Google Reviews

Written by: Gary Horsman

Ten Reasons Your Google Reviews Are Not Being Displayed

Support with Google Reviews

Over the past few months I have received many inquiries from clients about the Google Review situation. People have asked about best practice when it comes to gaining reviews. However, a significant percentage of the inquires also are related to people claiming to have received reviews and their Google reviews don’t display in the Google Knowledge Graph area.

I have looked at this closely over the past couple of months. Here are my conclusions as to reviews may not be displayed in the Google Knowledge Graph area on the right of the search results.

Google Reviews – Conformance

It is likely that your review got filtered or removed for not conforming Google’s review policies. Google is significantly about “conformance”. Based on cases I’ve looked at, here is what I’ve come up with for reasons why reviews are not being displayed.

1. The reviewer has included a URL or multiple URLs in the review.
2. The person who wrote the review is also a manager of your G+ Page.
3. The person who wrote the review has an e-mail address associated with the domain of your business.
4. The person wrote the review from the same computer or IP address that is being used to manage the Google local listing account.
5. The person wrote the review from the same IP address as other users who left reviews. This happens when a business has set up a computer for people to leave reviews. It appears to Google that these reviews are all coming from the same computer (therefore, perhaps the same person) and they are being filtered out by Google.
6. The person tried to post a review several times on different dates. For example, the person wrote a review on July 5th and it got filtered so they tried again on August 5^th and neither google review is being displayed.
7. A business has seen a big increase in the rate at which it acquired reviews. For example, a business gained 1 or 2 reviews from January to June and then 20 reviews in July.
8. The person reviewing you has also reviewed other business locations of the same business. For example, a business has several locations and the same person has reviewed all of them.
9. The person submitting the review has a completely blank G+ profile. For example there has been no activity on that Google profile before or after they left the Google review.
10. The number of Google reviews for the business is abnormally higher than most businesses in the industry. Google may therefore not display all of the reviews.

Google Reviews – Some Tips

The best way to get reviews is to ask for them. Ask for them when the client has just received the service or product and you know that they are satisfied. Provide instructions or coach them through the process. Get reviews at a steady rate by putting in place a process that is consistent with the Google guidelines.

If someone has to create a Google Account to submit the review and there will be little activity for the account after this then realize that this may be a review that may not be displayed.