In the last 24 hours, automated processes have removed around 30 of my reviews. Some were up there for a very long time, no removal was requested by the owner, it’s just automated. These were good, genuine and honest reviews. Some with photos. None of them was against any guidelines or rules. And it’s not only me, my wife and my father also get their reviews removed. Is someone else here experiencing this too? It started around 24h ago and the removal emails keep coming. To me it looks like some automated moderation process was changed and now it’s going crazy.
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@grassi2000 Sorry you’re going through this. Losing reviews feels frustrating, you put time & effort into them. 
Have you checked if the reviews possibly violated any of Google’s policies (like duplicate content, promotional wording, or maybe too-frequent posting)? Sometimes reviews are taken down automatically.
If you believe it was a mistake, you might try appealing through Google Maps Help, explaining clearly that the reviews were honest and policy-compliant. Hope you get them restored soon!
The AI designed to check out reviews is constantly being refined to detect spam. And it not only runs when we post a new review, but it also regularly scans them. This might explain why a bunch of your reviews were taken down.
I don’t see a drop in my reviews.
In this post I shared a 17-point checklist you might want to take a look at.
Currently 41 of your 441 reviews are taken down.
Please share the wording of one of the emails you got, as there is often a hint as to why this is happening.
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No violation on any of these. Some of them are up there for years. And it just started yesterday. 30 reviews in one day is crazy. Appealing is doing nothing. An automated process is removing the reviews and the appeal goes to an automated process too. I don’t want to run in circles for nothing. This will probably lead my to stop contributing at all, same goes for my wife and father.
Had a look on the checklist, my review are fine. No reason for deleting them. Maybe that’s a German problem.
The text is this:
Hintergrund
Vielen Dank für deinen Beitrag! Diesen können wir derzeit leider nicht veröffentlichen. Dieser Inhalt wurde von unseren automatisierten Moderationssystemen entfernt, da es darin möglicherweise Verstöße gegen die Maps-Inhaltsrichtlinien gibt. Diese Richtlinien tragen dazu bei, dass Maps für alle Nutzer sicher und zuverlässig bleibt. In diesem Fall gibt es offenbar Konflikte mit der Richtlinie über gefälschte Interaktionen. Laut dieser sind Inhalte und Verhaltensweisen unzulässig, die Einfluss auf die Bewertung eines Orts nehmen, sich nicht auf tatsächliche Erlebnisse beziehen oder für deren Veröffentlichung eine Gegenleistung angeboten wird.
Then I suggest you use this form
Then wait at least 3 weeks to see if they get released. If not, an operator has found that your reviews are not in compliance.
Please note that the violation(s) might not be in the review texts but some other actions you have taken on Maps.
Fingers crossed.
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Hello @grassi2000, I don’t think it “the German problem”, because the text of the notification is different and the word defamation (“Diffamierung” or “Verleumdung”) is not mentioned, like others including myself did report before. The text, you quoted, is rather generic and doesn’t say anything specific.
Nevertheless you might want to read this thread: Two years later my honest review got me a defamation strike?! - #7 by ErmesT anyway.
Anyway, in addition to @MortenCopenhagen’s tips, one more (I believe more important) suggestion:
If photos or videos are attached and only one is rejected by the filter, the entire review including all other attached media will be hidden to the public. So, the reason for a rejected might not be found in the text, but one photo or video was (possible falsely) tagged by filter.
I never experienced a review being rejected after a long time (unless the place was deleted), but it did happen several times for photos posted directly to the listing. In those cases, an appeal did help for me.
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Thanks for the link, but I’ll probably just let it be and stop contributing at all. Being a local guide has become more and more frustrating over the years. And what is happening now, is just the last nail in the coffin for me. You never get answers from anyone at Google, you never get reasons for anything. And the sentence “we will not be able to share the results with you” in the form just describes that perfectly. Maybe my review will be reinstated, maybe not and I’ll never know why. How should anyone work with something like that. I’m contributing for years, I’m literally working for Google for free, and that’s what I get? They literally tell me “You have to improve, but we won’t tell you how”. I won’t play this stupid game anymore.
But thank you for the help, I really love the Local Guides community, the problem sits in Mountain View, not here.
3 Likes
Like I said, they removed over 30 of my reviews in the last 24 hours. My wife had 20 of her removed, my father around 15. Thats 65 reviews in 24 hours. Something changed on Googles side and that change was probably wrong. I checked multiple reviews and there was nothing wrong with any of them. Every single one was genuine, honest and perfectly fine. And there was no obvious similarities between the reviews, it’s just random. Long, short, with or without photos, old and new.
1 Like
Update for everyone: As expected, I never heard back from Google. But after analysing which reviews were delete for my wife and me, we found the reason. Google only deleted reviews for places we both rated. We use our real, full name on Google Maps and we share the same last name. It seems like Google changed something on their side and suddenly rated reviews from user with name similarities as suspicious. That’s a strange change, because name similarities are usual, but that’s what it is obviously.
It would really help to get this information from Google, but at least I know what happened now.