Reviews getting rejected and approved appeals not showing

[ZigaD]

Hey everyone!

So let me explain my situation which is a little bit different here and quite a story.

One day like a month or 2 ago I woke up and noticed all of my reviews were unpublished (they were published before). I found out that this new spam checking mechanism started to work on my account and in my country. So out of 1000+ reviews only few remained published. I immediately appealed all of the unpublished reviews (a lot of them). And I changed around 100 reviews from some time ago that only had “Good” or “OK” as a review and changed it to a more “real one” that expressed my genuine experience. All was good but after a few hours I got an email saying I was now restricted from using Google Maps and banned from Local Guides. As I guessed my behaviour (changing so many reviews) triggered an alert so I got banned. After submitting an appeal explaining what happened Google unbanned me without any problems but now the problems have started.

1. I have 300+ approved appeals for reviews but none of them have been republished (only few reviews got rejected others were canceled)

2. As mentioned above all of my remaining appeals have been canceled. Last approved appeal was 21. July, before that most of my appeals were approved in same day or few days so I’m guessing I got blocked from submitting an appeal. How can i get unblocked?

3. When I publish a review it gets automatically rejected, if I submit appeal it gets immediately canceled (takes less than 2 seconds to get canceled). This started happening after 21. July.

4. Many of my reviews that are unpublished have approved appeal but are still unpublished. Example bellow:

5. All of my likes and views on reviews are gone since I was blocked and unblocked. I guess they are gone for good?

6. Some of my reviews that are unpublished have this description. If I edit the review and republish it I get the same fake engagement as everywhere but this should be updated automatically when I was unbanned:

I have already submitted my data to this form 2x (more than 20 days in between). but nothing changed:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEYYLY9EUPoAy9Wj_qqsbUd8kF9g_hiR0P2GXdrSoubu57og/viewform

Also I have explained the problem in account appeal section if your account gets blocked and got this reply:

So as I can see my account has no penalties but my reviews are not getting published, my appeals are immediately canceled and approved appeals are not shown. What can I do? I’m a long time Local Guide, I just got to level level 10, I love it and this is just giving me headache…

Any suggestions or should I just abandon Maps and start reviewing places and contributing my time somewhere else?

[ErmesT]

Hi @ZigaD

You are correct, and the message is clearly explaining the situation-

As you submitted already the form for checking the account for the blocked reviews you just have to wait.

When I submitted the same form I had to wait at least 8 weeks to have the reviews republished so if you did it 20 days (3 weeks) ago I think you will have to wait some more weeks. Please be aware that the team will not give you any reply about the investigation, but they will simply republish what is wrongly blocked.

Good luck

[ZigaD]

@ErmesT thanks for the reply. I guess I’ll have to wait a few more weeks and we’ll see how it goes thanks for the reply.