Mass-removal of my reviews

Google Maps tips & tricks
1

Hi everyone.

I recently noticed that most of my reviews were taken offline. They are now supplied with a little red tag that says “Not published”. A link under the tag informs me that this could be due to “policy violations”. However, nothing in the reviews is harsh, untruthful, or in violation of guidelines. Most of them are 4 or 5 star reviews with positive experiences. I have read the guidelines very carefully many times now and nothing in my reviews have violated the terms. There is no clear explanation, other than a technical perhaps. I mostly write in my local language, Danish, and perhaps something has created false flags for an automated algorithm? I can’t think of anything else, honestly.

I am not sure when this happened, but even 5 star reviews from years ago have seemingly been “unpublished”.

I am a Level 9 Local Guide and I take pride in the content I post. It’s over 250 reviews and many years of work that’s “gone dark”. To be honest, it feels extremely dissatisfying and distressing to discover this, and then having no obvious way to correct it.

As a test, I clicked the button for the appeals process on some of the reviews. The appeals were all approved when human eyes looked through things.

I tried reaching out to official Google Support. They directed me to fill out a “Local Guides appeals” form, even though my account itself is in good standing. I got no receipt for submitting the form, but days later I got a reply telling me there was “no issue” with my account. No case number, no reply option, no sender name. In fact, I could not tell if it was sent by a person who actually looked at my case. The reply did not address the actual issue, and gave me no information on how to proceed, except encourage me to go to Connect and get help from other Local Guides. I am not sure how other Local Guides can help, but I hope you will share your experience and thoughts anyway.

As it stands I have over 250 reviews offline. I have no idea what the reason is, I never received notification about it, and there is seemingly nobody I can approach for help. My new reviews are flagged for manual review and are no longer published immediately. I assume I have been “Flagged” as a bad Local Guide because I have so many reviews “in violation of terms”.

What should I do? Do I need to click 750+ times to manually start the appeals process, and “hope for the best”? Would doing so actually fix the problem, or would I just see this happen again? Does anybody know how this happened, and how to fix it?

Your thoughts on this matter are highly appreciated.

Thanks.

(Tagging: @MashaPS, @InaS, @DeniGu, @Ivi_Ge)

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Here is an example of a recent review that can’t be published at all. It is flagged as violating the content policy, but I can’t see what the problem is.

The review is a 4-star review of a restaurant in Copenhagen:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ristorante+Nino+e+Franco/@55.6930743,12.5630611,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m12!1m5!8m4!1e1!2s109043284268095945306!3m1!1e1!3m5!1s0x46525301cffefdb1:0x44fcff78e9e0f5e6!8m2!3d55.6930713!4d12.565636!16s%2Fg%2F1td_x642?entry=ttu

Here is the review text in English (by Google Translate):

Nice experience, authentic and tasty. The presentation is a bit like in the 80s: without a great sense of the visual, with just a leaf of lettuce or a sprig of herbs as decoration. But fortunately the taste is good, so that compensates a lot.

The acoustics are not good when there are many guests. Best to visit during the off-peak hours.

It is rumored that the place will unfortunately close soon, so there isn’t much time left to make a visit. Quality and price go together well, so it can definitely be recommended.

Original text in Danish:

Dejlig oplevelse, autentisk og velsmagende. Præsentationen er lidt som i 80’erne: uden den store sans for det visuelle, med lige et blad salat eller en kvist urter som pynt. Men heldigvis er smagen god, så det kompenserer jo godt.

Akustikken er ikke god når der er mange gæster. Besøg gerne på ydertidspunkterne.

Det forlyder at stedet desværre lukker snart, så der er næppe lang tid tilbage til at nå et besøg. Kvalitet og pris hænger fint sammen, så det kan bestemt anbefales.

After reading Googles policies and terms 4-5 times I am still unable to identify the problem.

Other reviews I have posted can be appealed, and all of those appeals have been accepted. This particular review can not be appealed, for reasons unknown.

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I do absolutely relate to this post too. I am not level 9 but 8. And I started receivong emails about some of my reviews going unpublished doe to content violation.

Nevertheless here is an example in of my Spanish review that was consideres abusive and not sure why

“Las comidas son caseras, solo hemos probado el garvure y el mousse de chocolate. Bastante bueno ambos.
El garvure es una sopa regional. Pedir una ración da para dos platos y medio, lo que resulta mucha comida si no acostumbras a comer contundentemente. Es contundente, en España lo definiríamos más como un cocido.
El mousse muy recomendable, no he probado nada más. Quiero decir, no nos hemos hospedado ahí.

Recomiendo este punto en calidad de restaurante únicamente.

Estoy poniendo la reseña 5 estrellas porque es muy bueno para ser albergue. Hay otras reseñas donde hablan de un perro en el comedor, de como sirven los cubiertos cogiendo desde la parte que se come y que está todo lleno de moscas y arañas. Pero hay que entender que es una zona rural, en la calle hay miles de moscas voladoras así que es normal que hayan en el comedor también“

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Hej @SplatMan_DK

Det ser ud til at du har brugt den forkerte formular. Prøv denne:

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. Keep in mind, it takes several weeks for the check to be done, and you will not be notified about the result, so I suggest you check the status of your reviews once a week or so.

Bedste hilsner
Morten

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Thanks @MortenCopenhagen , that’s very valuable advice. I received the original link from Google Support, but your link seems much more valuable. Thank you so much!

(Tusind tak; svar på Engelsk så alle kan få glæde af det)

:slightly_smiling_face:

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So, here is a follow-up post, about half a year from the original post.

Status: After submitting several forms, and following advice from other posters here, I am still getting nowhere. I generally spend A LOT of time making quality reviews when I visit places, essentially providing free content for Google. In return my posts are randomly flagged for takedown with absolutely no valid reason - it must be a bonkers-broken AI or something, else flagging the reviews. Or my local language is poorly implemented and triggers false positives.

As feared, it is impossible to reach anyone at Google. The entire company is hyper-optimized to remove all “expensive human contact”, so naturally there is nobody you can actually reach. Tagging admins here has no effect. Submitting various forms has had no effect.

My next step is now to make a manual appeal for each removed post. And for the ones where even the appeal has been denied, I will edit a few bytes and re-send it. Since the UI is not designed for that, it is a HORRIBLE experience to go through this. For every single edited review I am returned to the top of my review list, having to scroll through everything again. Opening things in new tabs doesn’t work. As I have several hundred reviews that are incorrectly removed, it will take me literally weeks to go through all of them this way.

It is embarrassing to ask people to work for you for free, and then make it totally impossible for them to reach out to you, when you trample on them.

I have been a Local Guide since the very beginning. Being treated like this is extremely disheartening.

@MashaPS, @InaS, @DeniGu, @Ivi_Ge)

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Statusopdatering her et lille halvt års tid senere: Der sker ikke en dyt, og jeg er løbet tør for ting at prøve… andet end at gennemgå flere hundrede anmeldelser manuelt i en UI der overhovedet ikke er bygget til det.

Det efterlader en bitter smag i munden, at ens gratis arbejde til Google gennem så mange år bliver mædt med så ringe respekt og service.

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Once more I totally validate your points since I went through the same. Bad thing, dough, is to edit some bytes from the review and getting it flagged once more. I do not have as many reviews as you do but my fight is equally hard (steps). I was lucky just ONCE where I could appeal a review and a human determined my review wss OK and the AI bot failed applying the terms and conditions. All other of my reviews do not have this option and there is no way for me to make them live again

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Been having the same issue for more than 3 months now, it is getting very annoyong, my reviews photos and videos are flagged with no reason. reported this twice,

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