this, the possible conclusion we came out with is that that Google had hidden reviews in that month only. This was happening way too frequently for many businesses when we tested it. We do extensive testing before deploying, so it was very obvious. Anyway, at the end we felt this data wont be that reliable, and hence updated the feature to show the average review for that particular month.

So, to your question, I think it happens a lot for many businesses. It also happens for older reviews too.

@Kurt Steinbrueck Just curious to know. Even though the review was hidden, I am guessing your Google Rating would still be reflecting the new review rating, right?

I don't know. The client has over 100 reviews and I didn't go through each to get the ratings and find an average. From what you described, there could have been other hidden reviews I wasn't aware of which would have skewed the math anyway. That said, I wouldn't assume that the rating still counted if the review was removed, but I don't know.

 

[WilliamGMBE]

I don't know. The client has over 100 reviews and I didn't go through each to get the ratings and find an average. From what you described, there could have been other hidden reviews I wasn't aware of which would have skewed the math anyway. That said, I wouldn't assume that the rating still counted if the review was removed, but I don't know.

This would be interesting to know. I would think the rating would still be counted, that is what we saw in some of the scenarios.

Maybe if we found a business with less number of reviews and have some hidden, then we can find. This will be interesting to know

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

This would be interesting to know. I would think the rating would still be counted, that is what we saw in some of the scenarios.

Maybe if we found a business with less number of reviews and have some hidden, then we can find. This will be interesting to know

How do you know if the review is hidden? Are you keeping track of all the client's reviews and then checking them periodically to see if any disappear?

 

[WilliamGMBE]

How do you know if the review is hidden? Are you keeping track of all the client's reviews and then checking them periodically to see if any disappear?

We don't keep track of the reviews.

Why do we think it could be hidden?

So, generally the google rating is almost same as the average of the ratings. It is not exactly the same, but only varies by some decimal digit. You have found this when testing our Review Audit functionality. You might also like this article: Why does Google show a 4.8 rating when I have all 5-star reviews? - Local University

Above: Screenshot of GMB Everywhere review audit result. See the data shows by the arrows.

So, in short this means that if you take the present rating and calculate backwards, this should match the value we get when we calculate frontwards from the first review. Which means, the rating for a particular month in the past when we calculate backwards from the present rating should match the rating when we calculate front wards to that month. We were doing this programmatically, so we did this for many businesses.

In our case, for many businesses we noticed that the values were not matching. We also noticed that this discrepancy in data happened in some specific months. This is why we came up with the hypothesis that maybe some of the review in that month is hidden.

It could also have been due to some other reason, but we could not think of any. Let me know if this helps.

Edit:
Thought I will give an example to elaborate this:

Say the rating(in February 2022) is 4 and the individual ratings were like this:
Dec 2021: 5
Nov 2021: 4
Sept 2021: 4
Jan 2021: 3

So, if we want to calculate what is the rating at the end of Nov 2021, it can be calculate 2 ways:
Calculating frontwards: (3+4+4)/3 = 3.66
Calculating backwards: (4*4-5)/3 = 3.66

We noticed that this did not match for some months.

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

It's strange that there's a discrepancy. I suppose Google may be hiding some reviews, but still including them in the rating average. Google will do what Google will do.

That said, I think my situation was different. I don't think my client's reviews were hidden. I think they were completely filtered out (removed though not completely deleted). The reason I think they were completely filtered out is because they disappeared from both their profile and the admin of their profile.

Anyway, with Joy's help we got the review back and I'm satisfied with that.

-Kurt

 

[WilliamGMBE]

@Kurt Steinbrueck Happy to hear it worked

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

Hey Everyone, I wanted to give one more update about the school reviews.

Just to be sure, we did an experiment. We changed the category of the school to just private school (removing high school, middle school, etc.) and had a parent post a review to Google where we were able to verify she did it correctly.

She didn't encounter any problem when posting the review, no errors or indication the review wouldn't be posted, but the review is not visible (publicly or to the parent who posted the review) and we did not receive any notification in the admin.

-Kurt

So, this is very frustrating. My school client sent me an email, today. She was looking at another school's Google Business Profile and saw that they just got another review on Google 2 days ago!! She sent the following screenshot:

You can see there's also a review from only 3 months ago.

Joy, I don't want to waste your time. Do you think there's any point in notifying Google about this? We'd love to be able to get reviews for the school, but if not, it would be nice if Google applied the restriction equally for all schools.

What do you think?

Thanks!!
Kurt

 

[Ryan Steinolfson]

Hi @JoyHawkins

We were just notified by one of our clients that they left a great review back in December but it never showed up, we posted it on the Google Community:

https://support.google.com/business/thread/158945322?authuser=1&hl=en

Could you help us check if we can get it reinstated/posted?

Thank you in advance!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey @Ryan Steinolfson it looks like that post never made it live. See this for details on how to avoid that: How to Get Help on the Google Business Profile Help Community (Forum) - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

Hi Everyone,

My pool client has another review that's not being displayed. The client can see it, but no one else can and we didn't get a notification of the review. I've posted to the GBP Help forum. Here's hoping they respond.

Recent Legit Client Review is Hidden - Google Business Profile Community

Kurt

 

[Patrickjanethood]

Hi Everyone,

My pool client has another review that's not being displayed. The client can see it, but no one else can and we didn't get a notification of the review. I've posted to the GBP Help forum. Here's hoping they respond.

Recent Legit Client Review is Hidden - Google Business Profile Community

Kurt

Kurt,

I’ve had 12 reviews this week, 2 showed up - Google has done a terrible job here at identifying fake reviews with their filter if you ask me

 

[Kurt Steinbrueck]

There do seem to be quite a few false positives.