Hey fellow local guides. I’m experiencing a series of blocked reviews - all from businesses and restaurants that fight low (1-3 star) reviews simply by claiming the review is defamatory. The automated Google algorithm then takes down the reviews. How convenient for the local business and how terrible for the community of local guides and people who use our ratings since that means that you can’t really trust reviews and ratings anymore.
To state the obvious: I rarely give low reviews and even for my worst experiences I post balanced reviews that are factual and empowering for the business owner to step up the quality of their service. My reviews are never personal, mean, and they never contain defamation.
If this is the new reality for Google reviews, I will happily delete my profile and stop contributing.
Hi @drtomford , and sorry for the late reply.
I’m sorry about your issue, and to give you a better reply instead of a generic one I would like to better understand what’s going on and where.
From your profile we can see that 13 of your reviews are “private”, visible only to you. Obviously, as I can’t see hidden reviews, I don’t know on which country the "defamatory reviews were uploaded, but I can guess they are in Germany.
Let me explain: in the world Google is obligated to manage the reviews according to the laws of each countries, that are obviously different:
If a review is made private inside the EU you are notified with an email and a red message on your profile over that review.
In the rest of the world you don’t receive any notification.
In Germany the business can also fill a complaint for defamation against Google. In this case Google is obligated to take the review down to protect you for a legal action coming from the business.
As far as I know in this case you will most probably be contacted by Google’s legal team. They will ask you if you have a physical evidence of your visit to the business (a receipt), to demonstrate that you really visited them.
However I don’t have a personal experience of this (it never happened to me) so my reply is based on messages we received here on Connect by other Local Guides, so I cannot tell you exactly how much time this process needs.
As I said, in some case Google is obligated to act in this way.
If you have other reviews taken down also in other countries please let me know, and I’ll tell you how to proceed.
To check your hidden reviews outside the EU you will have to open your profile (this link) in a browser in incognito mode, and to compare the reviews with the ones visible in your private profile (when you are logged in in Google Maps).
Kindly let me have a feedback
I did have such a case and received an email from Google explaining they needed to hide the review since the shop was threatening with a “Veleumdungsklage” (defamation lawsuit).
I filled out the appeal form explaining I couldn’t see any reason why the company could be successful with such a lawsuit (which I don’t understand until today) and the review was reinstated within a couple of days without asking for any proof.
This was in May last year and took five days to reactivate. I just checked: The review is still public.
Thank you @WilfriedB for sharing your experience. Me too I don’t see any reason to flag your 3 stars reviews as defamation, nor a I see any reason for raising that complaint.
But what makes me worried is that, as the law gives the business the possibility of doing that, they can be tempted to use it even when it’s obvious senseless.
What I think is that Google’s legal office considered in fact your review impossible to be considered defamation so after the necessary procedure of filling the form they released it.
But I know for sure that in several cases an evidence of having visited the business was required
I agree @ErmesT and my first thought was also, they wanted to get rid of all ratings below five stars and just take at advantage of the system, hoping the author wouldn’t react. Possibly @drtomford is correct and it works in many cases.
But I have to admit. after receiving the email, I did edit and removed two phrases (not sure before or after sending the appeal). The original text, as quoted in the mail was:
“Nachdem wir einige enthusiastische Kommentare hier gelesen hatten, wollten wir die Waffeln auch einmal probieren. Die Waffel war nichts besonderes - weder gut noch schlecht. Das “and more” bezieht sich wohl nur auf einige kalte und warme Getränke, sowie Desserts im Glas auf der Basis von Früchten, Joghurt und Kuchenteig. Die Einrichtung ist, abgesehen von der Spielecke für Kinder, insgesamt recht karg und unpersönlich. Derzeit ist noch keine Kartenzahlung möglich, aber die Kellnerin versprach, dass das ein nächster Zeit eingerichtet würde.”
Hey @drtomford ! Welcome to Connect!
Don’t quit too quickly! As many long term Local Guides can attest to, it’s better to ‘fight’ the system by giving feedback to the Local Guides/Google Maps teams and guide them on how to balance blocking of reviews. As @ErmesT and @WilfriedB have mentioned, it can be an ‘err on the side of caution’ by Google to hide a review if a complaint is made by the business and only reinstating it if it’s contested by the author and proven to be a valid review.
Anyway, let us know if things change for your reviews. Every shared experience here on Connect can help the community to better navigate this situation. Thanks!