I started getting these emails about a month ago, they all go about the same way. “I have had my customers leave us a review, and they can see the review (screenshot included) but it is not showing on my business profile.
As far back as June of 2021, I have been writing about how there is a “bug” with Google Business Profile (formerly GMB) reviews that are “missing”.
Here is a thread on the GBP community that is a perfect example of this problem. And another, and a quick search of the community for “missing reviews” will yield hundreds of other examples.
Usually, a review will not publish because they are in violation of the guidelines in one way or another, but more often than not the “nanny bot” is catching what if thinks are violations based on machine learning. Well, I am not the first to say it, the machine is as stupid as the input it receives and as accurate as those who program it. Unfortunately, looking at these two components we can see why there is a ton of false positives.
And according to Google in 2021, here were the review removal states.
“We blocked or removed more than 95 million policy-violating reviews, over 60,000 of which were taken down due to COVID-related instances. We took down more than 1 million reviews that were reported directly to us.”
What Are My Reviews Missing?
Now, this is by no means official, but hear me out, I have a theory. Every time a client would ask about missing reviews I would ask them, how they were going about asking for reviews.
Are they sending the short link from GBP? Do they ask someone to search for the business name and then leave a review? Did they send the customer a link that has the PlaceID? Was it sent from a software provider like Service Titan? Did they text the link when they provided the service?
Well, what I found out was this;
- 70% were sending out the link from the GBP dashboard.
- 13% used a third party software to solicit
- 10% asked the user to find their business via search
- 7% texted a short link for a review
Based on the data from 100 merchants, I am thinking that by sending out the link from the GBP dashboard that there is some kind of filtering happening. What I think makes this make a lot of sense, is that I recall this happening before, but it had to do with the short link in GBP. So, since it is the came code behind it it makes sense this could be the issue.
What can you do if your reviews are filtered?
If you have the screenshots from the client or from the email you got about getting a new review, then you can come to the community and ask a PE to ask Google to look into it. GBP support seems to be clueless, but there is a missing review option on the help form. We at Steady Demand can also take a look at your case as well.
Google is aware and investigating. So keep an eye out for updates.
Have a review score average that doesn’t match up with the actual reviews? Check out our article outlining how Google review ratings work.
