Why does Google remove reviews? Google reviews under the business listing.

You wake up. You check your Google My Business account. Usually, there are a few nice reviews waiting for you because you really care about your customers. But not today. The number of reviews looks suspiciously small. You rub your eyes. And you notice that a significant portion of your reviews has simply disappeared.

Does it sound like a horror story? Unfortunately, it may be a grim reality. Find out why Google removes reviews. There are 5 most common reasons for this phenomenon.

Too many new reviews at once. It looks like fake reviews

It's cruel, but it's true. And you can guess why. It's possible that in recent months you have been running an intensive promotional campaign, which recently had its grand finale. Your store received even ten times more orders than usual. So Google users gave you a huge number of reviews in one day.

It happens that Google considers such reviews as fake. Unfortunately, the algorithms have been trained that way. And the only ones to blame are the people who buy fake reviews like crazy.

Personal data in reviews on Google My Business listing

Yes, this is also possible. Let's assume you have a very grateful customer who wants to behave professionally. That's why they describe in deeply moving words the amazing qualities of you or your employee (insert your name and surname here). What does Google do? It hides such a review to protect personal data.

Fortunately, this problem can be easily solved. Just remove sensitive data from the review, and it will reappear after some time.

Google Maps reviews with word repetitions may be deleted

This is a controversial decision by Google. After all, not every one of your real customers needs to have a wide range of vocabulary. People sometimes leave reviews in a hurry. Repetitions of positively charged adjectives can happen quite often in such a situation.

Unfortunately, such a review may be considered as spam by Google. And then it will be deleted.

What if Google reviews were sent from a company computer?

This solution used to be very popular in hotels. A company computer was placed right next to the reception desk to facilitate guests in leaving reviews. Of course, the reviewer had to log in to their Google account for this purpose. But the IP address was the same for many different reviews left by subsequent guests.

It used to be accepted by Google, but not anymore. If you really want to ask customers to leave Google reviews of your services, it's better to do it differently. Suggest that they use their own phone or laptop for this purpose.

The same review on the website and on Google account goes to waste

It's a copy and paste action. Let's say your customer writes you an extensive, positive review on your company's website. And because they are really satisfied with your services or products, they decide to take it a step further. They copy their post. They go to Google Maps. They choose the maximum number of stars and paste the copied text into the review box.

What does Google do? It hides such a review. It won't pass the search engine's anti-spam filters.

Why does Google remove reviews and may even delete an account?

As you can see, Google can remove genuine reviews in many cases. And here you see only the most common reasons. That's why managing reviews consciously is not just an empty slogan. It's worth having a review acquisition app at hand, which will provide you with many useful suggestions. With Rating Captain, you will learn not only how to ask for reviews to receive them. You will also understand how to acquire reviews that won't suddenly disappear from your listing.

If you don't fully trust apps, even those based on advanced machine learning mechanisms, Big Data collection, and sentiment analysis, remember that you can choose the Power subscription, which will give you contact with a dedicated account manager.