Why this review can’t be posted public?

Hello Google Maps champions

I need your help to find out what might be wrong with this review.

thanks in advance for your advice

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Hi @I-am-Q

Please also share the Maps link to the place.

Cheers

Morten

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Hello @MortenCopenhagen , here you have the link.

Dubai International Airport

Hi @I-am-Q

I’m not sure why your review is not published. Here are some pointers to consider:

The airport has 95K reviews. So even when published it is unlikely to be viewed by a lot of people.

This review is not the only one if yours taken down. You have added 1339 reviews and only 1290 of them are public.

Also, keep in mind that the trigger might not be in the review text itself. Try deleting the attached photos and check if your review goes public. If so, try adding the photos back one by one and keep checking. This way you can figure out which photo was the culprit.

Furthermore, the spam filter looks at your overall performance and track record as a local guide. So completely unrelated violations can also cause reviews to be removed from public view.

The review initially sounds like you are reviewing the country.

And it is unusually condescending. You could try making it more balanced and include some facts to document your broad and general statements.

I hope you did enjoy your trip to the middle east.

Cheers

Morten

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@I-am-Q reading your review, my first impression matches @MortenCopenhagen 's last suggestion: “.… include some facts to document your broad and general statements …”. You write about “worst experience”, “indifference” and “discrimination”, but no word about what exactly did happen to you to create such a negative memory.

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Ok @MortenCopenhagen , I will write a short story then :blush: . I have tried this review without pictures. It was not published either.

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Well, if you mean evidence, then I see no relevance in putting up justification for my feelings. The whole review is about capturing the feeling and impression, not setting up a list of “beyond any doubt” evidence. However, I am willing to try your suggestion, and here you have a shorter story. What do you think @WilfriedB :face_with_monocle: ?

This was my first trip to this country and my worst experience ever.
I have never experienced so much indifferent and discriminatory staff at any airport before. The passport controller asked me to visit the immigration office on the other side, behind the long line that I had already passed (about 40 minutes). I asked the passport controller if there was any problem and wondered why I should visit the migration office. He just made a strange gesture and showed me the way to the office. He ordered me to come back to him afterwards.

So, I was confused and didn’t know what was wrong. Anyway, in front of the migration office there was a long queue. Only one desk was active and the staff at the other three desks were sitting talking and laughing together. After almost 90 minutes it was my turn. He looked at my passport and asked me to look at the camera. He asked me why I am visiting Dubai and where I will live. I said I am visiting a friend and have booked the Conrad for my stay. He looked at my booking and stamped my passport. Please note that you do not need a visa to enter the UAE as a Swedish citizen. I was with five other friends. Everyone had to wait about three hours before I could join and take a taxi to the hotel.

I have been to many countries and passed through many passport control stations. I have never ever seen or experienced such indifferent and arrogant staff at any airport.

I will try to avoid this airport as much as I can.

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@I-am-Q at least, we understand better what made you upset.

While nobody can tell you what exactly caused the filter to hide your review, some thoughts:

  • I have a bad feeling for the words “discriminatory staff”. Personally, I would not write the first two phrases at all.
  • You wrote a review for the airport, but you blame immigration controls, which is a responsibility of the government - not the management of an airport.
  • From my own experience traveling overseas many times, I can only say, this might have happened just anywhere. More likely in some countries and less often in others, but you never can blame the airport for it.

Again, just some intuitive thoughts of mine, in case I would have been in the same situation.

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Very good points @WilfriedB . Thanks for sharing. I see your points. It could have happened anywhere. I believe that things can go wrong or bad things happen, but the way you handle it makes the difference!

The distinction between different functions at the airport is not so obvious or it is clear. The migration office staff, the staff managing check-in desk or the officers controlling passports are a natural part of all international airports. I mean those staff are managing the most important part of the service at any international airport.

I will consider wording in different way to convey the same meaning.

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I deleted the old review yesterday and added this one today. Not published publicly.

Please comment what more can be changed

@MortenCopenhagen

@WilfriedB

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@I-am-Q at a first glance, I would remove “arrogance”

However, also remember @MortenCopenhagen 's words “Furthermore, the spam filter looks at your overall performance and track record as a local guide.” which may or may not translate to “too many hidden posts already”.

My experience:

After I learned about hidden media and reviews not until fall last year, I spent a lot of time to clean my account and was successful except for one review, which I never found until today.

At some point I gave up trying to understand what exactly was causing the problem. Instead, I used a more pragmatic approach:

  • If the text continues to be rejected without photos, I removed half of the text and save it in the text editor on my PC.
  • Then I repeated the above step until the text is accepted.
  • Then I inserted the saved part sentence by sentence, then word by word and see when it works.

One review was especially nasty, but the above method was, how I finally managed to publish the review by replacing “Kartoffel-Chips” by “Kartoffelchips”, i.e. just by removing a hyphen. Certainly a very unusual case, but a good example how the SPAM filter may fail.

And one more thing:

Don’t ask why Google doesn’t tells us any details. If they would be more clear, I would also become more easy for real spammers to bypass the filters.

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I see @WilfriedB . What a waste of time :smiling_face_with_tear:

I also have had some places I never succeeded to publish my review public. Istiglal Mosque in Jakarta was one I spend hours to edit end refine before I gave up.

I am going to change some words and see where it goes :sunglasses:

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@I-am-Q what did you do with the hidden reviews after giving up? If they still exist, the filter might track how many those are and based on that refuse more in the future … not sure, but just my guess.

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@WilfriedB ,

I have 1291 public review out of 1339 (49 non public / hidden). I don’t know what is the threshold, and I have not valued it that much to spend so much time finding all hidden reviews. I have to leave with some level of acceptance of poor quality :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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@I-am-Q seems about 3,6% of you reviews are hidden.

In Count your hidden contributions (Desktop) @MortenCopenhagen said a while ago “I believe it is OK if you have less than 4% hidden.” So, you are getting close. However, I assume this was never officially published by Google

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@WilfriedB You know, the thing is that some places are of don’t know reason, impossible to review. That’s it! I hope it is not because of my low tanking. The same story also happened when I reviewed the airport in Amsterdam (among unfriendly airports I have seen).

I deleted two videos from the review I did two years ago (Amsterdam Airport Schiphol), and it is now public :blush:

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This version has not been accepted either … no pictures

Any suggestions @WilfriedB , @MortenCopenhagen

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@I-am-Q just give it a try and correct the typo “… last tome …” :grinning: .

Sounds strange, but I did have a hidden review which got immediately accepted after correcting an obvious typo, i.e. a word which was marked as error in Firefox. At the time @MortenCopenhagen mentioned, he doesn’t believe the SPAM filter does any kind of spellchecking, but the AI certainly watches for “forbidden” words and in that case, it was the only change I made, to get it published.

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Thanks @WilfriedB . It is done.

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No success :face_with_raised_eyebrow:. It is a kind of magic … :smiley: