Decreasing number of published review

Google Maps tips & tricks
1

Hello everyone,
I wonder if anyone share my experience and can help my find out what I should do to find the cause and prevent the decreasing of the number of my reviews.

Please note that I get no varning that my review is not has published due to various violation of the policy or so. I just see that during last month my number of publis (incognito mod), has dropped by three.

Thank you very much in advance for your time.

All the best

7 Likes
2

Hi @I-am-Q
As we had already several conversations about hidden reviews I don’t need to start again from the beginning with you.
Unfortunately there is no way to prevent this. Time by time the reviews are scanned and, as the AI ​​(the filter) continues to learn, what was not previously removed may test positive on re-checking. There is no trust level in reviews. On the contrary, you can be flagged and even blocked from writing new reviews, but this does not seem to be your case.
We receive a warning when a review is made private or removed only for listings located inside the EU.
Based on the above, I see only two possible reasons for the counter to decrease:

  • The review made private is related to a listing located outside the EU
  • The place you reviewed (again outside the EU) has been removed from Maps. In this case also the counter on the list of our contribution should decrease.
    When this happens, unfortunately, there is no way to find the removed location, because while the photos are associated with an “unknown location” our review disappears completely from the list of our contributions.
3 Likes
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Great answer @ErmesT . Thanks. I don’t remember if you mentioned it earlier.
I will not anymore care about disappearing reviews with no warning.

1 Like
4

Hello again @ErmesT you have always good answers and explanations for things happening to reviews, that seems totally illogical and difficult to grasp. Please help.

I am totally lost now, from what I see happening with my published reviews.

Local time in Kuala Lumpur, at 10:52 I had 1459 published reviews, which was down by almost 10 since the day before yesterday. One minute later today, local time at 10:53 the number was down to 1454. Now 19:58 the number is 1443.

I am completely restless, what is happening?

Best regards

PS
Please note that:
My total number of contribution has not decrease, on the contrary it has increased as many as I reviewed these days.

5

Now (11:21 morning Kuala Lumpur), the number of published reviews is 1424, the counter on the list of my contribution is 1529. So, another 16 published reviews have disappeared since last night.

Appreciate all help
@MortenCopenhagen
@ErmesT
@MoniDi

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@I-am-Q I am UK/Malaysia based. When in Malaysia, I’m in KL which is where I am at, at the moment! So hello neighbour! :wave:

Below are my personal opinion and assumptions:
I can only assume that with any AI filters, Google will have different models/versions that are updated periodically. And with any updates, those filters will scan through new and existing reviews.

Unfortunately, for us Local Guides, all our reviews will continually get accessed for appropriateness etc and we are at the mercy of how those filters work. Also, different governments may have new policies to address fake reviews, defamation etc so Google tends to err on the side of caution to protect themselves as well as to protect us reviewers, so they will proactively take down reviews that have been flagged by their filters or flagged by businesses/users.

Anyway, long story short. It’s really hard to tell what’s going on and how to address the issue. It might be something said in the review that gets flagged, it might be a photo/video that gets flagged (which also pulls down the review if they were submitted together), it might because the GPS location does not match the location of the business so the authenticity of the review is being questioned, it might be because you’re submitting so many reviews very quickly within a short time.

You can:

  • identify the reviews that are being hidden
  • are the hidden reviews submitted with photos/videos? Are any of the photos/videos hidden as well? Try re-submitting the reviews without any attached media
  • try editing your reviews and rephrase anything that may look like a possible trigger
  • check your Timeline history to see if the location recorded matches the places you’re reviewing. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same location but a close proximity should suffice
  • after all the above still doesn’t work, you can submit your account for a review by the Google Maps team. It may take a while. If I’m not mistaken, you won’t get a notificiation that their reviews of your contributions has completed so you’ll just have to periodically check to see if your stats improve.

I hope that helps.

3 Likes
7

How nice to get contact and advice from a local LG. Thank you @AdrianLunsong for taking the time and sharing your experiences. I have struggled for a long time with getting my reviews “right”. After so much time and various attempts with rewording, removing pictures and clips or simply deleting the review, I have managed to find a way to feel somewhat okay with some deletions that occur. Now the latest that has happened, exceeds all reason (so many that have disappeared in such a short time)! I have made a list of places I have reviewed. In this list I usually mark the reviews that are hidden/deleted or are published. I travel a lot and then it happens that I post many reviews during my trips. Now I have started comparing my list with my reviews in incognito mode and have gone back about 14 months. So far I have found three discrepancies, but it is difficult to say when the discrepancy may have occurred. One of the reviews was for “Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)”. I rephrased and removed two clips. It was published afterwards. I’ll see what happens next.

By the way, I usually check and correct my timeline as it often happens that Google Maps registers a nearby location.

1 Like
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Today 11:20 local time Kuala Lumpur the total number of published reviews are down to 1398.

I just submitted a request to review my account, using your link @AdrianLunsong
I hope that I found the right one to submit.

1 Like