If the problem isn’t your business listing, the issue might be with the reviews themselves and the ways they were written or submitted. Unfortunately, in these cases, you don’t have as much control over the appearance of your reviews. What you can do is educate customers about best practices when writing any form of feedback.
1. Reviews Marked as Spam
Google continues to be aggressive in fighting review spam to ensure the quality of the platform. If you’re wondering why a Google review isn’t showing up, it could be that it violated the Google review policy.
The review can also disappear when regular users flag the review as inappropriate. In these cases, Google investigates by looking at the review in question before deleting it from the listing.
2. Reviews with Links and URLs
Google can also remove reviews and responses that contain links or URLs. However, users can look at what they originally wrote and quickly edit Google My Business reviews to omit the URL and avoid Google’s digital ax.
3. The Review is Not Authentic
Some brands cut the line by trying to buy Google reviews in an effort to artificially boost their online reputation. Needless to say, that practise violates Google’s guidelines, which can result in the removal of your entire GMB listing.
Instead of trying to buy fake reviews, be proactive and start asking for reviews. Doing so not only organically improves your search visibility and brand reputation; it also provides the insights you need to improve the customer experience.
4. Reviews from Third-Party Sites
Google used to import review data from business review sites like Yelp, Facebook, and TripAdvisor and display these on local business listings. Google has since stopped doing this, which means that any reviews from other websites that showed up during that time on a Google listing are no longer available or factored into your business’s presence on Google.
In some cases, Google will sometimes still show some feedback from other reputable sites in a section called “Reviews around the Web.” This is typically found below the reviews by Google users, but these are generated by an algorithm and may not always be accurate.
5. Private or Deleted Reviews
In previous updates, Google users could mark their reviews as private so others won’t see their feedback. This option is no longer available. If you do notice a review is missing, another likely reason is that the person deleted the review. There’s not much you can do in this case, except hope that the customer returns and gives you another review.
Final Thoughts
When one or more Google reviews aren’t showing up on your business listings, it’s important to treat the situation as an opportunity to continue to get Google reviews from newer customers.
Reviews are a major factor in driving revenue and in acquiring and retaining customers. By continuing to request feedback and improving the customer experience, your company can generate more reviews (the right way) and build a 5-star brand on the Internet’s largest search engine and business discovery platform.
