Google DELETING Legitimate Places Reviews?
Posted by Matthew Loop | 13 Comments
Real quick, I wanted to inform you about this article that was written on TechCrunch less than 24 hours ago to explain the recent annihilation of legitimate Google reviews from your Places page. My inbox has been flooded by concerned clients and other business owners.
This explains the situation:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/google-places-stops-stealing-reviews/
They even reference a pizza place in Chicago that went from 1,110 to 171 Google Places reviews. Most doctors, professionals, and marketers I’ve spoken with are down about 65% from where they were… Absolutely crazy!
What are your thoughts on this whole ordeal?
Do you think it’s fair for the average small business owner to get caught up in the politics? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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Wow I didnt even notice that. It actually seems to have helped me cause I am the only chiropractor in my town that has been getting reviews through Google Places. I guess since its helped me I like it but I do feel bad for any other small business that would suffer from it.
Glad you weren’t affected, James… There’s been so much fluctuation with reviews lately that I feel bad for chiropractors and other small business owners who are caught in the cross-fire.
What I don’t get Matt is that my reviews were legit, yet another chiro in my town is spamming, making fake reviews and barely any of his were touched. That pisses me off more than just my reviews being annihilated.
Yeah… countless other practices are noticing the same thing. I don’t agree with the automated and algorithm-based filtering at all. I really feel Google has hurt business owners with what they’ve been pulling on Google Places.
For the search Chiropractor Edmonds I google place as C with no reviews and F with 1 review. Dr. Bowers is in last place = G and he has 17 reviews. And DeNovi who holds the E spot moved a good year ago. Google isn’t smart enough to realize how obsolete a listing is.
So trying to make sense out of Google is fruitless in my book.
Oh did I mention that those Google Place rankings change if I’m logged into a google account. They also change depending on what IP address I log in with.
While I have not noticed this particular issue taking place on the Google Maps platform, I have noticed open+operating businesses being mistakenly marked as closed. That is an even more shocking thing in my opinion. Can you imagine the effect that would have on a business if visitors were lead to believe they had closed?
i have no idea what’s going on. an SEO contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me my google listing was being eliminated in a couple days and of course for a small ($400 ) fee they would re register me with google and give me first page placement.
I had already done an SEO btwiyh scrub the web and had pretty good placement but that was on google places which they told me was arbitrary. based on clicks. i got a web site and blogging rights too. So i think i spent needless money but i have gotten better placement with a few new keywords. and if you don’t have a google ,ail acct, get one it affects your placement drastically!
Matt, i signed up for the BOOK and do not have an address to email bio or picture can you provide samre? thanks for the constant kicks in the ass wake up calls!!
I’m glad none of my reviews are missing. From what I understand Google is only keeping the reviews done by Google users. No third party reviews.
Matt thanks for all your hard work and information!
Yes, you’re right Melissa. That’s what the TechCrunch article above speaks about. Thanks for sharing 🙂
The buzz in the Local SEO community is that the review policy change has not affected client rankings and that this change is mostly a non-issue. Most experts that track rankings daily for clients report zero changes in rankings and are recommending no change in strategy. This is a case of all ships rising and falling with the tide. While you may have fewer reviews in an absolute sense, hardly anyone was affected in relative positioning.
I have been having the same problem. I wrote 2 (originally one but it got deleted so I made another e-mail account to check) reviews on the “105th police department” and included a link, and just the word “YOUTUBE” in the other and now both do not show up. as a matter of fact when I’m signed in under my gmail accounts, the option to add a review is no longer there. I have to sign out, completely close my browser and reopen without signing in just to see the review link. my review about the police department was negative, and the link was proof of prejudice. I would like an explanation!!!
@ bruce
It’s funny how google originally stated that you could not buy first page placement and that all searches were listed by relevance. so did google lie to you or to the public?