Making reviews private

Google Maps tips & tricks
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Good morning afternoon or evening @ErmesT talked about a previous article about being shadow banned from google maps reviews (https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/Why-are-reviews-being-shadow-banned/td-p/2688736)

I was looking for transparency on this practice of making reviews private since I am being systematically targeted for reviews deactivation from a rival corporation / hackers / competition. Thanks for reading this -

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Thanks for tagging me, @BobRocks , even if this post is about presenting the Google Moderators, and I am just a Local Guide.

There is something unclear in your post: “I am being systematically targeted for reviews deactivation from a rival corporation / hackers / competition”

As far as I can see, 7 of your reviews are not visible, on a total amount of 67. This can be due to

In my persolal case, I had 9 not visible reviews. I fixed a few of them by myself (by editing the review) and reported the issue on the “Known Issue” post. Now all my review are back.

However, I am curious about your sentence highlighted in my reply as you want to identify some specific reason:

  • Rival corporation - Are you reviewing the listing of some competitors, or some listing related to your own business? If so, making the review “private” is the correct thing to do (conflict of interest)
  • Hackers - As I said, a review can be made private by an algorithm (filter) or because reported. Do you think someone is hacking the Google Maps server and databases to flag as private nine of your reviews? Why?
  • Competition - Can you please explain?

Have you tried to fix your Issue, as indicated in Flag and fix inappropriate content ?

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Hi @BobRocks and welcome to Connect.

As @ErmesT mentioned, please can you try to be more clear about your question. Please try to explain it as detailed as possible.

Also, I would like to let you know that I separated your post from the previous one. Bear in mind that it is always better to post questions like this one in a separate posts.

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Thanks @Ivi_Ge and @ErmesT thanks for your reply I was wondering where you found which of my posts were filtered. Also I wanted to get more information on possible solutions I could complete. As to your final question there is a business owner who is not competition but the business owner targets my posts because they generally are a evil person. Thanks for any information you can provide I would like to get all the ins and out so I can full under and the best practices when posting as my personal and my new business account. Many thanks in advance.

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Thanks for the Feedback, @BobRocks

First of all I hope you are safe, as I see a snow alert in your area.

Regarding your issue, we don’t know which of your reviews are private (The provate profile is accessible only to you). What we know is that there is a difference between the amount of reviews posted and the amount of reviews that are public, as you can see from the screenshot here below

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You can compare them easily on desktop by opening two sessions in google Maps, and switching one of them to “public”

From the Contribute tab, click on Profile settings then, in the pop-up window, click on VIEW YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE.

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In any case it is quite difficult that a review is hidden only because reported. Every reported review will be checked first, and made private only if not adhering with the policies.

Most probably your reviews are hidden because there is an issue in maps with reviews. Please drop a note :arrow_right: here :arrow_left: for the team to check your profile.

Regarding your last sentence " best practices when posting as my personal and my new business account" I would like to remind you that, according to the Local Guides Program Terms and Conditions : “Organizations, brands, and businesses are not eligible for the Program.” and “Contributions to Google Maps must originate from a single Google account to count towards benefits and cannot be transferred between owned accounts”

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Hey @ErmesT I know you don’t work for google but this process seems to be the most opaque anti-small business / ant-competitoin that I have ever seen in a larger almost monopoly that is Alphabet / Google. Do you know where I can contact someone in google legal @Ivi_Ge this practice seem Ani completion and Monolopistic and almost plain illegal being google / google maps such a large and know public entity. I really feel if this practice was know publicly it would not fair very well in court.

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Since you admit to being a business @BobRocks therefore ineligible for the Local Guides program I recommend you take your business queries to https://business.google.com/ and as for your queries about how Maps works I recommend the Maps Support Community https://support.google.com/maps/community and should you wish to take on Google legally perhaps you might be interested in https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/6151275

Please have a great day.

Paul

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Thanks Paul! As it turns out I have two account each for very specific purposes one for personal and one for business only. These two accounts are mutually exclusive and from my point of view the policy that google has for either is very incorrect. Just waiting for them to go the way of yahoo all tech giants fall under there own weight. Cashed by the folly of the belief that the people (users) that use their services are their servants but actually they are the masters.