I wish to know if any other local guides have had the experience of posted reviews disappearing?
This has happened to me on a large number of occasions.
For instance I visited Lanzarote roughly a year ago and posted at least 20, detailed reviews of bars, cafes and restaurants but they no longer appear under reviews.
On two occasions I have had reviews not posted as they were apparently in breach of Google policy but this does not explain the missing reviews of Lanzarote (and more!).
I look forward to replies from the Local Guide Community.
It means that the 20+ reviews mentioned by you disappeared because the places were removed from Google Maps. When a place is removed as “not existent” all the associated contents are removed too.
However it sounds weird that so many places were all removed. Can you tell us a bit more about them? What kind of locations you reviewed?
Thanks for your reply.
All of the places still exist and still have other guide’s reviews posted.
This has been happening frequently - other instances of reviews disappearing include:
A weekend in Newcastle, a weekend in London (both in 2022) and 2 weekends in the Lake District and holidays in Cyprus and Sicily!
Not only that but some of my reviews of pubs in Edinburgh disappear and the pubs most definitely are not permanently closed.
Before I posted my query on Local Guides Connect I looked on line and it seems that it seems like disappearing reviews are not uncommon. All the info is from the point of view of businesses however. But this just seems like the other side of the coin - if a review disappears from a business then it is a review that will have been posted by and individual.
The places in Lanzarote are bars, cafés and restaurants.
I’ve attached a few screen dumps of my timeline showing some of the locations.
The queries online are about reviews made private by Google. There are several conversations in Connect too about this topic.
A review is made private when do not adhere to the policies. When a review is private it can be seen only by you. As I told you already, you have 3 only private reviews on your profile.
A review disappear from the account only in some very specific condition:
Temporarily, when Maps is performing a merge of two locations.
Permanently, when a place is removed from Google Maps. It may happen when a place is duplicate and someone suggested to remove it instead of merging the duplicate.
The timeline is showing that a place with such name was there when you visited it.
Can you kindly tap on the three dots near the place on the timeline to visit the place on Maps.
Another possible reason can be the use of a different account when you wrote the reviews.
I am not sure what you mean when you say you have to contradict me. What exactly do you mean?
Can you please tell me how I view the 3 private reviews?
As I said previously, all the places with a missing review are still on Google Maps and have reviews from other guides.
My reviews are always positive and written in a way that I can’t see how they would be in breach of any of the Google policy.
Also, I only have the one account so that is not a possible explanation.
I am aware of one, relatively local place changing its name and that does explain why that one review disappeared but I can’t envisage that is a reason for the many, many of my other reviews disappearing.
As you can imagine it is frustrating that I have spent time creating detailed, positive reviews only for them to disappear.
