Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
What is the best practice way to attribute a Google Review?
An example might be a local directory site, where multiple businesses are featured. To flesh out the respective business profiles, Google Reviews are included. Copying/pasting would be the definition of duplicate content. I wonder though if hyperlinking to the review itself would be enough? For a random example: "you literally have never had better ice cream. cutest shop in charleston sc" - Mandee Jalbert, Google Review Google doesn't appear to have a review embed option- am I wrong? If not, would the above attribution via the "Google Review" hyperlink be sufficient to head off any potential dings for duplicate content? Thanks! Stephen
Reviews and Ratings | | PerfectPitchConcepts
Thanks for your thoughts! I feel like this might make for a good presentation at our SoundBoard conference someday soon.0 -
Any Success Getting Fake 5 Star Google My Business Reviews Removed From Competitors?
Hi, I am working on a competitor who is obviously building up fake reviews using a 3rd party service. I need to build more evidence. A majority of his reviews on Google My Business, they are done by reviewers with very few reviews (no profile pic), and that seem to review 3-4 companies in the Chicagoland area the exact same day. This happens again and again. It started about 1.5 years ago. Before that everything looks normal. Any idea how much proof I need to actually get those reviews and/or his company removed? I am working on getting access to a private group on Facebook where he talks about it. Thanks in advance!
Reviews and Ratings | | vetofunk1 -
How to Remove Online-Only / B2B Yelp Listing
I advise a regional company on their online marketing efforts. They provide a service across a very large area, and they only have one corporate office. Their product is purchased online, and there is no face-to-face interaction with customers. Customers do not conduct business at their corporate office. Yelp says they are primarily intended for the review of local businesses and their guidelines for adding a business state that they are "l__ess interested in showing online-only, business-to-business (b2b), and direct-seller businesses" and that "if a business page you add is not eligible to be listed on Yelp, it will not be part of our directory". Our business doesn't meet this criteria. So my question is how I would go about requesting that our Yelp remove our listing due to ineligibility? I found an article on Whitespark that discusses this topic and they show some clear examples of online-only businesses that had their Yelp listings removed. Unfortunately, that article doesn't offer an insight on how to go about the process of requesting/triggering removal. Does anyone have experience on how to go about this? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Reviews and Ratings | | UMoveFree0 -
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 -
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore? Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating?
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore?
Reviews and Ratings | | lcourse
Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating? Duolingo has a 5 star rating, but I doubt that they really have an all time review average larger than 4,75. In the google playstore their average of the android version is 4,6. Does anybody know how apple calculates the star ratings or has an URL reference where this is explained?0 -
Do ratings/reviews show up in Organic Search Results anymore?
I read about using schema or h1review to add markup that would get an individual person's review to show up in organic search, but it was from 2013. I did a few queries for keywords in my area, and none of the results had this. Then I did some queries for generic things like "best pizza in Tampa" and "coffee in tampa" and they didn't have it either. So, is this still something that can be done or not? I do see it when a review site like yelp comes up or in ads, but I'm specifically talking about organic search results from our website. Thanks, Ruben
Reviews and Ratings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How can I avoid duplicate content when building a review widget?
My website has a profile page for each of the home improvement contractors who signs up. They accumulate reviews on those pages. I want to build a review widget to display our reviews on our contractors' websites. How can I avoid duplicate content issues for the reviews? Example of a profile page with a few reviews: http://www.thehomefixers.com/members/425/waterheaters-plus-llc.php
Reviews and Ratings | | menachemp0 -
Migrating Reviews from Old SIte
We recently changed our Website to Word Press and I would like to move the old reviews to the new site. I am concerned Google might not understand the reviews showing up all of a sudden. The old reviews were on a sub-domain (store.domain.com). I will be able to match the dates and text as well as names. Any advice or Best Practice on this? Thanks!
Reviews and Ratings | | Chris6610