I’m participating in the Google Local Experts program for a years. Earning points and badges, achieving level 7. Usually my reviews been quite positive. As soon as a struggled a really bad service and rated it 1 star, and provided my negative experience, the company contacted me, apologised and solved the issue, but it’s seems that from that point - ALL of my reviews become non public… What is the solution to fix it, so my reviews can turn back to public ?
I am truly committed for the local community in the society and always strive to provide friendly, passionate and committed reviews.
Please avoid 1 Star rating/ bad reviews writing. Please write reviews like a local guide not a normal person. Please read the Community Policy here you can find tips for writing reviews & adding photos.
Note :After You submitted the form it will take few weeks time and there is no notification if your problem solved/Not solved. (Automatic you are review’s will publish.)
Also i have visited your profile and i have saw some similar (same) photos. To protect your account remove the similar photos.
And this post you have posted in wrong you need to post in “How-to” not in “achievements” (it’s just my opinion if this only correct please change this post to “How-to” @ErmesT / @iyudhi )
If my message is not helpful please be patience for the response from the Moderators/Senior’s.
During all this years I’ve never rated someone 1 star, but this guys are just terrible, they did terrible mistakes in my every single contact with them. So they deserve 1 star they revived completely.
All that you are telling me is a testament, but I need a solution. What should I do now so my reviews become public ?
Just to wait ?
Thank you for your suggestions, I’ll definitely will review it and I’ve already changed the topic.
The form after you submitted it’s definitely work but it’s take few weeks time so please be patience. Also once see your photo remove the similar (same) photos to protect your account.
If my previous message is helpful to you please mark as solution (i am not saying to get any badges are anything) because it’s will be helpful who try to post new question like you then they can see in suggestions it can be useful for them.
Your message is not understand to me sir what are saying warranty and something i can say one thing. In the “India” (i think) people are not adding 1 Star rating because we never try get feel sad for the owner’s & when I talked with TravellerG sir he told one thing “If you not like a place don’t give 1star rating and don’t write bad reviews because they can feel sad by seeing that review/rating. If the place is not nice give the review like need development…etc”
@Rakshi2 We already discussed this in another thread. There’s a reason why the option to give 1 star rating is being made available. Please stop telling others to not use it.
There are cases where it’s deserved for a business to receive a 1 star rating, and if it’s being used the intended way, it will actually help the business owner. The owner might not like getting 1 star review, but instead of being upset, they should’ve used it as a feedback to improve the service, which means they will get good reviews in the future.
It will also help others that are looking at the review to understand what’s going on. If a business is really bad, as it’s rude to customers, serving food that makes you sick, overcharging you more than what’s listed in the menu, would you want other Local Guides to visit the business? You’re basically not being honest if you’ve experienced all that and still give good reviews.
You mean well. You don’t want to make business owners sad. I get that. But also try to understand from the other side.
While being in India I never rated someone even with 3 stars - because everything was fine or excellent. Even the local trains. I found also that all my reviews from 3 different trips to France been unpublished. Well I just reviewed all mr reviews, put some editing and corrections where needed, deleted all the 1 star reviews, and all the short (2-3 words) reviews. And “did” the link. We’ll see how it’s work. Thank you for help!
When Google allows users to give one-star ratings then it is okay to use it. It is similar to not giving zero stars = this is not possible. Making local rules different from what Google decided is not recommended.
Hallo, @Oleg_Khazankin “Welcome to Connect! If this is your first visit, you’ve come to the right place. This post will serve as a guide for everything you need to know about contributing content and engaging with the Local Guides community on Connect”. This is the first of the information that you will find in “Your guide to Connect” , the introductory Guide of the community. In there you will find all the necessary information to know how to better contribute in here.
Your issue is interesting. It happens time by time, when a specific reviews or some behavior of a Local Guide trigger the filter in a so strong way, and in one shot made “private” all the reviews of a contributor. In this case I don’t think the form suggested by @Rakshi2 would work, because yours is a kind of “penalization”, so I think you should proceed in two steps:
As you can read 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."
Only after fixing every potential issue (as you are doing already), fill out the Appeal form . This is a different form, reserved for investigation on suspended accounts, as you can read in Why was I removed from Local Guides? . In fact it is like if you are under a partial suspension, so please consider to ask for an investigation of the whole account. Obviously I don’t know the content of the reviews, but as a general rules we can say that a negative review is perfectly fine, but cannot be a blackmail for the business, nor a personal rant. If a claim is not fixed, using a lawyer is much better then using a review as a leverage. When I say “very potential issue” I also means what correctly mentioned by @Rakshi2 about your photos. There is no reason, because it doesn’t give any additional information, to add duplicate or redundant (very similar) photos. This is also against 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.”
There are a lot of examples of the second case in your contributions, and this should be fixed. Unpublished photos are difficult to spot, but in your case 25% of your photos are private. Just to provide an example of the violation, six of the photos in this place are added twice. If you need more examples, please let me know.
@Rakshi2 , what @iyudhi and @MortenCopenhagen said about giving one star is absolutely correct, and I don’t need to repeat it, but once more I would like to remind you that giving a misleading information is not the best way to help others. Not giving a one star review when the business deserve it is a way to deceive others. What is important is to be honest and respectful of the business as well, as our negative review can help it improve.
In addition I would like to add what my grandfather was used to say: “a good silence was never said” or also “before you speak, shut up”. The meaning is to think before speaking and answer when you know what to say, otherwise instead of helping others you confuse them.
Regarding asking for the reply to be flagged as the solution,I don’t recall any of the Local Guides with the highest “solutionist” badge (the 13 PRO and the 3 Master) ever asking for someone to flag their answer as a solution. Maybe we should learn from them
Thank you for your suggestion. From now i will never tells to anybody like “Avoid 1star rating”
@ErmesT Yes your correct I have want to learn about the “Mark as Solution.” I am told him If my message is helpful please mark as solution because other’s also with same question they can get suggestions and with solution it’s can be easy to help others.
Sorry for the confusion created; due to his poor English grasping, he has mistook my explanation.
I have requested him… for 1 Star reviews, to give proper explanation about the poor service/facility, so that the owner can improve upon the same.
Of course, honestly, for me… I have close to 2,000 reviews (globally) in Google Maps; to best of my knowledge, I am yet to get a PoI which ranks at 1 Star (ie. with Zero) - I think twice, even before giving 2 Star rating.
As rightly mentioned by fellow LG @Oleg_Khazankin , it will be very difficult to find a 1 Star destination in India.
Surely, if I find one, I will not be against ranking it a single star.
Thanks to all for the detailed explanations given to dear @Rakshi2
Me too, I am very careful in giving a low rating, first of all because I think that businesses all over the world understood that improving the quality of services and products is extremely important to keep their market, second because I try to avoid to visit, when possible, businesses with a low rating. A am an avid reader of reviews, when I search for a place where I’ve never been, and I trust a lot the reviews written by other local guides.
Regarding soliciting a solution, @Rakshi2 , no doubt that a moderator, or a user, will flag a reply as “the solution” when the reply was without any doubt the way to fix an issue, or a clear explanation about the reason why something happens, because the solution will help others with the same issue. And as I said already, I never saw one of the top solutionist asking for their reply to be flagged as the solution. At least I can say that I personally never did it, and I have more than 1500 solutions authored.
EDIT: Let me add, @Rakshi2 , that in this moment @Oleg_Khazankin will not be able to respond, because he’s no longer a local Guide, so most probably his issue was not possible to fix by filling that form, as I wanted to clarify in my previous reply. While I hope that he will be reinstated soon, I would like to remind that a “canned” reply is something that should be used carefully
