I noticed several of my recent reviews have had photos deleted after posting. These deleted photos were all unique, meet the content policies, and were my own photos taken the day of the review at the location, so timely and not copyrighted. I received no notice that photos were being flagged as inappropriate or any other communication. The photos simply are gone from the reviews.
For feedback, I do not recall ever receiving any email notification from Google that any of my reviews were in violation of policy or seen any that have been flagged. I am currently a level 8 reviewer, so have many reviews posted. It also seems a little strange when I view my profile, it notes I have no reviews made yet, but I do have photos included along with edits and answers.
This happened just a couple of days ago when I reviewed Hudsonville Nature Center in Michigan, when 15-20 images were removed, leaving only one. This also recently happened for reviews of the Grand Rapids restaurants High Tea along with Brown Butter.
Any insights about why the photos would be deleted?
Hello Bill, @BillCleveland, I am Erna from Detroit Michigan. I was reading your post and it makes me curious about your question too. Let see maybe our friend @MortenCopenhagen will be able to enlighten us
Do you mean that the review appears publicly but the photos are not?
Can you share a screenshot of the review in your public profile and the review in the Listing to better understand the issue?
I am asking because recently we had an issue about the visibility of the photos attached to the reviews: Photos under reviews are again missing
Is your situation similar to the one mentioned above?
@ErmesT
Yes, the recent reviews go public but photos not. It seems that the same problem appears again, just like last month
All photos under new posts are missing again.
Not only me, I checked all the reviews under some famous spots like British Museum and found that the all pictures under newly posted reviews during last 4 hours were missing. I also checked my active friends, and their pictures under recent posts were missing too.
It seems that this is a global and general problem again.
I read through the materials. While my reviews sometimes lack extremely specific details, they generally follow a pattern of providing some details about my experience along with pointing out what I did/didn’t like and why. I am typically careful about criticism to provide management opportunities to fix problems and not throwing anyone under the bus. I do typically write a single paragraph that adds up a long review, so I’ll break this up in the future.
Is there any way to see any of the 187 (Only 341 of your 528) reviews that are NOT currently public to fix them?
How can you know when a review is not being shown?
Of omitted photos for both Brown Butter and High Tea restaurants include images of their menu and of the food as served. I take great care not to include people in the photos, especially not faces that could be identified. None of the reviews or photos contain anything about sex, violence, etc. While both of these reviews were long paragraphs, they did provide specific details about my experience, with High Tea being particularly detailed.
I did have a case 3 months ago when I posted the same content for both Walgreens and the Walgreens Pharmacy located inside, both screen shots below. The address for these is 1601 Kalamazoo Ave SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49507 and I don’t know if this link will help. Some of my photos are on the Walgreens review but none appear on the Walgreens Pharmacy review. I don’t know if that would create a problem for my account to get penalized into the future. And I see these, but I don’t know if they are publicly viewable. I have not repeated this kind of duplication since I saw that the 2nd review did not include the photos.
Honestly, who knows at this point… Your characterization is correct: it’s pervasive issue on the platform, which has been occurring for years unfortunately with no resolution.
Thanks Ermes T.
What I mean is when I post the review from my iPhone, the review has between 15-50 photos/videos attached to it and the point tally that shows when the review includes all the images, often around 200+ points.
When the review initially posts, it has all the photos attached to it, with the +## showing upwards of 40+ additional images that can be browsed on the review. All of these are unique images taken at the business with the review typically posted the same day, some are videos, none seem to violate guidelines, and very few have images of anyone in them and in those cases, usually not faces of people.
Then, when I go look at the review later, the number of photos shown on the review is 1-4 or so and the point total has only changed by about 25 points rather than the 200+.
I’ve put several reviews in the first reply to Morten, which is the first comment on this thread. These include links to the reviews plus some screen shots.
You can see here on my profile 2 recent reviews. The first of these 2 had 15-20 images including photos and videos from a 2+ mile hike in the Hudsonville Nature Center. The second of these had about 50 images of different animals, park signage, and other displays from the Boulder Ridge Wild Animal Park. Now, only 1 or 2 appear.
They can be found in your review contribution list in Maps while logged into your account. To identify which are hidden please compare the list with the list seen from a friend’s phone or your computer while not logged in. Those that show only while logged in are the hidden ones.
If the problem started when you uploaded the same photos to two places this might be the problem. Have you deleted the duplicate copies? If not, please clean out all duplicate photos.
When did you posted them?
I am asking because you said that you also added videos. The check of the videos may takes time, and the whole review+media attached is becoming visible only when the whole content is checked.
If you posted it more than two days ago please fill the form suggested by Morten.
However before to appeal please delete one of the two identical reviews
This is in fact a violation of the policies, and for sure can be something that triggered the filter.
A user who posts duplicate content across locations can be indeed blocked
Thanks so much Ermes T. I have posted many reviews since the mid-July UPS Store that you found. Some of these had videos and others did not. The one I noted that you asked about was posted on Sunday 8/17, so about 2 days ago, for the Hudsonville Nature Center. This review shows only 1 image when I see when I’m logged in as myself.
The duplicate review was deleted.
Thanks so much for your previous help. It’s been 2 weeks since I submitted this form:
about checking on the reviews. I remain at 341 reviews and 4,074 photos showing on the public facing count of reviews with 527 reviews and 6,422 photos on my private.
About how long should it take to get some sort of response or impact on an account after submitting the form?
According to my personal experience, @BillCleveland (yes, Moderators are impacted too) it may takes from 4 up to 6 weeks to have your content checked.
You will not receive a response, but everything that is found to be complaint with the policies will be released
I’ll check back at the end of the month. For compliant items being “released,” does that mean that they will be made public and the number of public reviews versus all that I have posted should be much closer to the same number?
Is is possible to easily check which reviews have not been released to learn from what is not compliant?
Sure! Just open this link Google Maps (your profile in Google Maps) in a web browser in incognito mode, and compare it with your contributions in the App, being logged in, of course.
In this way you will be able to identify your hidden reviews.
An update on this issue with the reviews and photos not posting. The reviews and photos appear to be mostly released. However, I did a review over the weekend of Thai Table restaurant in Grand Rapids, MI that included more than 30 pictures including about a dozen of the menu and only 4 photos appear, none of which are the menu.
A similar problem with a review for VCA Woodland Animal Hospital in Grand Rapids. Of 16 photos posted, only 3 show up on the review. These were all unique photos, so I am at a loss.
It seems like the backlog of reviews have been posted, but only a small fraction of photos on new reviews are being posted despite the photos all being unique.
Is this a situation where I should submit another review form?
