Is anyone experiencing a large number of reviews disappearing in Google Places?

[4RealLocal]

Just curious if anyone else has had issues with any clients losing lots of reviews in the last week?

[4RealLocal]

Thanks Miriam for the follow up, I appreciate it!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Again Howard,

While I haven't yet rec'd a response from the TCs, I have heard from two top Local SEOs that their clients have lost a bunch of reviews over the past week. So, yes, could be something going on, and it could possibly be that Google is doing a cleanup. The tough thing is that legit reviews often get dumped with spammy ones when this happens. And there appears to be a significant shakeup going on in the local SERPs right now. The reviews you've noticed might return after things settle down or they may be gone permanently.

Google's handling of reviews continues to be most unsatisfactory, in my view.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Howard,

I will ask a couple of Google Places Help Forum TCs if there has been any unusual upswing in reports of lost reviews. Looking at the forum, myself, it looks like business as usual there, which unfortunately means that people are constantly grappling with disappearing reviews.

Justin has linked to the document I would have pointed to, as well. I'll let you know if I hear back on this from the TCs. So far as I know, nothing unusual is going on.

[Thos003]

I have only lost a few reviews as of late, but I have lost hundreds of reviews along the way.

From my experience, Google does not remove reviews based on IP address. I could clarify this, but it's a long story, I was not spamming the reviews.

What trips the google review filter?

• Having considerably more reviews than others in like industry.
• Sharp increase in reviews.
• Increase in reviews followed by a review drop.

They are pretty vague in their statement, "exhibit spammy behavior". For the most part, I have yet to see them remove all reviews by simply reporting fake reviews. Say the reviewer has posted 3 reviews about the same company, but in 3 different locations, you may have those few reviews removed if the reviewer is deemed spammy, but not a bunch of reviews.

[4RealLocal]

Thanks Justin!

But I was hoping to hear from someone that had experienced it first hand in the last week.
Is it widespread or perhaps my client posted some reviews on their own and raised the red flag?

[JustinTaylor88]

have read on a couple of forums about this, seems google have been tweaking the way the reviews work, and the way it treats third party website reviews.

Here is the official word from them on their forums:

"There have been a lot of questions about reviews lately in the forum, and we wanted to address some of the more common ones. But before we dive in, keep in mind that we’re very much aware of all the issues that you’re experiencing, and we’re working hard to overhaul and improve our reviews system so that you stop experiencing these issues. Yes, it’s going to take time, and we know that can be frustrating. But we hope the work we’re putting into long-term fixes today will significantly improve your experience soon.You can also view all the information below in our Help Center.**1. Where did my reviews go?**You may have seen reviews suddenly disappear from your listing. A few reasons why that may be the case:

1. Reviews from third-party websites are no longer displayed on Google Places listings. Below the reviews by Google users, we may link “Reviews around the web” on third-party sites.
2. Reviews are removed from Google Maps because they exhibit spammy behavior. We can't share specifics about what signals we use, but our goal is to provide end-users with high-quality information they can trust and use that info to make informed decisions. We also remove reviews that violate our content policy guidelines. We know that sometimes our algorithms may flag and remove legitimate reviews in our effort to combat abuse, but believe that overall, these measures are helping to ensure that the reviews appearing on Place pages are authentic, relevant and useful. Here's our reviews posting guidelines and policy: http://goo.gl/LtFCS
3. We have data spread across multiple databases, and we bring all that information together to create your local listing. Reviews can sometimes be dropped from Place pages when we’re trying to reconcile all that information. As we mentioned at the beginning of this note: This is a known issue, and we are working to make it better.
4. There are duplicates of the business's listing, and your reviews are living on one of these duplicates.
5. Occasionally, there is a technical issue that causes Place page reviews to drop from Google Maps for a short period of time (a few days) and then reappear on your listing. This happens when we push updates to our listings database. Again, this is a known issue, and we are working to make it better.

**2. How do I know which of the above reasons is affecting my listing?**There’s not much you can do to troubleshoot this — it requires a deeper dive into our system’s backend. In the case of #4, try searching for your business's exact name or address on maps.google.com to find duplicate listings.  3. How do I get them back on my listing?There’s no way currently to quickly, easily and absolutely get your reviews back on to your listing, nor is there much our support team can do to ensure they get reinstated. If we dropped them during a reconciliation process, you’ll see them reappear after a few days. Fixing this is a priority for us, and we’re working on long-term solutions to resolve most of these cases. If you see your reviews on a duplicate listing, we can try to merge the duplicates back in to one listing. Two things to note: 1) It takes several weeks to merge listings, and 2) There is no guarantee that merging the listings will bring the reviews back. Contact support using this form: Select I have verified > Yes >**There is a duplicate **— give the support team a few days to get back to you, they've got a lot of tickets to work through.**4. Where are my owner responses?**Here’s the deal: Google Places allows multiple people to own a listing. So you may have claimed your account, but someone else may have claimed it before you and is still considered an “owner” of the listing. The last person to have updated the listing is considered the main owner, and only responses from that account will appear live on the listing (so, if the other owner updates the account after you had left your response, your responses will be removed from the listing). Here’s something you can do to make sure you’re the most recent owner: Go into your Places account, click to Edit your listing, don’t touch anything, and hit “Submit.” That should ping our system, to let us know you’re the most recent owner. Give it a couple days, now try again to leave a response. If you’re still not seeing the option to write a response, start a new thread here in the forum, and provide us the link to your Places listing. **5. That review is clearly fake, written by an ex-employee, etc. — how can I get it removed from my listing?**There's no guarantee we will remove it, but you can report it directly to Google Places support and we will investigate:Link to form: http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.csSelect: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from a member of our support team. **6. Why are the reviews on my listing not related to my business? **Reviews can sometimes get reassociated to another, similarly related listing. If you’re seeing reviews on your listing that are not related to your business, please use this Help Center form to get in touch with our team, and we’ll work on getting it removed:Link to form: http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.csSelect: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from a member of our support team. **7. One of the links in “Reviews from around the web” is wrong — it’s going to a page of reviews about an unrelated business. How do I get rid of it?**Those links are generated algorithmically, and sometimes we get it wrong. If you see an incorrect link, please use our Help Center troubleshooter to get in touch with our team, and we’ll work on getting it removed (note: it takes several weeks to fix):Link to form: http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.csSelect: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from a member of our support team.**8. Why can’t my customer leave a review? **Say your customer tells you that they’ve gone to your listing, but were unable to submit a review. It’s very difficult for us to troubleshoot and investigate secondhand reports. Ask them if they’ve created an account to review on Google (they should get a prompt when they go to leave the review, and they should be logged in to their own Google account before selecting a reviews nickname). Ask them if they used the 5-star rating feature just above the review (if they haven't done this, the Publish button will be disabled and they will not be able to post the review). Ask them to try posting a response in a different browser. Ask them to wait a few minutes and try again. **9. How can I report spammy reviews? **Use the “Report as inappropriate” button next to the review to tell us you think it’s spam, and we’ll look into it. If you’re seeing a large network of spam, too many for you to individually mark each one, start a new thread in the forum. We’re looking out for those reports and investigating. **10. I’ve reported a review on my listing, but it’s still there. Why won’t you remove it? **Note that we very rarely remove reviews. You can read our removal guidelines here.**11. But none of these questions address the issue I’m experiencing?**The information above addresses almost all the issues you can experience with reviews on your listing. But we know that sometimes, new bugs can crop up. So if none of the information above applies to you, start a new thread here in the Business forum and we’ll investigate. "

Taken from here:-

https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/technical-issue/mPz5bqu7ViM

Hope this helps