Having been directly impacted by this bug for the past 2 months, and having alerted google support a dozen times to a problem with review validations, it’s with great relief that I see google officially acknowledging the facts today…. here’s the translation of the announcement made via Searchengineland.
Google has accidentally removed legitimate, rules-compliant reviews submitted by local guides from Google Maps. Google has acknowledged the problem and said it is working to reinstate these reviews over the next few weeks.
What happened. According to Google’s Local Guides Connect blog, the company said it is “constantly improving our moderation system to remove rule-breaking content from the map”. As a result of these efforts, Google said that its “protections have removed more rules-compliant reviews than expected from a set of local guides”. Google added that it “recognizes that this change has affected many of your accounts” and that it is working to restore reviews that have been affected.
Problem resolution. Google said that, “as part of our efforts to resolve this situation, we have launched an update to our protections to correct them.” Google added that the search company will also “automatically reinstate” all policy-compliant notices over the “next few weeks.”
What to do if your review is not reinstated. Google has stated that if your policy-compliant notice is not reinstated, you can submit a request via this form to contest the decision.
Why we care. If you’ve noticed that your reviews aren’t being taken into account as a local guide, Google advises you to continue publishing your reviews as normal, and the problem will be solved automatically. At least, you can hope that Google will, and if not, you can always ask Google to manually review your submission.
I also deleted a few, then recreated them and it worked straight away.
So you may see a number of reviews that weren’t listed on your business in a few weeks’ time, when Google relaunches its review protections.
