Reviews are the hallmark of a business’s online reputation. If you’re wondering why your Google reviews aren’t showing up and what you can do about it, don’t worry.
Whether it’s a technical glitch or a policy violation, in this blog post, we’ll uncover the 12 reasons why your online reviews are not appearing. We’ll also provide tips on how to fix missing Google reviews quickly.
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Table of contents
- What is Google’s review policy?
- 12 Reasons why Google reviews are not showing up and how to fix it
- 1. Inaccurate listing information
- 3. Inactive listings
- 4. Reviews from current or former employees
- 5. Reviews with links and URLs
- 6. You’ve been paying for/ incentivizing reviews
- 7. Profanity in Google review
- 8. User deleted Google review
- 9. There could be a bug with Google
- 10. Your business isn’t opened to the public yet
- 11. Older operating systems might be causing issues leaving a review
- 12. Your Google Profiles have recently merged
- Use missing Google reviews as an opportunity
- FAQs about Google reviews not showing up
- Start managing your Google reviews with Birdeye
What is Google’s review policy?
Google’s review policy is designed to provide people with honest, unbiased feedback about products and services. It discourages businesses from preventing reviewers from leaving negative reviews and states that you give every reviewer an equal opportunity to provide authentic feedback.
Here are a few key takeaways from Google’s review policies:
- Include details about the customer’s experience in order to be posted.
- Flags anonymous reviews written to mislead customers.
- Prohibits reviews written as spam and fake content to manipulate.
- Off-topic reviews that don’t specify how the business’s product/service is.
- Contain hate speech, illegal, abusive, derogatory, and explicit content are removed.
- Written in the language intended for the target audience, or else they will be removed.
- Sharing personal information is restricted.
- Sharing the same content multiple times from multiple accounts.
Reviews are automatically processed to detect and scan to adhere to predetermined Google guidelines. Google only allows reviews from verified customers, meaning users must have purchased a product or service directly from the company.
What is a Google-verified customer review?
A Google-verified customer review is a review a customer leaves after buying from a business. Your business’ ratings and reviews appear on Search Ads. The higher the review ratings, the better chance you’ll be featured among the top 5 results.
Did you know that, as per G2, 92.4% of respondents say reading a trusted review makes them more likely to purchase a B2B product? A positive customer review builds your credibility and doubles the impact.
12 Reasons why Google reviews are not showing up and how to fix it
It can be frustrating if some of your customer reviews are missing from Google. Your review counts matter, and a review can influence potential customers to trust your company.
From technical glitches and policy violations to incomplete product listings, understanding why a review is missing will help your business reviews show up quickly.
There are 12 main reasons why this might happen, but we’re here to help.
So, why aren’t your Google reviews showing up? The following are the top three listing issues that may be causing disappearing Google reviews.
1. Inaccurate listing information
Incorrect listing information can not only hurt your SEO, won’t just hurt your local SEO efforts. It can also reduce the number of reviews your company gets from customers.
Luckily, there’s an easy fix. You can edit your information in your Google Business Profile.
Here’s how to fix inaccurate listing information:
- First, log into your Google account.
- Find the location or listing you want to edit and click “View profile.”
- Then select “Business information” and find the selection you want to edit.
- Select the pencil icon to add or edit information.
- Finally, make the edits and click “Apply.”
Once you’ve updated your business information, you’ll see more reviews displayed on your listings. This is because your customers will know that is your authentic profile and want to leave a review.
2. Duplicate Business listings
Having multiple Google Business listings might also be why you’re not seeing the reviews you’re expecting. Your customers might accidentally leave reviews in the duplicate listings when they should be leaving them on your primary business listing.
To solve this problem, you’ll need to remove any duplicate listings you have.
Here’s how to remove duplicate listings:
- First, log into your Business Profile Manager.
- Next, go to Manage locations.
- From there, check the boxes for any duplicate listings you want to be removed.
- Then click “Actions” and Remove location.
3. Inactive listings
If you’ve been logged out of your Google Business Profile listing for a while, there’s a chance that Google might have unverified your business listing. Google says it will un-verify business listings if companies are inactive on their Google Business Profile page for more than six months.
Suppose you’ve lost verification on your business listing. In that case, it’s essential that you regain your verification not only to collect reviews but to also edit your Google Business listing and respond to Google reviews.
The solution: Contact Google support to re-verify your business.
Now, let’s talk about issues with the reviews themselves.
If the issue isn’t with your Business Page, chances are it’s an issue with the review itself. If a review violates Google’s policies, it will be flagged or removed. Let’s run through the next five common reasons why a Google review might have an issue.
4. Reviews from current or former employees
Reviews that were paid for or incentivized are a big red flag for Google. Under no circumstances should you be buying Google reviews.
Turn negative reviews into positive ones. Even if your customer had a negative experience and decided to vent their anger through a not-so-pleasant review, encourage them to review maturely or see if you can take the conversation offline.
5. Reviews with links and URLs
This one is simple but can cause some issues. Google doesn’t allow reviews to have any outbound links to other websites. If they do, they’ll be removed.
The solution: In your review request, advise your customers not to include links in their reviews.
6. You’ve been paying for/ incentivizing reviews
Reviews that were paid for or incentivized are a big red flag for Google. Under no circumstances should you be buying Google reviews.
If you’ve been paying for or incentivizing reviews, you’ll have your reviews deleted. Even worse, Google will penalize your company in search rankings.
The solution: NEVER buy Google reviews, no matter how tempting this may be.
7. Profanity in Google review
Google doesn’t tolerate profanity of any kind in written reviews. If the review has any profane language, it will be removed.
The solution: Encourage customers to refrain from using profanity in their reviews.
8. User deleted Google review
It’s also possible that, for whatever reason, the customer decided to delete their own Google review.
The solution: This can be frustrating, but you can remedy this by contacting the customer directly and asking why the user deleted the review. It may have been a mistake, and you can get their review reposted.
The next two examples may be technical glitches that don’t happen very often but are still possible explanations for missing reviews on Google.
9. There could be a bug with Google
It’s not very common, but your Google reviews may not be showing up because of a bug on Google’s end, just like what happened recently when Google pushed several new changes live at once to the Business Profile.
The solution: If you think this is happening to you, you need to contact Google support.
Take note of the problems you’re having so you can immediately bring them to Google’s customer service support team. Explain in detail the technical issue you’re having in the GBP Support Form to have your reviews reinstated.
You’ll want to give your old and new CID numbers to Google. This is a unique ID that Google assigns to a business location to identify it within its systems.
Understand why a review is missing
Apart from the technical bug, your Google review is missing because it may be removed from the page for a variety of reasons. Some questions to ask:
- Is/was your profile disabled or suspended recently?
- Did any reviews violate policies?
- Did it contain any inappropriate content?
Sometimes it may happen that it wasn’t your fault. The account that was reviewed has a history of posting spammy or low-quality content. And that’s why Google is preventing your reviews from being shown.
Remember, Google only approves helpful, accurate, and trustworthy reviews.
10. Your business isn’t opened to the public yet
If you have an upcoming opening date for your company that has yet to open to the public, Google will automatically remove any reviews left by customers before opening to the public.
The solution: Wait until you are open to the public before requesting reviews from your customers.
Why is your Google review delayed?
These are two of the most probable reasons why your reviews are delayed:
- If you’ve set a future opening date for your business, any reviews left before it’s open to the public will be removed.
- Your profiles have merged recently, slowing down the reviews of Google Maps or Google Search.
11. Older operating systems might be causing issues leaving a review
If you have customers that are leaving a review on old devices and operating systems, then there are likely to be some issues with their reviews not appearing right away.
The solution: Recommend to your customers that they update their operating system and Google Maps app on their smartphone or tablet.
12. Your Google Profiles have recently merged
If you and your customer experience a specific review taking a lot longer to appear on Google Search and/or Google Maps, it could be because Google Profiles are merged. If this is the case, it will most likely be resolved in a few days, according to Google.
Use missing Google reviews as an opportunity
When your Google reviews disappear, don’t stress. Now you know why it might have happened and how to fix it. So, let this be an opportunity to motivate your company to collect more reviews from your customers.
So how can you collect more Google reviews? Send review requests to your customers via text and email with a custom short link to your Google My Business profile. Chances are that your customers will be happy to give you more feedback.
Check out our article on how to get more Google reviews in 5 steps.
FAQs about Google reviews not showing up
When you post a review, it can take some time to get “posted.” Open an incognito window to check if it’s a technical glitch. If not, the review is under Google’s moderation process.
While you might see reviews almost instantly, there are business owners that report waiting 2-7 business days to actually see these reviews appear online.
Possibly. It is not common, but it happened when Google recently made several new changes to Business Listings.
To fix your Google reviews:
Check if something went wrong when your customer left the review.
Contact your customer to understand if it was a technical issue.
Contact Google Business Profile Help.
No, Google reviews don’t expire. New ones get better visibility because they are recent, but you or your customers can scroll to view past reviews.
No, Google doesn’t manually approve reviews. But it does automatically processes to detect inappropriate content like fake reviews and spam.
No, Google doesn’t allow any company or business to delete reviews. Only the reviewer who wrote the review can delete it. But, businesses can request Google to remove an inappropriate review.
Start managing your Google reviews with Birdeye
You might have two reviews or two hundred. No matter where your company stands, Birdeye is here to make things easier. We’ve helped over 100,000 businesses get more reviews from their happy customers and build a strong online reputation on a single, easy-to-use platform.
Originally published
