Google only posting some reviews?

[TomBristol]

A doctor of mine recently complained that his patient went on to his Google+ Local listing and submitted a review, but it never showed up. The patient can see it on his own page, but it's not viewable publicly.

Any ideas or posts you've seen about this?

Thanks!

Tom

[KevinBudzynski]

Tom,

From Google (may not answer your question though):

Here are some potential reasons reviews might not post, as outlined in this sticky post.

• Duplicate listings of the business. If we've got more than one page representing a business, reviews may live on one but not the other.- Old reviews. Reviews written before the Google+ Local launch display differently and may be difficult to find. You can upgrade the display of old reviews by trying to write a new review of any place.- Review sort. The default review sort on a page is by Most Helpful. Your recent review is not necessarily the first one to appear. You can change the sorting of reviews to Most Recent using the drop down menu above the first review.- URLs in reviews. We don't allow URLs in reviews. If you edit your review to remove the URL, it should post almost immediately.- Marked as spam. We can't share details about what exactly constitutes as spammy behavior, but the goal is to ensure that users viewing pages see only quality, legitimate information to make informed decisions. We know that sometimes our algorithms may flag and remove legitimate reviews in our effort to combat abuse, but believe that overall, these measures are helping to ensure that the reviews appearing on local Google+ pages are authentic, relevant and useful. Here's our reviews posting guidelines and policy: http://goo.gl/LtFCS

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kevin,

Google's review product has been buggy since day one, but as of the rollout of the new Google+ system, the rise in review issues has been totally astronomical. The Google and Your Business Forum is literally drowning in complaints about this.

Read Mike Blumenthal's quick post: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/07/30/google-local-and-review-issues/

And here's another one from Mike that's been widely cited: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/24/asking-for-reviews-post-apocalypse/

I have seen lots and lots of threads in the Google forum about reviews being visible when logged in, but not in public.

Here's one: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/XQYWVOCFebc

Here's another: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/review$20only$20visible/business/9ro8W8hzKiM/CALKB8W7vwAJ

I wrote a post here at SEOmoz back in August on the subject of lost reviews:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lost-your-google-reviews-take-a-proactive-stance

However, despite the efforts of things like the Mike Blumenthal consolidated thread of lost reviews (referenced in my above blog post) the review system continues to be totally broken. This is a cause of huge frustration, particularly since Google has made it increasingly difficult to even leave a review. When so many of them get filtered out, the appeal of making an effort to review a business is certainly diminished. Google is basically trying to fight spam - which is good - but they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater in too many cases when it comes to reviews.

[TomBristol]

Thanks Kevin - it's helpful to see where Google stands on the matter.

Miriam - you're amazing. Thank you so much for your help so far on this. I'm going to read those articles. I think they'll get me pointed in the right direction so I can tell my client what's happening.

Thanks again!!

Tom

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure, Tom! Google reviews are important, for sure - widely considered to be a ranking factor in their algo, but I'd advise the doctor to get reviews in a variety of places, just so that all his eggs aren't in one basket.

[TomBristol]

Ah! Excellent point. Thanks!