In 2 days, a loss of 20 reviews
-
Hi Mozers,
I have a cosmetic dentist client, in Belgium, who had 95 reviews. And in 2 days, he lost 20 good reviews (10 reviews per day), from real customers. The problem is that his rating went down drastically because they were only 5 star reviews.
Yesterday he got a 5 star review from a real customer and this morning he disappeared.
Have you ever experienced such a scenario? What could be the cause?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Kind regards,
Jonathan -
I am trying to build reviews for my solar installers near me client. What are the best review software and SEO strategies to boost reviews?
-
This has happened to me on occasion, they should eventually turn back up in my experience (except Yelp is pretty harsh)
-
@jonathanleplang yeah they will do that - remove them until they can verify - if they take the time to verify. They are preserving their reputation as. a reputable platform with real reviews. They can't tell the difference between real clients and fake ones - so they remove all suspicious ones. - including past ones b/c once something becomes suspicious the whole thing does
-
@marketapeel Thank you for taking the time to read my problem and for posting a relevant response. I think that is where the problem lies. We sent his client listing the link to post a review on the clinic when before he only had 3 reviews per month. But the strange thing is that it was real customer reviews that were deleted and only the positive ones unfortunately.
-
@miriamellis Hi Miriam, Thank you very much for taking the time to reply and for posting these useful links. I never miss one of your inspiring posts.
-
@miriamellis Thanks for sharing these links.
As someone who worked in the online review world, I can say that a sudden increase in reviews - all good reviews - can trigger a red flag because it looks suspicious.
If you want to ensure you don't get flagged for suspicious activity, you need to ensure review activity looks plausible. If you have a huge amount of past customers and you are asking them for reviews, send out email requests for reviews in batches over an extended period of time so you are getting a few reviews a day and growing over time. Not a sudden spike.
-
With I knew how to make some of those DISAPEAR. I have a link textClient who has a lot of bad reviews and they are based on a manufacturer not honoring a warranty, not the [clients]((https://www.myfloridasolar.com) work. What Should I do?
-
@jonathanleplang Hi Jonathan, sorry to hear about your client's predicament. Review loss of this kind typically happens for two reasons.
One, there's a bug in Google. Check the Google Business Profile help community and Sterling Sky's Local Search Forum when review loss happens to see if others are reporting a similar experience. There have been historic periods in which Google has accidentally made reviews disappear and then reinstated them.
The second cause is that Google has removed the reviews because they became suspicious about the profile, for some reason. For example, here's a recent article about a business losing the majority of its reviews because of review gating: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/google-removes-hundreds-of-reviews/ and another about why new reviews might not be publishing: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/google-reviews-not-publishing/. Read those with the client and try to root out whether they might unknowingly be violating Google's guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/local-guides/answer/7400114?hl=en#zippy=%2Cadvertising-solicitation%2Cfake-engagement)
If you are unable to discover the cause of what is happening, it's time to contact Google about the case. Good luck!
-
@jonathanleplang can i check your listing then I can give you solutions for that.
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
-
What Should We Do to Fix Crawled but Not Indexed Pages for Multi-location Service Pages?
Hey guys! I work as a content creator for Zavza Seal, a contractor out of New York, and we're targeting 36+ cities in the Brooklyn and Queens areas with several services for home improvement. We got about 340 pages into our multi-location strategy targeting our target cities with each service we offer, when we noticed that 200+ of our pages were "Crawled but not indexed" in Google Search Console. Here's what I think we may have done wrong. Let me know what you think... We used the same page template for all pages. (we changed the content and sections, formatting, targeted keywords, and entire page strategy for areas with unique problems trying to keep the user experience as unique as possible to avoid duplicate content or looking like we didn't care about our visitors.) We used the same featured image for all pages. (I know this is bad and wouldn't have done it myself, but hey, I'm not the publisher.) We didn't use rel canonicals to tell search engines that these pages were special made for the areas. We didn't use alt tags until about halfway through. A lot of the urls don't use the target keyword exactly. The NAP info and Google Maps embed is in the footer, so we didn't use it on the pages. We didn't use any content about the history or the city or anything like that. (some pages we did use content about historic buildings, low water table, flood prone areas, etc if they were known for that) We were thinking of redoing the pages, starting from scratch and building unique experiences around each city, with testimonials, case studies, and content about problems that are common for property owners in the area, but I think they may be able to be fixed with a rel canonical, the city specific content added, and unique featured images on each page. What do you think is causing the problem? What would be the easiest way to fix it? I knew the pages had to be unique for each page, so I switched up the page strategy every 5-10 pages out of fear that duplicate content would start happening, because you can only say so much about for example, "basement crack repair". Please let me know your thoughts. Here is one of the pages that are indexed as an example: https://zavzaseal.com/cp-v1/premier-spray-foam-insulation-contractors-in-jamaica-ny/ Here is one like it that is crawled but not indexed: https://zavzaseal.com/cp-v1/premier-spray-foam-insulation-contractors-in-jamaica-ny/ I appreciate your time and concern. Have a great weekend!
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
Unsolved How long do you tell your SEO customers to wait before they start to see actual results from their SEO?
So, this is probably one of the most challenging questions for SEO agencies likes ours to answer. That is how long does it take for a business to see an increase in sales, because of the business investing in organic or local SEO. It ultimately comes down to how competitive the business sector is, we do know that. We are just wondering what various SEO companies tell their clients. Is it for example, they have to wait a minimum of six months of paying for SEO, before they can get the business on page one of Google? Or, instead, do you carry out an SEO audit at the start, and then make an estimate for how long it will take to get the business on page one of Google?
Moz Local | | sarahwalsh0 -
Looking for feedback on review website
Hello Moz community. I’m looking for feedback on how
Content Development | | Paul-Paquin-Golden-Financial
to improve this national company review/comparison website. We bring in experts in the industries we are writing reviews on. Well then conduct extensive keyword research and provide an SEO optimized recommendation content briefing to the writer. The writer creates the content including the high search volume and most relevant keyword phrases that people are searching for. We also make sure to match the intent of the keywords to Commercial intent for the content to ensure it matches our audience. For example, we brought in a leading audiologist and created the top Hearing aids for tinnitus.. How can we improve the process and site, any recommendations?0 -
National services provider and localized SEO (no physical stores)
Doing work for a telecom provider who operates in over 25 states. They are not trying to drive traffic to their brick-and-mortar stores. They want their marketing website to show products/services/pricing dynamically when a user enters their zip code. Previously, we could not show this until the shopper was already in the purchase flow that began with their serviceable address. They want to move these location-based details more forward in the shopping experience. They would likely have a "default" zip and set of services/pricing displaying until a user changes their location. My question is how does Google treat local SEO on a site where all location-targeted content is dynamic? Will the website suffer in localized search, when a shopper, say, in Colorado, wants to search for Internet providers? Is it better to have distinct landing pages for each territory with services/pricing?
Local SEO | | sprydigital0 -
Do people receive notifications when you respond to their Google reviews?
If someone leaves a review of your business on your Google My Business listing, and you respond to that review, will they receive an email notification of your response to their review? We are working with a client who has unanswered reviews from several years ago, and though it's best practice to respond to all reviews, we didn't want to respond to reviews from 2013 if the person (who has likely forgot about their experience with the business in question) is going to get an email notifying them of our late response to their review. Thank you!
Reviews and Ratings | | BlueCorona1 -
Motivating Clients to leave reviews
We are a bankruptcy law firm and therefore getting clients to post a public review is challenging, as they don't wish to disclose the fact that they filed for bankruptcy. I recently audited our local competitors. Most just have one or two reviews. But 2 firms in particular have 6- 10x the amount of what is "normal" for our practice area, and in addition they are 1.) all 5-star reviews 2.) the only review they had ever posted by that person (seems unnatural that your first and only review is of a bankruptcy attorney). This is the exact same fact pattern for both attorneys, so I am wondering if they are using a special tool or some how incentivizing clients to leave a 5 star review...is there any way to know if they are using unethical practices? So my question: how do we motivate happy clients to leave a public review when they the nature of our practice is a private matter? Is there a helpful tool or method people have found good success with? Is there a way to leave anonymous or first name only reviews on Google Plus? We have a lot of review on the testimonials section of our website, but clients who submit ask us to change their name for privacy. Could we somehow post these on Google Plus for the clients, while still keeping within the regulations of Google? Thanks in advance for your insights!
Reviews and Ratings | | JulieALS0 -
Schema.org problems with reviews
Hey Mozzers, Has anyone had problems getting review data to appear in the SERP? Specifically, hotel package reviews. The site I work for sells packages and products, but I'm having off cases where the data is appearing if there is only 1 review present. As soon as it gets multiple reviews the snippet data is no longer showing up. The schema.org markup is testing fine in the structured data testing tool, and when I compare it against competitor sites where the data is appearing, I can't see the difference. I am by no means a veteran SEO, but this doesn't make any sense to me. Has anyone encountered a similar problem? I could really use some help here. One of the pages I am having difficulty with: www.tripcentral.ca/vacations-packages_mexico.html }
Reviews and Ratings | | tripcentral0