Why Are My New Reviews Not Coming Up on Google

Reviews on Google My Business are important for businesses for many reasons. First, they provide valuable feedback about your business that can help you improve your products or services. Second, they can help you attract new customers by giving them an insight into what others think about your business. Finally, reviews can help boost your business’s SEO, making it easier for potential customers to find you online.

If you’re not already actively encouraging your customers to leave reviews on Google My Business, now is the time to start. By doing so, you’ll be able to reap all of the benefits that come with having positive reviews.

There are, however, rare instances where your customer reviews might not show up on your Google My Business profile. This can be extremely frustrating, especially if you know that you have happy customers who would be more than willing to leave a review. So, what gives? Why aren’t your customer reviews appearing on your profile? 

The most likely culprit is that Google’s algorithms are reporting and blocking your reviews, even if they’re legitimate. These algorithms help ensure that only the most relevant, useful and trustworthy results are displayed to users, so it’s possible that your reviews simply aren’t being deemed as relevant or helpful enough to be displayed.

There are a few possible reasons why Google’s algorithms might not be surfacing your reviews. Let’s take a look at each one:

If a review contains a hyperlink, Google is likely to flag it as spam. This is because businesses will often try to game the system by leaving fake reviews that contain links to their website in an attempt to improve their SEO. Google has measures in place to combat this tactic, though, and will remove any reviews that it believes to be spam.

If you have multiple employees who are responsible for replying to reviews, it’s possible that they might be accidentally leaving reviews from the same IP address. Google is likely to flag these reviews as spam, as well.

Another reason why your customer reviews might not be appearing on your profile is if they were flagged by Google as being solicited. This means that you or someone from your team reached out to the customer and asked them to leave a review, which goes against Google’s guidelines. 

Google also has strict guidelines when it comes to reviews that contain advertising content. If a review contains any mention of promotional or commercial content, or includes email addresses and phone numbers, it will likely be flagged as advertising and removed from your profile.

If a review contains any profanity or other inappropriate content such as harassment, hate speech, or personal information, it will also be removed from your profile. This is to protect both businesses and customers from offensive or dangerous content.

Finally, if a review comes from the business owner or someone who works for the business, it will likely be removed. This is because Google views these reviews as biased and not representative of an average customer’s experience.

How Do I Get My Missing Google Reviews Back?

Google now offers a dedicated form where it seems a business may communicate directly with Google support in the hopes that their missing reviews will be restored. How to do it is as follows: 

1. Visit https://support.google.com/business/gethelp to get in touch with customer service.

2. Select your business from the drop-down menu after logging in as the business owner. It should be noted that Local Guides and regular Map users can also report their own missing reviews using this form.

3. Put "missing review" in the "Tell us what we can help with" section, then click next.

4. Select "review missing" as the best way to describe this problem.

5. If you don't want to be distracted by unrelated stuff, select Next Step twice.

6. On the following form, complete all mandatory fields.

7. It is not necessary to add your Business ID, however doing so will at the very least ensure that Google is viewing the correct listing and is likely required in the event that your listing has been suspended.

• By selecting the three dots in the upper right corner and Business Profile settings / Advanced Settings, you can access your Business ID from the NMX search interface.
  

8. Please take note that you will not be able to add new reviews to your profile if you choose Yes under the question, "Does the profile belong to an elementary, secondary, or high school?" For educational institutions in the US and the UK, Google has disabled reviews.

You have only a few weeks to request your reviews back if your listing has been disabled and then restored, after which they will be permanently gone.

9. When given the chance to attach an image of the review, you should do so if you are an agency and identify yourself as such. While not strictly necessary, review photos that include the author's name and the content of the review are advised. Your chances of success will rise thanks to both of these review recovery tools.

10. An email submitted to the business may cause a review to be censored in some cases. The simplest way to ensure the agency has the right user name is to see if the company has a copy. But if that's not the case, the company must contact the original poster.

A review that Google has flagged as spam won't show up on the business profile, but it will show up on the user profile. You must request that the company instruct the customer on how to take the screen shot in order to obtain a copy of the review:

• On their phone, launch the Google Maps app.
• At the bottom, click the "Contribute" button.
• Click the "View your profile" button on the page.
• They can view all of the reviews they've written by scrolling down. Get a screenshot, then send it

11. Remember that most of the time the name of the reviewer will differ from the name of your customer. Your request will be denied if you don't provide the real Google account reviewer name.

Given that the form is new, we are unsure exactly how long it will take, but we believe that Google typically evaluates cases in 7 to 10 working days.

12. You'll most likely get a rejection email. If you do, reply with screenshots of the reviews. Your prospects will significantly increase as a result of the internal escalation and subsequent review that will result from this.

13. If your issue is still unresolved after 10 days, you can visit the GBP forum, start a new discussion, and give a Product Expert the information below so they can escalate it for one final human review:



• The case id Google gave you when you submitted the form
• Your Name of your Business
• Google Maps URL of your Business
• Image of the review(s) obtained from the reviewer(s) (need to verify the user name)

If you’re noticing that customer reviews are not appearing on your Google My Business profile, one of the above six reasons is likely to be the cause. Once you’ve identified the problem, you can take steps to fix it and ensure that your customer reviews start appearing on your profile once again.

Also, for the business to get the missing reviews back, Google is still making unreasonable demands. Without increasing the amount of fake review attacks, Google must undoubtedly enhance their review filter to reduce the number of false positives. Furthermore, even while the introduction of this new reporting system is an essential step in offering assistance to small businesses, it need to be much simpler.

Would you like to dominate local search results and drive more people to your business? Book a free, no-obligation meeting with one of our SEO experts.