All reviews not showing publicly

[HelenaK]

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to the community and I'm wondering how reviews work, I've written several reviews, however some can bee seen among the public reviews and others can't. I am not aware of any rules being broken and I haven't deleted any, in fact, I can see them all under my profile but when I'm logged out of my account or somebody else checks the reviews, my review is not  publicly showing (just found out by accident when recommending a place to a friend in person and mentioning I gave them a 5*  review on Google and then finding out my review wasn't there to be seen by others). Any idea why that is ? Can the reviewed business delete them ??  although, incidentally,  all of them are 5* reviews so I don't see why anyone would wanna delete those, some of the lower star reviews I gave are perfectly visible so I'm confused. Just wondering how this works. thanks

[PaulPavlinovich · Accepted solution]

Hi @HelenaK the Maps algorithm chooses which reviews to show or not based on a lot of signals from the review. There is no guarantee that every review left by someone will be visible.

I can't go into what the signals are (Google don't tell the volunteer moderators) it would make it easy to game the system. 

It definitely happens to everyone (including me). 

The best pointers I can give you to avoid your views disappearing are basic common sense things:

• Only review places you've physically visited
• Use objective rational neutral language
• Talk about the place, its vibe, the products, and things like accessible facilities, fun for kids, etc.

It is also possible that reviews have been appealed by businesses and they've been marked private.

In both cases you retain your points. Feel free to PM me a link to your "My Contributions" if you'd like some constructive feedback.

Regards Paul

[SanAntonioMom]

Paul, I recently had a great experience with an animal behaviorist and we did a virtual training session due to COVID-19. Here's the link to my review: https://goo.gl/maps/ZCvaZGdjFp5orRGb7

Could you please tell me why it's not visible?