Google Removed All Anonymous Reviews from GMB Listings with No Warning
-
I just saw that Google is no longer accepting anonymous reviews for businesses, and in fact have REMOVED all current anonymous reviews. This just happened in late May, but I'm pretty surprised there hasn't been any talk about this, it's a pretty big deal.
Before I knew this I called their "specialists" to ask why we lost so many reviews. I specifically asked if Google had changed their review requirements that would result in old reviews being removed. She said no. She's either not well informed or just lied.
https://orthopreneur.com/anonymous-google-reviews-disappeared/
My company just lost 20+ positive reviews. Anyone else hurting from the change and finding solutions?
-
@HammerandHand We lost 5-6 genuine customer reviews. Google has not restored them. Multiple support emails are not helping. We are a financial company, and all the reviews came from real clients. But Google removed them without any notification. How can we stop this or get a copy of the reviews? The Google GMB team will never give specific answers about what the customer reviews have violated from their rules.
-
Thanks for the post Laura,
Here's an interesting article that talks about this topic and how fake reviews tie into the motive
https://blog.reviewinc.com/2018/07/24/fake-reviews-latest-news-you-should-know/ -
Just wanted to update this thread with a little note that I've created a blog post about this very topic, published this afternoon on the Moz Blog: https://moz.com/blog/lost-anonymous-google-reviews
-
I totally understand, Laura. It's really dreadful to see your hard-earned reviews just disappear, at the stroke of a pen from Google!
Something I hope will help to think about ... it's consistently found by surveys that well over 1/2 of customers will leave reviews if asked. It's just finding the best way to ask that's the challenge. If your consumer segment is particularly tough, you might want to consider checking out software like GetFiveStars, that will help you systematize review acquisition.
-
Thanks Miriam. After seeing our competitors have suffered the same fate (some worse than us) I have calmed down a bit. I understand the reasoning behind removing old anonymous reviews but to do it without any notice just seems wrong.
It's tough for some businesses - for example we have a small number of clients per year, not thousands like a restaurant or coffee shop - and many of them are incredibly private people. Getting them to write online reviews is difficult. Seeing the ones we were able to get from clients over the years disappearing like that was a bit devastating.
We don't like to bug our clients with requests for reviews but looks like we're going to have to!
-
Hi Pau,
Thanks for contributing to this thread.
I do want to offer a very serious warning against ever buying reviews. Doing so can lead to:
-
Legal action against the brand
-
Public humiliation and irreversible brand damage
-
Removal of local business listings
Purchasing reviews is an act that has the intention of deceiving the public. It's not an honest business practice, and any potential reward will never be worth the risk of lawsuits and loss of the public's trust.
The good news is, good businesses need never purchase reviews. Deliver a quality experience to customers, follow the guidelines of the various platforms as to how you can/can't ask for reviews, and you should be just fine.
-
-
Hi Laura,
I agree with you that there hasn't been a ton of buzz surrounding this. I'd put it down to the fact that when Google makes a decision like this, there's nothing you can really do about it. You can't get the reviews back. What a pain, I know. My suggestions:
-
Be sure you have an active review acquisition strategy in place so that you are continually earning reviews at a moderate pace.
-
Be sure you are earning reviews beyond Google on the other platforms your customers are most likely to use.
These are the best insurance policies I know of in an environment in which Google can make policy changes at the drop of a hat.
-
-
Hi Laura,
as the article says, "There is nothing that business owners can do about the removal of anonymous reviews. This is an update that Google made to its core algorithm. It was not a selective penalty levied against a small number of businesses.".
What you can do about this is ask your clients for reviews if they are satisfied with your service or product, you can also offer an incentive so that more customers are encouraged to leave a review.
Here you can see some interesting articles about it:
If you can't get reviews this way, I suggest the possibility of buying reviews, but be careful with this it can be risky. If you want to do it, do it natural, buy from real people with reputation on Google that live near your business.
But better try to get real reviews from your clients.
Hope that helps, best wishes!
-
Hey there,
I think the best thing you could do now is to have a strategy to ask for a review from your existing clients
and to be honest anonymous review doesn't carry much credibility either.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do Product Ratings or Reviews Improve Google Rankings?
The is a lot of info on the web about how business reviews/ratings improve local search result rankings. However do product ratings or reviews improve PDP/PLP/Homepage (not local) rankings?
Reviews and Ratings | | rigelcable0 -
Yelp hides my reviews
Hello, This is pretty frustrating. This is the third time Yelp has hidden a review for my business. I don't know why. I am trying to get lots of reviews on different platforms but I feel at the mercy of Yelp as they decide what to show and what not. I think it was triggered when I actually replied to the reviewer on Yelp. I should have done nothing I think. Any hints or reasons why this might be happening?
Reviews and Ratings | | AL123al1 -
Review page set up
Hey Gang! So I have a client with multiple locations in different metros. I would like to set up a page in WordPress for each metro that the technician can give to the happy client so they can review us. I would like to have a link to my GMB, Yelp, Yellowpages, and whatever else I can grab. Is there a badass plugin for this or what would you guys do? Much love.
Reviews and Ratings | | Meier0 -
Google crawling item page reviews
Hi Moz community, I've been trying to do some on-site work and noticed that our product pages reviews may not be totally optimized. It used to be that all of the text from the reviews appeared in the actual code of the page, but now none of that text appears, so it may not be getting crawled. The change was most likely released when we had an item page redesign. However, when I Google a review snippet, it does seem to come up, so maybe Google is crawling that data despite it not being SEO optimized. Is this really an issue if the review snippets are showing up in search, there's been a lot of talk that Google is now better at crawling javascript. Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | znotes0 -
Local Reviews.
Hi I was wondering if someone can tell me if I understand this correctly or at least my observation has been right? Does Yelp pick up the reviews left of Google and post it on yelp, if you are using the same gmail to log in to both your yelp and google account?
Reviews and Ratings | | LittleDog0 -
Google+ Places Reviews
Hi There, Am I right in saying that Google Places reviews cannot be reviewed easily if at all. I have advised a client wirth a negative review to instead respond to the review and get clients to place good quality reviews. However, they seem to think if I ring Google they will just remove them and that Google has confirmed this. I am pretty sure I am right but before I jump through pointless hurdles with Google to be told I am, I want to make sure. Has anyone been successful in removing negative reviews from Google. Kind Regards Neil
Reviews and Ratings | | nezona0 -
Blocking Reviews by Blocking Words?
A client sent me an email this week, stating that you could block bad reviews on social media sites by "blocking" certain words from comments such as "I", "you", "them", "they"......she heard it at a conference from some other CEO's that had some problems with bad reviews. Essentially these CEO's blocked these words making the pages read only pages so no one could leave a review on social media sites. Now, I have never heard this tactic, nor think this is a good idea in any way shape or form. And I know that you can't block bad reviews from happening (without looking at the bigger picture and encouraging some look at internal processes and customer service). Has any one heard of this tactic? Or better, know of anywhere online that documents this idea of blocking words? I have to get back to her, but I have beaten the drum about how to acquire good reviews so much, I feel I am not getting through! Help! Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | cschwartzel0 -
URL Structure for a local listing site
Hi - We have a site that offers customers with wide range of local businesses information. We have URL structure for those these days like this - site.com/listings/plumbers/ca/sfo However here the "listings" doesn't add any value and are confusing for users who want to remember it, hence we decided to make it cleaner. The question here is, which one of the two should we do and why? site.com/plumbers/ca/sfo or site.com/ca/sfo/plumbers Any help on this matter would help.
Reviews and Ratings | | nunoz0