How did I Unhide My Hidden Reviews?

Google Maps tips & tricks
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Nowadays, I am a bit cautious about writing reviews; after publishing, if it is published instantly, then it’s fine; otherwise, I usually wait a couple of days to see if the review has been published or not.

Even sometimes when I am fully sure that my review has not violated any policies, but still hasn’t been published, I usually wait a maximum of a week before reevaluating it.

My aim in writing this post is that recently, many local guides, especially the new ones from my region, have been coming to me asking about the unpublished reviews and photos. I hope that through this post I can help all of them.

So let’s take two cases: case 1, review without photos, and case 2, with photos.

Case 1: Reviews without Any Photos

I think if your reviews are without any photos, then you just need to follow a few simple points:

  1. Your review should not be a couple of words like “Very nice place,” “Food quality was good,” “Amazing restaurant,” etc.
  2. Avoid posting negative, revenge, or bad reviews. Don’t say, “The staff was rude and doesn’t know how to behave with the customers”; rather, say, "The staff needs more training."
  3. Always be authentic. Don’t post fake reviews of a place you haven’t visited just to get the points.
  4. Avoid copy-pasting reviews from others, any website, or anywhere on the internet, and avoid liking your own reviews.

For more information, you can look through this post, Common Review Violations by @MortenCopenhagen.

Case 2: Reviews with Photos

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This is the most common issue that I and other local guides face. To illustrate, let me take a recent example and show you how I unhide my hidden review on Kolkata Airport.

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Before reviewing, my count of Helpfulness reviews was 142, and after that, it remained the same. That clearly indicates that my review was hidden, as I wrote a detailed review, as I always do.

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As usual, I waited for a few days before taking action. As the review doesn’t appear, I first carefully read my review and saw that I haven’t used any hateful words in it. I had uploaded 10 photos with the review; I deleted 8 of them and then separately uploaded a few among the 8.

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Instantly after deleting the photos, I saw that my helpfulness reviews count increased to 143; that clearly indicates that my review has appeared now. I cross-verified it with the Google Chrome browser, where my separate email is logged in.

I will suggest you:

  1. Avoid uploading photos with your review.
  2. If you still want to upload, make sure to upload 2-4 and max to max 10 in rare cases. You can upload them separately.
  3. Avoid uploading identical images with your review.
  4. Sometimes, even when I upload 8-10 images with my review, it instantly appears in a few minutes. So my suggestion is first try with images if you want; if it doesn’t work, then take an action.
  5. Kindly note that if one of the images in your review violates the policy, then your entire review might be hidden until you delete that image.

I hope that my post will be helpful. Please note that all the suggestions I have given in the post are entirely based on my personal experience; your experience might be different from mine, so please feel free to share your thoughts.

17 Likes
Google maps not accept my review😢
Reviews are not visible
2

Why should we avoid “liking your own reviews”? :thinking:

I specifically asked a Googler about this during ConnectLive 2019, and he told me, "This is not a bug, this is a feature,” and they know it’s possible. He compared it to Instagram, where you can also like your own photos and videos without any penalties.

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Ya @Rohlik I agree with your words, it’s a feature but my point of saying this was when others like our review, the AI may consider it as helpful and might feature it to the Most relevant section but if we like our own review nothing happens rather than just adding a +1 to the total likes count. :folded_hands:

4

Some years back quite a few Local Guides got suspended for this. That is why I added it to the list.

1 Like
5

Thanks for sharing these tips @Shaunak

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Thank you @Noorx1302 for your kind words. :folded_hands:

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I think that this is google fault, not ours. I had many hidden reviews after mmonths of uploaded review. The first think i do is just…

  1. Edit it, without editing - works in about 60% cases

  2. Write new one, adding few lines/paraphrase and ADD ONE OR TWO PHOTOS - works almost every time

  3. Google should check their restrictions and TOLD US WITHOUT HINDERING OUR WORK, which things were violated. This is the most frustrated thing when you see hidden - we do not get the message about it, when we supposedly broke rules TELL US WHICH one we broke god *** it.

  4. Many users may feel abused especially, when you have 10 stars, you just deserve to know what have you done wrong!

  5. To google - reinvent function hidden function, it is just unfair in case of local guides. Managing throught things like that is basically like playing the game, i have some “hateful” reviews, which to my surprise, never went away! So..

  6. I think that this is bug and mistake inside the google system.

    1. Start with stars, post.
    2. Write 3-4 sentences. post. check for hidden,
    3. do it until you have large review, if after 3-4 sentences you got banned review, at least you know where the source is.
    4. This is especially, albeit time consuming way in understanding algorithms.
    5. When or if i got a long list of sentences that brought me hidden status - we will be able to build guide and show google that their algorithms are too aggressive.
    6. You should know this but, 1. Having phoned to a place, 2. Being in that place [localization/gps needs to be activated] lessen the probability of ban/hide acc.

    My 2 cents, you can add them to your post if you will find them useful. Just citate me.

8

Great Post…. Thanks :blush::folded_hands:

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@Morte
This is an ancient issue. We all know it’s Google’s fault. But as as been fiercely argued long ago, there is no use fighting for this as Google has made it clear this is how its “AI” filtering mechanism works (and there is also some investigation mechanism to moderate the impact to some degree). You either live with it or leave. But at the very least it’s clear. What’s the even worse now is Google can’t resolve review uploading issue of a single account for more than two months, without any transparency on what happens or when it is expected to be resolved. Now that’s a far more serious issue. All the other rosy posts on this forum simply can’t cover the awfulness.

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Thank you so much @SayanKumarRay :folded_hands:

1 Like