Local guide account suspended, no resons

Hi there !
I’m a big fan of food, and I love sharing that. I strive to write complete, accurate and factual reviews; while remaining neutral (and polite when I have bad experiences).

Lately almost all my reviews have been removed (both positive and negative), so I think my account has been suspended. I can no longer take advantage of the joy I had in sharing my passion.

I think it all started when I gave a negative review to a company; this one massively asked these friends to report my opinion.

Can you tell me how to get out of here?

Thanks !

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Bonjour à tous,
Depuis peu, tous mes avis sont systématiquement modérés par l’IA google…

Le message dit :

« Merci d’avoir laissé un avis sur ****.

Les processus et systèmes de modération de Google ont identifié du contenu susceptible d’être une interaction artificielle. Il est possible que votre contribution ait aussi enfreint d’autres règles.

Malheureusement, nous ne l’avons pas publié, car : Les processus et systèmes de modération de Google ont identifié du contenu susceptible d’être une interaction artificielle. Il est possible que votre contribution ait aussi enfreint d’autres règles.»

Malgré plusieurs reformulations et autres modifications, toujours le même résultat.

J’ai relu attentivement les règles https://support.google.com/ et ne contrevient pas aux règlements.

C’est la première fois après plus de 600 avis !!!

Quelqu’un peut m’expliquer ?

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Hi @igormages , @Sigycop

First of all welcome in Connect, and thank you for asking. I can assure you that you are not suspended, because only Local Guides accounts can write a post here, even if in fact you have 18 hidden reviews (Igor) and 13 hidden reviews (Xavier)

As you both are asking about the same issue at the same time, I am merging the two posts together, as the answer is exactly the same.

I know very well what you are facing, as I am having exactly the same experience.

A quick answer would be (taken from the solution of this post) “please use this Google Form to share your profile with us and let us know which contributions don’t appear on Maps”.

This is in fact the fast way, even if the investigation may take a few (up to three) weeks.

This seems to be a new version of the AI running in France, that is a bit stronger than the standard algorithm. But associated with this there is of course the possibility to ask the team for a check, and everything that is not against the rules will be released.

In addition I will share with you the "standard option to try to fix your issue:

Fixing your issue

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."

This method worked well for me in the past, but my recent attempt of editing a review didn’t had a positive result, so I opted for the appeal form, that worked well for me a month ago.

Good luck

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Hi @ErmesT and thanks for your answer.
… Hello @igormages

I filled out the Google Form you gave this morning, along with several new reviews written using the exact same style.
Three opinions were rejected. Two were OK, but one was further investigated…I don’t know why.
I have read again the rules for avoiding inappropriate content, I don’t see what can be wrong in all the rejected reviews.
Also tried several sentence structures, making grammatical or spelling mistakes: rejected.
I tried to lower my rating just in case Google AI found me too accommodating: failed.
There is no offensive data, url, and I of course I went to all the places that I have evaluated. It was even Maps that offered me to write a review for each place.
I don’t really know what to do anymore, but my Local Guide activities are not neutral on my schedule. If the time I spend writing reasoned and substantiated opinions is useless, despite more than 600 opinions because a bot decided that my writings were not compliant, I would like to understand why.

I’m also a Maps beta tester.
Google must not lose sight that it is thanks to volunteers like us that its business is so universal and profitable.

3 Likes

Thank you for your reply.

I filled out the form and also filled out the google maps appeal form…

It’s not just what we write or the pictures. I had a review that was removed when I just put 5 stars and nothing else.

It’s heartbreaking, and it gives a feeling of terrible censorship. For my part it lasts 4 years, it is not your new AI. I now only put very little opinion because I know that they will be hidden.

The only thing that has changed is that now it is clearly displayed that the review is hidden. Whereas before you really had to look to see that you were censored.

Some of my reviews was alerting to criminal activity, in order to protect google maps users, have simply been removed. It is extremely serious.

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@igormages

The “happy cyclette” case is interesting.

Plethora of rave reviews given by profiles with less than 10 reviews for the most part. But not that of a local level 7 guide? Finally, I’m lucky to still have my badge.

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I fully understand your frustration, @igormages , @Sigycop

Myself, even if I am a moderator of the Local Guides community, I am not immune and the AI act on my reviews exactly like on yours.

Probably the only difference is that, reading a lot of post, I am aware of the issue and I am confident that the reviews will be released.

But I shared with you the bad feelings about receiving an email that is apparently accusing us of violation of the rules.

I am also aware that fake reviews do exist, and some business pay to have five stars review.

I personally reported a business about that just a few months ago.

So I am not surprised about the emails (I would love to have it here in Italy too).

What surprises me is the content of the email.

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Thank you @ErmesT for that feed-back.
What surprised me the most is to go from a situation where almost all of my reviews have passed the filters for several years to a situation where almost all of my reviews are rejected. My opinions are always written with the same register of language, argued and verifiable.
A bit as if my user profile had been degraded and the filters had suddenly become much stricter…
Such behavior is not encouraging. If we could at least know the exact cause of the rejection of the messages… we could improve. But that seems totally arbitrary. Incomprehensible.

3 Likes

@igormages

@Sigycop

I noticed this issue in September. There are many other Local Guides who are also facing this problem. We have all filled in the forms, but as you can see the more of us there are the more delays.

https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/All-of-my-posts-and-reviews-cannot-be-showed-on-the-google-map/td-p/3463800/page/24

HI, I’m sorry to hear your reviews aren’t being accepted, even though you are the kind of reviewer who is making Google Maps successful. Hopefully this can be resolved for you. It’s insulting to your efforts.

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I’ve also write ther :
https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/All-of-my-posts-and-reviews-cannot-be-showed-on-the-google-map/td-p/3463800/page/26

Again, again, again….

I appealed as requested. The limits of my account have a priori been lifted.

Excerpt from the email I received:
“Thank you for contacting Google support. Based on the information provided, we are happy to confirm that there are no penalties against your account.”

So I put new reviews, and reposted old ones that had been censored… still the same problem. My 12 new reviews have been removed.

@igormages

You used the wrong form. The appeals form is relevant when you are suspended. Obviously you are not suspended since you can still write here on Connect.

Instead please use the form called Account investigation for contributions not visible on Google Maps if you believe that some of your contributions have been wrongfully unpublished.

Best of luck
Morten

Oh! My mistake. I have already filled out this form…

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