Hi all,
I recently moved to a new city and a string of bad experiences forced me to start leaving Google reviews to help others. All of my reviews have been hidden from Day 1 and don’t alter business ratings even though my reviews show up for me when I’m logged in. (Wow Google, way to keep unfairly suppressed reviewers from complaining to you.) I found out tonight that even though my non-TOS-violating, negative reviews are hidden I’m somehow earning a lot of points because of them and they’re showing thumbs ups. And about a week ago Google started emailing me, praising me for being helpful and saying my rank has increased. Um… how? When my reviews are hidden and don’t affect any business ratings? Reddit would be extremely interested if they knew and I think it’s amazing that Google would go to such lengths to make someone think they’re not being unfairly censored or shadow banned or suppressed when they are. How about not helping bad businesses give the middle finger to their customers or clients instead? Jeez.