Hi, I hope this is the right place for this. I noticed one day that my points for detailed reviews dropped by several points. No biggie, I’ll just add more. Since then I have included detailed reviews on every review I’ve done, but it’s not registering in Google Guide. Even though I have almost 100 detailed reviews with well over 200 characters, I’m only getting credit for 45 of them and it seems to be stuck at 45. I’ve read about best practices for reviews and I’ve tried to leave different types of reviews to see if it’s how I’m writing them, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason for why some get counted and some don’t. Is that something that can be updated. It’s the only thing keeping me from moving up to Master Reviewer. Thanks in advance, and have a great day!
Hallo @TG2007 . I am sorry about your issue, that is easy to explain: 55 of your reviews are “private” (visible only to you), as you can see from the screenshot here below
This can be due to several reasons: A violation of the Maps user-generated content policy , but also an error of the filter. Sometimes an edit of the review may help to have the review released, as explained in Flag and fix inappropriate content "If a review you wrote has been flagged and removed, you can fix it yourself. Edit your review to follow Google review policies — for example, you might remove a phone number or URL from the review. Your review will be automatically republished.
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."
If it doesn’t work, please check the form available in An update on how we moderate Google Maps reviews . With that form you will ask the team to check your account. The team will inspect your reviews and will release all is not against the rules. The check may take several weeks, so please be patient.
However, before to ask the team for a check, I would like to suggest you to remove what can be a “potential” future issue: A big redundancy in your photo. A photo should be posted because it gives additional information about a place, so redundancy - adding several similar views of a storefront or a building - as I can see in most of your reviews, is considered useless (no additional information added) or a trick to get more points. Please can read the Community policy :
“Take photos that clearly and accurately represent a location …**”
“Dark, blurry, and redundant photos will be removed. Users who duplicate photos across locations, … will also be removed.”
Please let me know if you need help in this last part
Hello @ErmesT . Thank you for the helpful information. After doing a deep dig, I see what you mean by the redundancy of multiple exterior photos. I also noticed that all the reviews where I added an aerial photo got removed as well. Being an FAA Part 107 Certified Drone Pilot I didn’t think aerial photos would be an issue, but it appears they were.
I have since removed all the aerial photos, and all the redundant photos of exteriors. I also tweaked the reviews that weren’t showing up publicly and re-posted them. Do you know how long it takes for a review to be automatically republished? So far, none of the ones I have corrected have republished. In addition, somehow, 10 more reviews have been hidden. These were reviews that were totally fine, I removed a duplicate exterior photo, and now all of a sudden they are hidden.
At this point I think I just need to request the team take a look to see why so many are getting flagged. Maybe I changed too many at one time and it flagged some other filter. Anyway, thank you again for the suggestion and feedback. I think I know how to avoid these issues moving forward, I just need to wait until the team can take a look and reinstate the other reviews.
I don’t see an issue in sharing photos taken by drones, if a photo is correctly representing a place.
In my personal case one review that I wrote in France was supposed to be “fake engagement” (when you write a review in France, you receive an email if the review isn’t posted. More details here).
After that review, all my reviews were systematically hidden.
The only way to fix my issue was to fill out the form, and wait for two months.
