My Reviews Are Not Public

For the past 1-2 years, I noticed that whenever I try leaving a review, it does not appear at all to anyone except for me when I am logged into my Gmail account (the same email account that I left the feedback from). However, once I sign out my review disappears. I have asked family members & friends to check for my review but they also confirm that my review is not there.

I’m thinking whether my Gmail account & IP address is blocked or flagged where Google does not allow me to leave any reviews for other people & places. This is ridiculous. I have been trying to get this problem resolved since the beginning of when I first noticed this issue & nobody has helped me. There is no customer service support. No email address. No phone number. I filled out a form online that allows Google to call you & I did have someone call me but that person was not able to assist me either & stated that I have to utilize this form in order to get a response within 24 hours. Even with this method, I don’t think there is going to be a Google representative who is going to assist me with my concerns.

I just want someone to let me know what’s going on & why I can’t leave reviews publicly to be seen by others. That’s all. It’s everyone’s right to be able to leave ratings & reviews based on their experience(s). Everybody is entitled to leave feedback since it is their right. By Google preventing people from doing this is really not the right way to go about doing things. Especially, not for customers who have been utilizing the Google platform for over 2 decades & have purchased Google products in the past.

FYI: Upon checking, I do not have any restrictions on my Google account. Also, I have deleted all of my contributions (ratings & reviews) from Google. All 80+ of my contributions have been deleted manually by me but this did not resolve my issue.

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Hi @Sirin_1

You are correct that there are no personal or individual support provided to users of the free app Google Maps from the company.

Seeking help from fellow and volunteers individuals here on Connect and on the Maps Support Forum are your best bets.

It was a drastic move to remove all of your removable contributions and start over. I’m sorry to read that this did not solve your issue with hidden reviews.

Your case confirms that the trigger might not be in the review text itself.

The spam filter looks at your overall performance and track record as a local guide. So completely unrelated violations can also cause reviews to from you to be blocked temporarily or permanently.

Currently only one of your 3 reviews are public.

If you already used the form called Account Investigation for contributions not visible on Google Maps and waited several weeks (not just 24 hours) and your reviews have not gone public, the sad conclusion is that after a human checked your profile you remain banned from publishing reviews.

There are no further avenues to appeal this.

Sorry
Morten

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Hello @MortenCopenhagen ,

First, I would like to thank you for your detailed & prompt response. I appreciate you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to assist me on this matter.

In response to your reply, it’s a huge disappointment that Google does not provide customer service assistance/support to their customers. I’m a firm believer that every business/company should have a customer service option available for their consumers. I understand that my best bet is to post a discussion thread on here in order to seek help from individuals like yourself but, would you believe me if I told you that I had to post this same discussion thread on a few other places?

Initially, I was informed by a Google phone representative to post my concern on the Google Search Central Help Community. The same phone representative emailed me the direct link to post my concern. I followed his instructions & was later informed by a Diamond Product Expert who replied to my thread that my concern was unfortunately posted in the wrong place. The Diamond Product Expert told me to post my question in the Local Guides or Maps community instead. I then posted that same thread once again but this time in the Maps community platform. I received a few responses from Diamond Product Experts but none with actual answers or resolutions. Just recently, I had another Diamond Product Expert who responded to my thread within the Maps community & suggested for me to post it on Local Guides Connect platform. As you can imagine, I went through several platforms & I feel like this could’ve been avoided if there was an actual customer service support option for consumers.

However, I truly do appreciate the majority of Diamond Product Experts who responded to my threads within those communities because it led me here which I’m assuming is the correct platform that my thread should’ve been posted on to begin with. I am grateful for each & every response that I received to my thread, including yours.

Unfortunately, I made the hard decision to delete all of my contributions because I’ve been dealing with this same issue for a while now & just wanted to get down to the bottom of it. I figured that by me removing all of my contributions to date would’ve resolved the issue but it didn’t. Otherwise, I have no reason to delete any of my contributions at all. I’m sure you can tell that I’m someone who writes detailed & lengthy messages; that’s how my reviews were. I didn’t want to delete something that I actually put my thoughts & time into.

It’s strange that it shows that I have 3 reviews because I did delete ALL of my contributions. I do see that on my end as well but I can assure you that there are no actual ratings or reviews with commentary even though it appears as if I do. Just last night, I actually attempted to leave a review with a star rating only for one of the places that I had left a review for back in 2022 & at first, my review was public but it disappeared a few months later. I left that same place a 1-star rating with no commentary & it seems that my ratings + reviews are now finally public. When you mentioned that one of my three reviews was public, that gave me additional confirmation that my reviews are now public. The problem seems to have been fixed thankfully.

In reference to the form that you mentioned, “Account investigation for contributions not visible on Google Maps”, I actually filled out that form about 2 weeks ago. Sadly, I had to find a link to this form myself by doing my own research & looking up similar threads to mine. I found a link provided by a Diamond Product Expert to another Google user like myself who had the same exact issue. I’m not sure why that same link for the form was never sent to me to begin with but it was strange to see the same Diamond Product Expert providing that link to another user that I had to utilize on my own terms. If the link had been sent to me earlier, I wouldn’t be on different help communities on Google about the same issue.

Luckily, with my own research skills I was able to find the link to the same form that you mentioned & I believe that my problem was resolved shortly after receiving an email response from Google confirming that my account didn’t have any penalties. The subject line of that email is: Update on your Local Guide Appeal. I decided to leave one review shortly after reading that email just to see if my concerns had been addressed & to my surprise, it was!

Your response was wonderful & I wish that I had encountered this platform way before the other communities on Google that I was advised to post my thread on. I wouldn’t have been on my own searching for other ways to see if there was an appeal option which is actually one of the questions that I asked the Diamond Product Expert who then never responded to me after I asked that question. The same individual had provided a link to the appeal form for another user but not to me.

Thank you beyond words for your thorough response & for being extremely helpful, Morten! I hope you have an amazing rest of your day/week!

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One comment, @Sirin_1

You are likely not aware that there are two different forms. The one you got an email response from is the general appeals form. I shared a link to the form related specifically to hidden contributions. That form will not give you an email response.

You may want to wait using that form until (or if) you have a number of hidden contributions.

Morten

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Hi @MortenCopenhagen ,

No, I wasn’t aware of there being multiple forms to appeal but I already had assumed that there are forms to appeal different things here on Google.

I went on the link that you shared in your previous response & those were the same set of questions that I answered when I filled out the appeals form. The title of the form was also the same as the one you shared with me. The email response I received was from a “No Reply” kind of email; similar to those auto generated ones.

However, I have bookmarked the link to the form just in case I need to utilize it in the future. I can also try to assist others (family & friends) who might be having the same issue that I did.

Thank you so much for your help & for educating me as well, Morten.

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