We recently faced an issue where users were telling us that they’d left Google reviews for our business, but the reviews weren’t appearing in search results. During the process of trying to resolve the issue, we uncovered a surprising number of reasons that can prevent Google reviews from showing in search results. In this episode, we share these reasons and several solutions that can help you ensure that all your Google reviews appear in Google.
*A Request*
If you’re reading this and our podcast is in your rotation, can you spare a minute to leave us a review? Reviews on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser are most welcome, but we’re really not that fussy; we appreciate any reviews you’re able to leave on your podcast platform of choice.
Referenced in this episode:
- Google Business Profile: https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/business/
- Google Business Profile customer support email: googlebusinessprofile-support[at]google.com
Connect w/ Scott:
Connect w/ SiteVisibility:
Transcript:
Today’s episode is all about reviews, and so it feels timely for me to make this request. It’s a request that I don’t think I’ve ever made before on this podcast. If you’re a listener of this podcast, please can you leave us a review? We all know the benefits of reviews. And so not only do they help us grow the podcast, but they’d let us know whether we’re on the right track in the content that we deliver to you. It really only takes a minute. And reviews on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or Google, are really appreciated.
But feel free to leave us a review on your choice of podcast platform. And if you’re listening and you’ve already left a review, we really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
In today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing with you why Google reviews for your business might not be showing in Google. And this episode was inspired by our experiences with Google reviews at SiteVisibility.
Google reviews is one of the primary mediums through which we secure social proof, and in recent years, we’ve made a conscious effort to secure more reviews via Google.
Recently, we started to experience an issue where users were telling us that they’d left a review for our business but we’d noticed that they weren’t showing in Google, and it’s the first time that we’ve ever experienced this issue.
And if you listen to the podcast, you know we’re a curious team. And so, our marketing manager, Sean Nichols, went on a mission to find out all of the reasons that Google reviews might not be showing in Google.
We ended up fixing the issue for our business, and now all of our expected Google reviews are showing. And in today’s episode, I’m going to share with you all of the common reasons that your Google reviews might not be showing and how you can fix those issues.
Let’s start with Google’s review filtering algorithms. As you might suspect, Google employs sophisticated algorithms that filter out potentially fake or harmful reviews. The algorithms that they use analyze various factors such as IP addresses, review patterns, and user behavior to determine the authenticity of reviews. If their algorithms detect any suspicious behaviour, these reviews might not be displayed publicly.
Now, of course, I’m hoping if you’re listening to this podcast, You’re smart. You’re not buying fake reviews, and you’re not tempted to buy fake reviews. But if you have been down that path or you’re tempted to go down that path, just know that it’s likely going to be a big waste of time. Either the reviews won’t show at all or best case scenario, they show for a short period of time. before they’re eventually taken down.
The delayed review processing is another reason that Google reviews might not show immediately. And this was one of the issues that seemed to impact us, which we weren’t familiar with. At the time of recording, we’ve secured 90 plus Google reviews. Many of them are 5 stars, and we’re starting to secure reviews at a greater frequency. And this is only a theory, but it’s my theory that our increased frequency of securing reviews, and the high proportion of 5 star reviews have caused our reviews to become more heavily scrutinized. And so subsequently, the moderation process is taken longer to process the reviews, and so we’re taking longer to see them. Up until recently, we’d never experience this. And when people said they left a review, we could go to Google, and it would be there almost instantly. So, our suggestion is before you reach out to Google, before you start worrying, before you go down any other avenue, just give it a couple of days to process, especially if you’re a company that receives a high volume of reviews.
Next up, we have issues with your Google business profile. So Google might not show you reviews if there are issues with your Google business profile. And common issues that could prevent reviews from being shown include inaccurate listing information, duplicate business listings, and inactive listings. Assuming that you’re familiar with Google business profile, these are easily resolved, all you need to do is jump into your Google business profile account and make sure all of your information is up to date and go through the process of removing any duplicate or inactive listings. Incomplete Google account verification can also prevent reviews from being shown. If a reviewer hasn’t verified their Google account, or if they have incomplete information within their Google account, this can prevent reviews from being visible too. And the reason here is pretty simple. Google uses verified accounts as a measure to help reduce spam and maintain the credibility of their review system. Reviews might not show on Google, if the reviewer has left a link within their review. If a user tries to leave a Google review that has a link in it, they simply won’t show. So, this is a helpful reminder that when you next ask a user to leave a review for you in Google, make sure that they don’t include a link within that review.
The visibility of reviews can also depend on the user’s privacy settings in their Google account. So users are able to limit the visibility of reviews to specific people or prevent them from appearing in Google Search altogether. So this one is a little more outside of our controllers’ businesses. But if you have someone that’s left the review that’s close to you, you can, of course, sense check whether they have privacy settings configured that may prevent reviews from showing.
And, finally, we have any recent changes or updates that Google have made to Google Business Profile. If Google is going through the process of making changes to its algorithms, its review policies, or its features, or functionality within Google Business profile, This can sometimes cause temporary glitches that may prevent the display of reviews. Again, the simple exercise here is before you start worrying about your Google reviews not appearing, just give Google business profile a quick Google to see if they’re making any updates to the platform.
So those are awesome the most common reasons that Google reviews will not show in Google. But if you listen to this episode, you’ve gone through all of the solutions that we’ve discussed in the episode, and your reviews still aren’t showing, there’s still hope.
Helpfully, Google business profile also has a support team that you can access by going into your Google business profile account or by emailing them. I’ll leave the email address in the show notes. As with any support request, we recommend before contacting them to group together as much information as you can, including any screenshots or videos that can help demonstrate the issues that you’re experiencing. Alternatively, if you’re finding that the Google business profile team is slow to respond or doesn’t respond at all, we’d recommend checking out the Google business profile community leaving a post about the issues that you’re experiencing in there and trying to catch the eye of a sympathetic Google employee or perhaps just an expert in Google business profile that hangs out there. So that’s a wrap for today’s episode. As I said at the beginning, if you could take a minute to leave a review for us on your platform of choice, we’d really appreciate it.
And if you do leave a Google review, please make sure to not include a link in it. I wish you plenty of positive reviews for your business in the week ahead. This has been the Internet marketing podcast. Take care.