A couple of weeks ago I visited a restaurant and had a bad experience. As a result I left them a 1* review. However, I have had many emails from Google stating that my review has been removed or not published as it:
“Our moderation systems and processes identified that it contains content that is considered Spam or Fake. It’s also possible that your contribution violated other policies.”
I have made countless reviews in the past and never had a single other review removed. My review is fair and genuine, and doesn’t break any rules, so I don’t understand why my review is being removed repeatedly. Is there an appeal process I can go through to get this rectified? I don’t think it’s fair that my genuine review of a business is being removed.
the “moderation system” is an algorithm, checking the respect of Google review policies by checking keywords (like a price, a website, or a word that can be considered not respectful). A small change sometimes may help, if you are able to identify what is triggering the filter
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."
Thanks for your reply. I was made aware of that the first time this review got taken down. I have re-read it, tweaked, and re-publushed it maybe 8 times, and there is nothing that would suggest any of the content breaks any rules in the slightest. My review of the business has been removed every single time, each time I have slightly tweaked the content just in case (although I believe there was nothing to break the rules the first time) just for that to get removed too. I have made hundreds of reviews on Google previously and had never a review removed, but this one gets removed every single time.
My latest “review” of the place literally has no text, just a star rating, yet that got removed too…
I don’t believe it is just an algorithm which removes reviews, yet the business flagging my review for “spam” when it does not contain any.
I am glad to see that @ErmesT already provided assistance. I just wanted to let you know that I moved your post in the relevant section of the forum, the How-tos, which is the most appropriate board for this kind of content. More information on Connect’s labels is available here.
Regarding your issue, we will verify internally as soon as possible. Thanks.