Hi, I am a reviewer/Local Guide. I posted an honest one-star review about my GP surgery. The person named in the review has left me two voice messages about it so I know it was public and that they read it. One week later, this review and my other reviews (4 in total, all were public: I checked) have disappeared. They are only visible to me, when logged in. Question: is it likely my profile has been reported by the person named - is this what happens when a business reports a user?
I have read all of the Support pages about violations of Google review policies and formatting of reviews etc, and I cannot find anything in my review that would constitute an issue. I can paste the review here if anyone is interested enough to check it for me.
My other (two 5-star & one 1-star) reviews that have disappeared from public visibility are important to me and I am extremely annoyed that they are no longer public.
I believe it may have been unfairly reported by the person named in the review, or flagged lots of times by the business. How do I find out if my profile was reported? Is this even a possibility?
(Also, I had posted an original review of the surgery under my main Google profile (I have two active Local Guide profiles): that was also public but disappeared from visibility as well after the first voicemail from the disgruntled person. I’m now struggling to post anything public with my main profile, and my reviews on this profile have disappeared. Is it possible that this business is continually reporting me and that’s why I’m having these problems?).
A review should not be used for a personal rant, or to solve a dispute with a business, just to give you an example.
However, looking to your account, it seems you never contributed, or perhaps you deleted your contributions, as the total number of contributions (this is a public number) is equal to zero.
Maybe you did it with another account (you said you have two local guides account). In this case I would like to remind you that this is against the Local Guides Program Terms and Conditions : “Contributions to Google Maps must originate from a single Google account to count towards benefits and cannot be transferred between owned accounts*.*”
So please close one of the accounts now, as this can end in a removal from the program on both the accounts
Thanks for your reply. Yes, I have read the Google’s Review Policies and my review was not a rant or a dispute. It was a review about a surgery that lost my medical results causing weeks of anxiety, has very long waiting times and other serious customer care issues.
I can confirm that I contributed 4 times and did not delete the contributions, this is my whole point - they are visible to me when I log in, but they are no longer public.
Anyway, thanks for telling me about the single Google account policy, I must’ve missed that. I will delete this account and try to persevere with the original one.
However I’m no clearer on why my four reviews became visible only to myself, unless it’s because of the two accounts thing.
The fact that users aren’t ever notified by Google of any breaches/reports/flags to reviews makes it a flawed and extremely frustrating programme to use.
I may agree with you about the frustration of not being notified (I have some private reviews too) @Wendy29 , however when we subscribed to the program we confirmed that “we read and accepted” the rules.
In any case I believe the reviews are not associated to the account you are using here, as they aren’t visible on the counts of contributions, that appear to be zero on this profile
Just jumping in here as I note you said that you have two active Local Guide profiles!!! Please note that having more than one account as a Local Guide is against the program rules and I strongly recommend that you immediately exit from the Local Guide program with one of them. You can do it from the Opt-out-page.
That business is suspicious, as they have a long list of apparently fake positive reviews.
Making your review visible again is indeed possible, by modifying and republishing it, as you can read here below
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."
So please try to edit your reviews to make them public again
Hi Ermest, thanks for that. My reviews don’t seem to contain any elements that contravene Google’s criteria. There are no phone numbers, URLs or anything. The business I suspected of flagging and reporting me is this one. I’m guessing no one knows what happens if a business reports your profile?? (FYI I was only a Local Guide on this account for a couple of hours: I just did it to post on this forum). Thank you I appreciate your replies!
NB It’s just so disappointing that Google say that I’m in “public view - this is what your profile looks like to others” and in reality no one can see the reviews! Why on earth not tell users why their reviews are invisible? To me this is just an awful application and one I am very close to completely abandoning.
Thanks Ermest - I will keep editing it and maybe one time it will stick! Glad to hear it’s been escalated.
I’ll assume that the business has not reported my profile, although I do find it weird that no one seems to know what happens when a profile is reported… it’s all quite mysterious. Maybe nothing happens.
I’ll read your links above and keep editing. Thank you for your help today!
