My reviews appear in Google’s emails but are invisible to other users

AlexandraPatuano · July 21, 2026, 5:31pm

Hello,

I am a Google Local Guide and I am experiencing a very confusing issue with my reviews.

Recently, some of my reviews appear as published in my own Google Maps profile. Google even includes these reviews in my weekly “Local Guides in Review” emails as recent contributions.

However, when I check the same places from another Google account or without signing in, the reviews are completely invisible.

One of these reviews was also rejected after an appeal, but Google still shows it in my profile and in my weekly contribution email.

Because of this, I don’t understand the current status of my reviews.

Could someone please explain:

Are these reviews under limited visibility?
Is there a problem with my Local Guide account?
Is there any way to have my account reviewed?

I can provide screenshots showing:

the review visible in my profile,
the review missing for other users,
Google’s weekly email showing the same review as one of my contributions.

Thank you very much for your help.

MortenCopenhagen · July 21, 2026, 5:42pm

Reviews (and photos) only visible to you have been taken down from public view by the AI spamfilters. It is likely because they somehow violate the guidelines from Google.

WilfriedB · July 21, 2026, 6:10pm

Hello @AlexandraPatuano welcome to the Local Guides Connect community!

There is a difference between “contributed” and “published”. Not all our contributions (reviews, photos and videos) are published, as you did realize. All contributions are checked by an AI filter and if either some rules are not obeyed or the filter detects contents suspicious for SPAM, it they are not published but stay hidden.

Unfortunately, Google does this without notification in most cases. Only for reviews, photos or videos related to places with the EU, we see an exclamation mark under My Contributions.

You can easily verify, how many hidden contributions you have by opening your profile while being logged in with a different Google profile and click on your Avatar:

In my screenshot the number 260 marked in red on the left, is the number of photos and videos others can see, whereas the 251 photos and 21 videos is what you actually contributed. Thus 12 of your photos or videos are currently hidden.

Likewise we can see, you contributed 70 reviews, but only 69 are public. If there photos or videos attached to your review and only one of them is rejected by the filter, the entire review and all other media attached to it will be hidden. For your hidden review, as a first step, I suggest to remove all attached media and check, whether the text-only review is accepted. If not, the filter did reject some words of your review.

If text-only is accepted you can either try to attach your photos, but only one by one, checking each time, if it is hidden or not. Or you can upload the media directly to the place.

I suggest to read @MortenCopenhagen’s series of articles How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main post

WilfriedB · July 21, 2026, 6:14pm

Unfortunately, Google will never tell us @AlexandraPatuano. Very likely because they don’t want to reveal details to professional spammers.

doni_hariadi · July 22, 2026, 1:27am

Hi @AlexandraPatuano
selamat datang di Local Guides Connect.

apa yang sudah di infokan oleh @MortenCopenhagen dan @WilfriedB sudah benar.

saran saya ketika sudah mengulas, jika anda memasukkan foto/video dalam ulasan, setelah mendapatkan point tunggu beberapa saat. kemudian anda bisa mengecek dari akun/profile lain (atau mode samaran) apakah ulasan anda sudah terlihat? jika sudah bearti ulasan anda tampil ke publik.

jika tidak terlihat, biasanya ada keterangan ulasan tidak tersedia, berarti ulasan tersebut kena filter spam. yang harus di lakukan dengan mengeditnya, jadi biasanya saya menghapus dulu foto/video dalam ulasan tersebut (hanya ulasan saja). jika sudah bisa kembali di cek, apakah ulasan tersebut sudah muncul.

silahkan di coba dulu, semoga membantu.

salam hangat,

MortenCopenhagen · July 22, 2026, 2:48pm

Today, I got this in the weekly praise email:

Going to the place on Maps

I now see this:

Earlier today my review was not even shown at all. Now it is listed as pending.

Why would the AI creating the weekly praise emails pick a non-public review to feature in a praise email?

@AngieYC, I think this should be escalated..

MortenCopenhagen · July 22, 2026, 10:09pm

Now, another 7 hours later my review is no longer pending after I fixed the typo.

AlexandraPatuano · July 22, 2026, 10:48pm

Terima kasih atas sarannya.

Saya sudah mencoba melakukan hal tersebut pada ulasan terakhir saya tentang Lorenzo. Saya menghapus semua foto dan video, sehingga hanya teks ulasannya yang tersisa.

Namun, setelah dua hari, ulasan tersebut masih belum terlihat dari akun Google lain maupun dalam mode penyamaran (incognito).

Jadi, sepertinya masalahnya bukan pada foto atau video yang saya lampirkan.

Apakah ini berarti teks ulasannya yang difilter, atau akun saya sedang dikenai penyaringan spam otomatis yang lebih ketat?

Terima kasih banyak atas bantuannya.

doni_hariadi · July 23, 2026, 12:44am

Apakah bisa kirim link ulasanmu disini?
Dan screenshot ulasan nya dari profile mu.
Jadi kami semua coba mengeceknya.

AlexandraPatuano · July 23, 2026, 8:28am

Terima kasih. Saya harap Anda dapat menemukan halaman saya.

Yang menarik, ulasan terakhir saya tentang klub golf juga sempat lama tidak muncul. Namun akhirnya ulasan tersebut tampil dan sekarang semuanya terlihat normal.

Mungkin hal yang sama akan terjadi dengan ulasan saya untuk Ristorante Lorenzo? Menurut Anda, apakah saya sebaiknya menunggu sedikit lebih lama?

doni_hariadi · July 23, 2026, 9:12am

ulasanmu sudah muncul @AlexandraPatuano , berikut tangkapan layarnya dan saya juga memberikan like kepada ulasan tersebut.

berikut ini link nya.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKqNNfbKa7bCSWxw7

AlexandraPatuano · July 23, 2026, 9:22am

I’m happy ! Finally

Thank you for your support!

doni_hariadi · July 23, 2026, 9:23am

sama-sama…

tetep semangat dalam berkontribusi,

salam hangat,

AlexandraPatuano · August 10, 2026, 11:11am

Dear all

Update: The same issue has now happened again with another completely unrelated place, Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud.

I removed ALL photos and videos and left only the written review.

The review is no longer marked as “Pending” and appears normally as published when I view it from my own account.

However:

• it is not visible from another Google account;
• it is not visible publicly;
• my total review count has not increased.

This is now happening repeatedly with different businesses and even with text-only reviews.

Could a Google Moderator please check whether my account’s new reviews are being systematically filtered? At this point it does not seem to be related to individual photos or a specific business.

Thank you

AlexandraPatuano · August 11, 2026, 5:05pm

Dear Morten !

Could you please help me!

Update: The same issue has now happened again with another completely unrelated place, Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud.

I removed ALL photos and videos and left only the written review.

The review is no longer marked as “Pending” and appears normally as published when I view it from my own account.

However:

• it is not visible from another Google account;
• it is not visible publicly;
• my total review count has not increased.

This is now happening repeatedly with different businesses and even with text-only reviews.

Could a Google Moderator please check whether my account’s new reviews are being systematically filtered? At this point it does not seem to be related to individual photos or a specific business.

MortenCopenhagen · August 11, 2026, 6:21pm

Currently there are long delays in getting our contribution stats updated. So I would recommend we do not draw any conclusions until that issue is fixed.

AlexandraPatuano · August 11, 2026, 9:29pm

Thank you, Morten. I understand about the delay in the contribution statistics.
But my main concern is not the number of reviews. The Patrick Guilbaud review appears as published in my account, but it is still completely invisible when I check the restaurant from another Google account. I removed all photos and videos, so now it is text only.
Is this also possibly related to the current delay?

MortenCopenhagen · August 12, 2026, 12:07am

As you phased it, it is how Google designed it. We don’t get any notification when the spam filters take down a review. We need to do some ridiculous detective work to figure it out ourselves. We need to know that EU regulations require platforms to inform consumers and grant us an option to appeal.

This has resulted in some new transparency. In our list if reviews the word Pending started showing up before a review goes public.

And honestly, I don’t know if this the case in outside the EU. Please let me know.

For Photos we get the !-mark in a triangle that indicate which photos are currently publicly invisible. Such photos are also greyed out.

WilfriedB · August 12, 2026, 8:24am

@MortenCopenhagen in this context, “EU” is not the exact term. In reality the “Digital Markets Act (DMA) und Digital Services Act (DSA)” applies to the “European Economic Area” which includes some more countries (e.g. Norway) and - if I understand correctly - even the UK and Switzerland.