Hidden Reviews? Read this.

[MortenCopenhagen]

Currently, the review spam filter seems more aggressive than usual. A few Local Guides are very upset that their reviews get hidden by the spam filter. Some believe they know and follow all the rules related to reviews, so the spam filter must be broken.

This might be true for some, but we all can benefit from studying the guidelines one more time and then editing our reviews that are not fully compliant. 

Short summary of the review guidelines

The Maps user-generated content policy (that we accepted when signing up as Local Guides) clearly states that suspending the ability of a user to contribute may include preventing uploaded content from being displayed to other users.

Two key documents outline the review guidelines. One is called Tips for contributing high-quality reviews, and the other document is named Prohibited and restricted content. 

The Tips document is quite easy to read. Here is an overview of the content: 

1. Be informative and insightful.
2. Be authentic.
3. Be respectful.
4. Write with style.
5. Avoid personal and professional information.
6. Avoid general commentary.

From the Tips document I extracted these very essential guidelines:

• Please write about your firsthand experience with the place and not general commentary.
• Review your own experience, and explain what the place was like and the service you received.
• Try to share something unique and new, and make sure your criticism is constructive.
• One paragraph is a great length for a review.

If you follow these simple and helpful guidelines, you may not even need to read the second written by lawyers. It lists all the things we should obviously never share in a review. Examples include spam, swearing, advertising, off-topic comments, rants, and repetitive sentences.

The current review problem

So why are so many Local Guides currently very frustrated about getting their reviews hidden by the spam filter?

Here is what I think:

Google Maps frequently praises all our contributions in a constant flow of emails. This makes us believe we are doing a fantastic job. And it creates a strong expectation that Google will treat the volunteers with respect and fairness. It seems the praise emails are sent even to those adding reviews of low quality. 

When Local Guides have contributed for years, and then suddenly discover their work has been removed from public view without warning, notice, or explanation they become rightfully outraged. Affected Local Guides then feel betrayed and find Google treats them with disrespect and our mutual expectations are no longer aligned.

Google has a policy to never explain or specify what we are doing wrong. This is probably to avoid helping the spammers. But this comes across as very impolite considering we are volunteers and we are constantly reminded to let helpfulness guide our actions. Between the lines affected Local Guides are accused of being bad actors and spammers. Leaving volunteers in limbo and doubting if they did something wrong or if the system is failing big time. This is not fair. 

From our side, it looks like volunteer work is met with disrespect.

In France Google is currently testing if notifying LGs when contributions get hidden can improve the situation. In my view, this is not helping. Violations are not really explained. I think the test so far mostly made more Local Guides aware of hidden reviews.

It is very difficult to check if our reviews are hidden or not. So many Local Guides are not even aware of the problem. To learn how to check read this.

Google probably made the spam filter more sensitive in the second half of 2022 to counteract increasing spam problems. A more sensitive spam filter will also hide perfectly good reviews. For a more differentiated view, please read No wonder some of our reviews get hidden! 

A major complicating factor is that a particular review may not be violating the guidelines, still, the review, all reviews, a group of reviews, or all new reviews are hidden. I have discussed this here. In early 2022 all hidden reviews could easily be made public by simply editing them to remove the problematic words or sentences. This is no longer the case. I suspect that even photo guideline violations now can result in hidden reviews. So hidden reviews are currently used as a kind of general warning prior to further sanctions.

In the big picture, a few unhappy Local Guides are not very important to Google. It is difficult to comprehend, but Google's actions and inactions speak loudly. 

Checklist

So if your reviews are currently wrongfully made invisible, I suggest you run over this checklist:

1. Are you representing a business on Google Maps? 
2. Have you been liking your own reviews? 
3. Have you been reviewing your current or former workplaces? 
4. Have you been writing super short or very long reviews? 
5. Have you reviewed businesses belonging to friends or family? 
6. Have you been encouraged or paid to write reviews? 
7. Have you been sharing opinions or political views not related to services or products from the business? 
8. Have you reviewed businesses where you were not a genuine customer?
9. Have you been adding links, phone numbers, or social media references in any of your reviews? 
10. Have you been repeating any text or headings across your reviews?
11. Have you included any text copied (=stolen) from elsewhere in your reviews?
12. Have you been publishing your reviews in parallel on other platforms like yelp, TripAdvisor, booking.com, Airbnb, Amazon, or even your private blog?
13. Have any of your reviews been revenge reviews?
14. Have you made sure to include details that prove you visited the place? 
15. Has your language always been respectful? 
16. Have you been posting a lot of reviews in quick succession?
17. Have you been reviewing places in many different countries without visiting them?

Ideally, you should be able to say No to all of the above - except two. The checklist is not from Google but is based on my experience helping fellow Local Guides.

Google has admitted that the spam filter can be too aggressive by offering a special form called Account investigation for contributions not visible on Google Maps. Please use it, but know that you will not be notified when the manual check is done and what they found. It can take several weeks to get done. If your contributions are found to comply with the guidelines they will be made public again. For Google to have this service for Local Guides is very unusual. If your contributions were not made public after a check, you will need to take a deeper look at the guidelines and how well your reviews comply. 

If your contributions disappear again after they've been reinstated, then please feel free to use the form again. This was communicated by @DeniGu here.

What more could be done?

What more could we as Local Guides do?

1. Make an effort to find and flag more suspicious reviews and profiles.
2. Organize and participate in a test of the effectiveness of flagging contributions. I suspect flagging is rarely acted upon. 

What more could Google do?

1. Improve significantly the communication with volunteers on this issue
2. Let Local Guides know when their review quality index starts falling and share specific tips on what they should do
3. Stop hiding individual reviews that are not violating the review guidelines
4. Stop hiding reviews for other reasons than review guideline violations. Use intuitively relevant sanctions instead
5. Speed up the manual check procedure
6. Ensure manually released reviews remain public if unchanged
7. Hide all reviews from new accounts until they have made at least 10 "good" reviews! To me, it seems that very few reviews from one account indicate it could be a spammer. 
8. Hide fewer reviews when relevant photos are attached
9. Mark hidden contributions in our contribution lists (when the current problems have been solved). 

This post was inspired by all the recent complaints, and especially @ErmesT's post Get Paid for Our Contribution? What could happen?, @Gezendunyali's post called Commenting criteria, and @gmapas's reply found here. 

I think @gmapas said it perfectly here: 

I sincerely hope that the teams at Google are working to reach a common denominator that satisfies everyone - those who contribute with real reports, the companies evaluated (which are often harmed in the process) and the users who consult and believe in the reviews.

I hope you find this post somewhat helpful. 

Cheers

Morten

[Gezendunyali]

Hi @MortenCopenhagen It was a great article. Really, there were people around me who stopped commenting because of such incidents. But we should not forget that it is a difficult task to control millions of users. Google tries to do this as well as possible. One of my ideas should be google maps moderators. Google should set up an academy and train local guides chosen from among the volunteers, then give map moderation and give the authority to close spam accounts and delete inappropriate photos. So it can be a very fast process. I report many spam accounts, but maybe until it's done. thousands of people unknowingly take into account the comment of that account. I think google will find much more specific solutions to these this year.☺️🙏🏻

[StevenBerlin]

Nice post as usual @MortenCopenhagen 

I do post photos and reviews to yelp as well, and one thing they do well is if a photo is not posted properly to a store, they actually write you back an email stating this photos is being removed because it dies not reflect that store.  So very clear and direct, and also they don't punish you.  This would be nice if Google could do something similar.  I do realize the volume is much greater in maps.

2.  I wish Google could work with you moderators to go over accounts and simply report back to each other, so there is some form of communication happening. 

3.  I have been asking for a way for us to see all privately marked photos or reviews, so the users can simply remove dupes or bad uploads quickly and rectify problems.

Most of us are just trying to have fun and help the community with reviews and especially photos.  The suspensions are abrupt and without any mention of problems to the user, and the forms don't allow us to explain any additional information.

I don't know what clout or input you mods have, but it would sure be nice if they listened to your input.

Thx for the nice article. 

[MortenCopenhagen]

@StevenBerlin 

Thanks for your reply. It is news to me how yelp is helpful. Sounds great.

Just for the record, I'm not a moderator 😉  But I still hope the relevant people at Google will care to read and maybe respond.

Cheers

Morten

[AdrianLunsong]

As always, interesting post @MortenCopenhagen ! Who knows what's happening behind the scenes with Google Maps and how it's affecting user contributions!? But I agree that some more transparency would be much appreciated. The notification testing in France on hidden reviews is a double edged sword because on one hand, it's great to know that a review has been hidden but at the same time, when there's no clear understanding on what the violation may be, it can be frustrating for users. I suspect that most users are not even aware that they may have hidden reviews since most are not as adapt as the members here on Connect and may not know how to check for hidden reviews. As they say, ignorance is (sometimes) bliss. 😅

Side comment, I wonder how much of Timeline affects the validity of reviews? For example, I've noticed that the automatic location logging from Maps is not always correct so in the Timeline view, Maps some times think I've been to a nearby place that I've not been to resulting in a) recommending me to write a review to a place it thinks I've been to but I haven't, and b) I may end up writing a review for a place Maps doesn't think I've been to. Of course, I can go into Timeline and correct it but it's not something that I do often as the interface is a bit unfriendly (to me) on mobile. 

[EliCH]

The spam filter is garbage, as this wonderful investigator on YouTube highlights the issue very well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEj_j-Y-yjs 

Her entire channel is dedicated towards this matter. Fake reviewers, payed reviews, they are found on countless listings. And the spam filter does a wack job at actually removing those types of reviews. Meanwhile, longtime LGs are somehow caught and punished.

If a company is unwilling to admit that it's algorithm has major flaws, then there is no chance of it ever improving.

[ErmesT]

Thanks for this post, @MortenCopenhagen , and for giving the Local Guides the possibility to review their reviews (this remind me of "The review reviewer" series)

Caption: Jaime Lyn reviewing a review written by Ilankovan at Connect Live 2019

Well, more seriously, we all know there is a problem, and with only two reviews hidden you are part of the lucky ones.

What is difficult to explain to the Local Guides is (skipping the part related to reviews hidden for the violation of the rules) why our reviews are hidden. You pointed it our very clearly in your reply here. Fake reviews are a plague, and many times are written very well, with no violations of the rules in the text, so that the reviews need to be caught in a totally different way. Fake reviews can damage a business, or can damage the consumer, and in some case (this seems to be the last strategy, can cause the removal of the business listing from Maps or other site, like TripAdvisor.

In some case this can end in a legal action against the company that do not remove the fake reviews. Against the company that do not remove the fake reviews (this is not a typo, I simply want to be clear).

In short, this situation can potentially end in removing completely the possibility to write reviews.

I saw someone testing the spam filter here in Connect a few months ago, whoever did it probably thought the Maps filter was the same thing. These were perfect articles, beautifully written, too well done to be true. This makes me think that perhaps the problem is the too well written reviews.

I'd also like to reassure anyone who talks about conspiracies to block one-star reviews. That's not the case: all my blocked reviews have four or five stars.

The messages that Maps is sending in France serve to inform that reviews are blocked, and this is useful, because many do not know that they have blocked reviews, but obviously it cannot tell us how to unblock them.

I honestly don't know what the solution could be, other than removing the reviews tab from Maps, and I think this is something the Local Guides should understand. Is this what you mean when you say "DO SOMETHING"?

I know this is painful, more as a User than as a Local Guide, but I think this is something that we should have in mind, instead of writing posts about a class action against Google, or suggesting the violation of the First Amendment (they don't know what they are talking about) or a kind of censorship.

How We Local Guides can help to block fake reviews in Maps? I have seen Level 10 building a system for creating fake reviews, so Level doesn't mean "Trust", so please do not suggest to trust people based on the level, like I have seen in many posts (I am a Level X and Google block me).

I think this is the debate, how can we help?

I know, I am a bit strong in here, but after being attacked several times just for trying to explain the situation, I think I should make it clear.

Thanks again for this post

[gmapas]

Olá, @MortenCopenhagen 

Ótimo texto!  Lendo sua publicação me lembrei de algo.

Muitos anos antes de o Google ter um Programa chamado Local Guide, havia um outro, chamava-se Reviewer Place. Acredito que foi o embrião do Local Guide, porém muito menor.

Quando você fazia sua inscrição para ser um Reviewer Place, antes, obrigatoriamente, você passava por uma "espécie de curso". E o "curso" era basicamente ler e entender boa parte das dicas que você escreveu. Você também tinha que "provar" que era humano. Ou seja, é diferente do que acontece hoje. O visitante do mapa faz uma avaliação, automaticamente é chamado para ser um Guia Local, mas ele não recebe nenhuma "instrução", nada! As vezes o indivíduo tem apenas uma avaliação ao longo de quatro anos,  e aparece o texto "Local Guide". 

Muito bom seu artigo. No seu "Checklist" isso já foi abordado, mas vou acrescentar um detalhamento, principalmente para falantes do "Português Brasileiro ".

A IA, algoritmos ou como seja o nome do mecanismo que faz revisões não considera as nuances da língua portuguesa brasileira, principalmente os regionalismos. Então, também fica a dica, evitar nas avaliações expressões regionais que o IA pode entender como  linguagem imprópria, repetitivo, spam, sem contexto ou simplesmente não entender porque não conhece. 

Exemplo: É comum o uso da expressão "trem"  no estado de Minas Gerais para se referir a qualquer coisa, é um regionalismo que dentro de uma frase, tem um contexto e é totalmente entendível para quem está lendo. No entanto, para um IA, "trem" é apenas um meio de transporte. A  palavra "trem" no meio de um texto de uma avaliação, para o IA faz o texto ficar sem sentido. 

Exemplo de avaliações com regionalismo que a/o IA oculta:

...eu comi um "trem" muito gostoso chamado "Vaca Atolada"...

Um brasileiro, falante do português do Brasil entende claramente a expressão "trem" no meio da frase acima. A IA não, pois, como alguém come um "trem"?

O regionalismo "trem" é apenas um exemplo, mas existem outras centenas que a IA não entende, não faz sentido, e a IA acaba ocultando também. Então, fica esta dica, evitar usar "expressões regionais", gírias etc. E o que não falta no Brasil são expressões regionais que com certeza dão "tilt" numa IA. 

Abb

Gil

[ivanos]

Threatening that Google may totally remove the review function so we honest and innocent local guides shall support its continuous disrespect to us? Well…

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @AdrianLunsong 

Thanks for your reply. I'm happy that we can also have a constructive discussion which is in contrast to many of the more angry posts on this topic. 

I chose not to suggest putting a lot more value into the timeline - exactly because I find there are way too many errors on the timeline. And also, the prompts from Google Maps to add photos and reviews are often irrelevant,m so I tend to disregard them.

Cheers

Morten