Why have reviews on my Google My Business Profile been removed?

This question was submitted to the community forum.

Details: “ I need help with a missing client review. My client left a review over three months ago and the review and my response was removed. I’m not sure what has happened, but this did occur before. Any assistance that you can provide is greatly appreciated.”

Answer

As the review was left in August and is missing from the profile on both Google Search and Google Maps, I believe the review was removed. These are the reasons why a review can be removed:

• The client removed the review
• The client closed his Google account
• Google suspended his account
• Filtered by Google Automated Spam Detector *
• The review violates Google’s policy
• A Google user other than the reviewer or business owner reported the review as offensive, spam, not relevant or inappropriate
• Google My Business bug/human error, I have dealt with occasions where Google removed reviews by mistake or transferred them out to a competitor listing

*Google statement:
“Google uses automated spam detection measures to remove reviews that are probably spam. Although legitimate reviews are sometimes inappropriately removed, these spam prevention measures help improve people’s experiences on Google by ensuring that the reviews they see are authentic, relevant, and useful.“

What can you do

As it’s only one review, Google will not do much to resolve the issue and probably is not a good idea to contact the clients asking if they removed their review.

Your efforts are better employed on asking your current clients and new clients to review your business on Google. Check the article below for a few tips:

For more tips on Google Reviews and optimization of your business reputation management, feel free to check my Google My business Complete Listing Optimization Training.

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