Hi all,
My wife and I know very little about computers. Someone named Vishal was nice enough to help us and told us to come here to post our issue. I will post the original post we put up in the wrong area. Thankfully we know how to copy and paste so that my poor finger does not have to type everything out again​:slightly_smiling_face: Thank you in advance for any help you are able to give us. We APPRECIATE IT Heidi and Mike
Hi all,
I apologize for reaching out for help but I have tried everything I can think of and done tons of searching. I am not a computer person so I apologize in advance if I have missed something. My wife and I leave Google reviews and do so only for companies that go above and beyond. We feel it is very important to praise those that deserve it. We have never left a negative review. If we get bad service we simply tell the person (in a very polite way). We just completed a complete renovation of our home. We left feedback for the man that built all of our cabinetry. He did an OUTSTANDING job. We also left feedback for the company that came in a leveled all of our floors and the company that built and installed all of our custom automated blinds. They all deserve to be praised. We left these reviews months ago and thought they were up. Well this week while at the gym we ran into one of the men that leveled our floors. I thanked him and asked him if he was happy with the Google review we had left them. He said that we did not leave a review for them. I took out my phone and let him read the review. He looked stunned. He took out his phone and our review was not on his phone? I asked my wife to check her phone and it did not show on hers either. It was then we noticed that there were others not showing on my wife’s phone as well. On one phone it says we have 69 reviews and on my wife’s phone it says 53. We know that one of the other missing reviews is one that my wife left for her hairdresser. We read each review and there are no violations. We deleted each of them and posted them again as that was a suggestion. That did not work either. I understand that to some of you this may seem like a small thing and that we should just ignore it. It is a big thing to us as we want those that helped us and did such an amazing job to get the credit they deserve. People are negative to people often these days even at times the person they are being negative to do not deserve it. It is very important to reward excellent behavior and service. I feel really bad as the blind company that did our blinds did such an incredible job and came in $1,800 under budget. I actually told the company and the installers that I was going to give them an exceptional review. All of these months and no review. It bothers me a lot that it “appears” that I did not keep to my word. My word means a lot to me, always has and always will. It is also upsetting that we go out of our way and make time to do something we feel is important and it does not get done. What is the point of leaving reviews is they are only visible by the person that posted them? I apologize if I seem a bit short. I am frustrated that I have tried everything I can think of to fix this issue. I called every help number listed and I am sure you all know what ended up happening there. I am not sure why they post a number if regardless what option you choose you never get to speak to someone. A big THANK YOU to anyone that can help us figure this out. Take care and we hope that you all have a great, safe week.
Heidi and Mike
I’m very sorry to hear you’re experiencing this frustrating issue with your reviews not showing up. I’ve had a similar problem myself in the past, where even reviews I wrote months ago seemed to be “shadow-banned” or stuck in processing, not visible to anyone, including the business owners.
It’s indeed frustrating when you put effort into writing helpful feedback and it doesn’t appear. I found a few steps that surprisingly helped me get a significant number of these delayed reviews (some even after about 2 years!) finally published. It’s not a guaranteed fix for everyone, but based on my experience, these actions seemed to trigger Google’s system to re-evaluate the reviews.
Here are the steps I took that helped in my case:
Review and Edit According to Policy: This is the most crucial step. I went back to the reviews that weren’t showing up and carefully re-read Google’s User Contributed Content Policy (it’s worth checking the latest version). I then edited each review. I paid close attention to:
Photos: Removed any photos that might be slightly blurry, irrelevant, or could potentially violate any rule (even subtly). Sometimes just removing ALL THE photos helps.
Specific Names: Removed any mentions of specific employee names. While positive praise is good, mentioning individuals can sometimes be flagged, perhaps for privacy or to prevent misuse. Focus praise on the company/team as a whole, e.g., “the staff was incredibly helpful,” or “communication with the team was excellent.” (Like your example: “communication with the company was superb… This is all thanks to people working there and the boss…”) – this kind of general praise seems safer than naming individuals.
Content: Ensured the review was genuinely about my experience with the business at that location. Removed any links, phone numbers, or mentions of unrelated topics. If the review was very long, I sometimes shortened it or moved the most impactful points to the beginning.
Report the Issue (Politely & Clearly): If editing alone didn’t work, I used the “Report a problem” or feedback option within Google Maps or the Local Guides interface related to the specific review. I stated clearly that my review wasn’t visible, mentioned that I had reviewed the content policy, and politely asked if the review violated any specific rule so I could correct it. This seems to sometimes push the review towards a manual check.
Ensure Location History is On (For Future Reviews): This is more for future confidence, but I realized ensuring my Location History is enabled on my phone whenever I visit places I plan to review might help. Google uses location data to help verify that reviews are from people who have actually been to the place. While this doesn’t fix past reviews where location data might not have been recorded, it adds credibility to your overall account activity for future contributions. (Grammar and style fixed and improved by gemini which STRONGLY agree).
Other possibilities:
Thanks to Gemini, it brought a few more ideas, especially acc. history and posting many reviews. They are rather not possible fix, but maybe?
Account History: If the Google account is very new, has a history of posting spam, reviewing competitors, reviewing places the user owns/works at, or engaging in other suspicious activity, reviews from that account might be automatically filtered or delayed.
Technical Glitches: Sometimes it’s just a temporary system error on Google’s end.
Bulk Reviews: Posting many reviews in a very short period might look like spam.
Reviewing Remotely: If Google’s system thinks you are reviewing a place you haven’t physically visited (perhaps due to VPN usage, lack of location history, or reviewing a place far from your usual locations), the review might be filtered.
Content Keywords: Certain keywords, even if not explicitly against policy, might trigger filters if they are commonly associated with spam or inappropriate content in other contexts.
Business Flagging: If the business flags your review (rightly or wrongly), it enters a review process, which can lead to it being hidden.
Based on your situation with reviews for different businesses after a renovation, it seems less likely to be a simple conflict of interest (like reviewing your own business). It’s more likely related to potential triggers within the review content, the age of the reviews causing them to be re-evaluated by newer filters, or possibly something about your account’s history or verification signals at the time those original reviews were posted
Thank you very much for your detailed response. We appreciate your time, efforts, and care to help others. After reading your response, the one thing our reviews does have are peoples names. Everysingle on of our reviews over years has included soecific peoples names. The idea has always been the hope that the manager or owner of the company reads the praise of a certain employee and reward them for their excellent service. Heidi pointed out that the reviews that only are viewable to us are smaller businesses. All of the reviews for the large companies are viewable. That seems strange. We notice the review we left for a hotel we stayed at in Germany posted without issues. It mentions the hotel staff by name. The review was not done until we returned to Canada. I did not even have my computer or phone with me. One would think that review would have been flagged if any. The person kind enough to send us to this forum (Vishal) told me that posted the issue here in this forum might get the attention of someone that could actually forward our issue to someone that could fix our issue. Unfortunately we are 60 years old and never really got into computers. We know how to check email and use Google. I think what we will do is take a picture of each review and email it to each company so they know that we did leave them well deserved positive reviews. Heidi wondered why her hairdresser never mentioned the review she left for her beauty salon. She will take my phone next time she gets her haircut and show her the review. Take care and THANK YOU for helping us. We really APPRECIATE it!! We hope that you and yours have a very nice summer.
Heidi and Mike
Heidi and Mike