UPDATED: Known issue: [RESOLVED] Unpublished reviews and photos on Google Maps

[TsekoV]

Caption: An illustration of an Android with a hardhat on, sitting at a laptop with tools.

Update 08/15/2022

To make it easy for you to submit your Google Maps profile for review, we’ve created a temporary Google Form. Please use this form only if you believe that your contributions have been wrongfully unpublished. 

Important: If your contributions comply with the Maps policies, they will be reinstated. Please keep in mind that it may take some time for us to ensure all reviews that we reinstate abide by our policies. Please also note that we will not alert you with the final result.

Update: 02/09/2022

While the root cause of this issue has been resolved, we’re continuously evolving our policies and protections to ensure that inappropriate content stays off the map. If you believe that your reviews have been wrongfully affected and are not published on Maps, please leave a comment below.

For more information on how reviews are moderated on Google Maps, check out our new video and blog post on The Keyword.

Update: 09/30/2021

Our team has successfully resolved the root cause of this issue. However, if you still have contributions that do not get published, please reach out to us in the comments below.

Update: 09/08/2021

We have identified the cause of this issue and reviews that do not violate our policies are in the process of being reinstated. We'll update this thread once the issue is fully resolved and we thank you for your patience.

We’ve noticed an increase in the number of reports of Local Guides’ reviews and photos which have been unpublished. The team is looking into why this may be happening. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding! 

Please note: Any previous discussions about this issue will be merged into this thread.

[RubenRZ]

Hi everyone, I'm 8 level local guide and have many contributions, but about month ago on my maps (on android phone and desktop) disappeared links to leave reviews. Even when I want to edit my old reviews something goin wrong and I can't edit them. Can anyone help me to solve this issue?

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @RubenRZ 

Welcome to Connect and thanks for asking. 

I see you have made 409 reviews of which 396 are public. You could try to clean this up by taking a look at my tips presented here.

Please, also try Clear cache & cookies, if you have not already done so. The link has step-by-step instructions for Android, IOS, and Desktop. Just select the relevant tab at the top. But since your problem can be found across platforms I doubt this will help.

Let me tag @ErmesT for you. He might be able to give you a better explanation. In the meantime, it would be helpful if you would share a desktop and an android screenshot showing the missing options to edit and add reviews.

Best of luck
Morten

[ErmesT]

Thank you for tagging me @MortenCopenhagen 

Hi @RubenRZ 

As you explained that you are having the same issue in mobile and desktop, the issue seems to be more related to the places than to you.

It would be helpful to have some link of the places where you are having the issue, and a screenshot of the message you receive.

To better know how to share these information, please check:  Need Help? - Help Us to Help You

In some case, a place or an area can be locked to avoid Users Generated Content due to several reasons, like spam attack, or the need to protect the integrity of the data, but without more details it is difficult to respond

[Asif71]

I have 1500+ reviews. Yesterday I received master reviewer badge, but on achievement it's showing novice reviewer badge. From yesterday My review numbers are sometimes showing 1, sometimes 28. What's wrong with it? Help me, please.

[MortenCopenhagen]

@Asif71

Welcome to Connect.

I can confirm that zero of your 1594 reviews are public. Seeing the numbers change lately is probably just due to the delay in synchronizing between servers.

Getting all your reviews made private is very likely caused by guidelines violations.

Please see my post on typical review issues here.

This should give you input on what you might have done wrong. Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on what improvements you could make. 

Cheers

Morten 

[MortenCopenhagen]

@Asif71

Some more info :

It is always a good idea to go over all your reviews to make sure they all adhere to the guidelines, including:
Prohibited and Restricted Content
Format Specific Criteria (See under Text Reviews and Captions)

In this older post you can find some more information about hidden pics and reviews: How great a local guide are you?

If you need to identify which of your reviews are hidden please see this useful tip by my friend @C_T.

My best
Morten

[Asif71]

 Look at my review numbers on the photo. Then the see the other photo containing badge. 

 i have 1600 reviews but on the badge it's showing 0!!! Please help me to solve it.

[MortenCopenhagen]

WOW 1600 reviews is a lot. I'm sorry to see that they all have been made private, @Asif71 

This can happen when some of your reviews are not following the guidelines for reviews. 

It is always a good idea to go over all your reviews to make sure they all adhere to the guidelines, including:
Prohibited and Restricted Content
Format Specific Criteria (See under Text Reviews and Captions)

In this older post you can find some more information about hidden pics and reviews: How great a local guide are you?

If you need to identify which of your reviews are hidden please see this useful tip by my friend @C_T.

My best
Morten

[AdamGT]

Hi @Asif71 and welcome to the Local Guides Connect Community,

Additional to the support documentation that @MortenCopenhagen has referred you to, as you can read here content that violates the policies can be removed from Maps listings and will be visible only to you.  As you will see there are also instructions on how you yourself can fix a review that was flagged and removed:

If a review you wrote has been flagged and removed, you can fix it yourself. Edit your review to follow Google review policies — for example, you might remove a phone number or URL from the review. Your review will be automatically republished.

Google uses automated spam detection measures to remove reviews that are probably spam. Although legitimate reviews are sometimes inappropriately removed, these spam prevention measures help improve people's experiences on Google by ensuring that the reviews they see are authentic, relevant, and useful.

I also recommend that you read the Community Policy as in briefly looking over your 250+ photos, I note that some of your photos are duplicate or near duplicate (see the first example below) and at least on one occasion it would appear that you have used the same photo for two different locations/reviews (see the second example below) which violates the mentioned Community Policy.  You should make sure that you have not duplicated reviews across locations as this could trigger removal from the program.

Caption: An example of duplicate or near duplicate photos

Caption: An example of the same photo being used on two different reviews

While photos are a separate contribution and thus may be visible to the public while reviews may not, would you please confirm that your profile is not restricted.  There's a section in the notes here that may help you with this.

Finally, as you are new to Connect, I recommend that you check out the following articles and feel free to

introduce yourself in the monthly Community Introduce Yourself post:

Program rules
Your guide to Connect

What are Connect topics?
14 helpful tips for using Connect

Regarding reviews, a good read is also these Tips for writing great reviews.