Updated November 8th, 2022

In the last few months 📅, many Google Business Profile (former Google My Business) owners started complaining that their Google reviews ⭐  are not being shown / or not being published, or being removed. This issue created serious difficulties in local SEO . There are several reasons 📋 why Google reviews may be removed from the Google profile. In most cases, missing reviews were removed for policy violations or quality issues. In other cases, the reviews can take longer to appear than usual. Lets’ find out why it happens and what you can do!

Why Google Reviews Are Not Showing Up in 2022?

There are several reasons why Google reviews may be removed from the Google profile. In most cases, missing reviews were removed due to policy violations. In other cases, the reviews can be delayed and take longer to appear than usual.

In Short, Google Review Might Be Missing Because Of Two Reasons:

• Reviews might be delayed
• Reviews might be filtered 

If the review is not following Maps User Contributed Content Policy or consists of Prohibited and Restricted Content or  does not follow the Guidelines for representing business on Google)

What Is The Reason Why My Google Reviews Are Not Showing Up?

Google will almost never provide  you you the specific reason when filtering harmless (or apparently harmless) reviews, because:

“We [Google ]reserve the right to disable user-generated contributions for individual business profiles and business categories to prevent abuse. We also reserve the right to remove content that violates our policies or terms of service, and to suspend or delete abusive accounts”

The Decisions About Filtering Google Reviews are made by Robots, not Humans.

Google started using automated spam detection measures to remove reviews that are probably spam. Google confirms that because of that, legitimate reviews are sometimes inappropriately removed, although they consider that these spam prevention measures help improve people’s experiences on Google by ensuring that the reviews, they see are authentic, relevant, and useful.

In short, it means that decisions about filtering reviews are made by the Google algorithm, and sometimes quality reviews will be filtered as well. 

Why Google Reviews Might Be Delayed in 2022?

Usually, when a user posts a review, they can almost instantly see their review as published on their devices, although these reviews may still not be published! Some reviews get published within 2-3 hours; however, others may take 2-7 business days to get published. Google reps say that delays might take up to 7 days. So, I would suggest contacting Google after 7 days the review was posted and getting ready to provide the screenshot of the review left by the user, if available.

Please take into consideration that:

1. Customers on older mobile devices and operating systems might have issues leaving reviews. To fix the problem, customers should update their operating system and Google Maps app version.
2. If you set a future opening date for your business that hasn’t opened yet, any reviews left before it’s open to the public will be removed.

Why Reviews Might Be Filtered By Google?

Your review might be filtered  for many reasons which are presented in 3 different documents:

1. Your review might be filtered if it is not following Maps User Contributed Content Policy
2. Your review might be filtered if it consists of Prohibited and Restricted Content
3. Your review might be filtered if it  does not follow the Guidelines for representing business on Google

Remember, that Google will almost never provide you you a specific reason when filtering harmless (or apparently harmless) reviews. Why? See Google’s statement below:

“We [Google ]reserve the right to disable user-generated contributions for individual business profiles and business categories to prevent abuse. We also reserve the right to remove content that violates our policies or terms of service, and to suspend or delete abusive accounts”

Besides Following Google Policies, Google Review Has A High Risk Of Being Filtered If:

Reasons For Google Reviews Filtering will definitely violate Google’s Maps User Contributed Content Policy or consist of Prohibited and Restricted Content or does not follow the Guidelines for representing business on Google). Please note, that Google never discloses its algorithm, so the info below is based on our team’s empirical experience in the field!

Google review has a high risk to be filtered:

• If the reviews are too long (more than 1000 characters) and the review does not look genuine or looks like an advertisement.
• If the review contains URLs, Phone numbers, or addresses.
• If the review contains prohibited and restricted content:  spam and fake content, off-topic content, restricted content, illegal content, terrorist content, sexually explicit content, offensive content, dangerous & derogatory content, impersonation, and conflict of interest.
• If the reviews were left by the employer or left by a current or former employee.
• If the review is not based on real experiences and information.
• If the reviews were requested from customers in bulk, for example, via email campaigns
• If the reviews come from the same physical location (from the same IP address). For example, if a reviewer shares an IP address with someone who already left you a review the review might be flagged. Another example, If your business offers Wi-Fi that customers connect to and you’ve logged into your Google Business Profile account – it might be flagged as well.
• If the reviewer is located far away from the business location or has never physically visited the business location.
• If the reviewer left the same exact review elsewhere on the internet (for example, Facebook, Yelp, Bing) or the content for the review was stolen from another business.
• If the number of reviews is abnormally higher than most businesses in your industry.
• If other Google users,  other than the reviewer or business owner,  reported the review as offensive, spam, not relevant, or inappropriate
• If anything else that might trigger Google’s bot to filter the review (Gog only knows, because Google never discloses the real reasons)

What Can You Do To Show Filtered Google Reviews? 

If your review was filtered you can Appeal to Google Business Profile Support for the filtered review(s) to show. Make sure to document and take a screenshot of the review(s) and pass that information to support. There is no guarantee that the reviews will show, but there is a chance of success as well if you can strongly support your point of view.

If you were no able to reinstate filtered reviews, don’t stop asking your clients to review your business on Google and try to follow the tips from this article to reduce the chance of being filtered.

Thinking Out Loud.

Even if one or several of your Google reviews were flagged, blocked, or deleted – try to reinstate them, using the tips from this article, BUT  KEEP ACQUIRING NEW GOOGLE REVIEWS! Focus your efforts on building more positive reviews with unique content, even though I feel your pain – sometimes Google algorithm deletes quality reviews.

Updated 10/16/2022

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