Google has accidentally removed legit, policy-abiding reviews submitted by Local Guides from Google Maps. Google acknowledged the issue and said it is working on reinstating those reviews over the next few weeks.
What happened. According to Google’s Local Guides Connect blog, Google said they are “constantly improving our moderation system to keep policy-violating content off the map.” With those efforts, Google said its “protections took down more than expected policy abiding reviews from a set of Local Guides.” Google added that they “acknowledge that this change has affected a lot of your accounts,” and is working to restore the reviews that were impacted.
Fixing the issue. Google said, “as part of our efforts to resolve this situation, we have launched an update to our protections to fix them.” Google added that the search company “will also automatically reinstate” any of the policy-abiding reviews over the “next few weeks.”
What if your review is not reinstated. Google said if your policy-abiding review is not reinstated, then you can submit a request through this form to challenge the decision.
Why we care. If you noticed your reviews are not going through as a Local Guide, Google says to continue to post reviews as normal, and they will automatically fix the issues. At least, you can hope Google does, and if not, you can always request Google to manually review your submission.
So you may see a number of reviews previously not listed on your business show up in a few weeks when Google reruns its review protections.
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About the author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.
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