Have you received a Google+ reviews that has later disappeared? Don’t worry, you didn’t imagine that review. This happens because Google has a very aggressive spam filter when it comes to reviews and even legitimate reviews can turn up as spam under their radars. In this situation, the review writer can see their review but no one else can. While the review they wrote may be completely appropriate, a this point, there is no way to retrieve your review.
To avoid having this happen again, here are some things to avoid doing in reviews or mentioning to people you ask to review your company:
1. Don’t reference a person’s name in the review as this could be a signal of spam.
2. Repetition of words in a review. Having the same words repeated could be a signal of spam.
3. If you write a review on Google and another site, make sure the reviews are varied
4. Solicited reviews are more likely to disappear
5. Review frequency. Posting tons of reviews out of the blue all at once might get your profile flagged and your reviews pulled.
A Note on Solicited Reviews
We have alwasy recommended that our clients ask for reviews from their clients or people they know that have used their services many times. This, however, is a practice that is frowned upon by Google and may flag your reviews as spam.
Based on the Google+ guidelines, it is fine if you reach out to customers to ask them to review, but we do not recommend that you do this in waves. If you want to reach out to a customers and ask them to review, I recommend you contact them immediately after you have done business with them so it would mimic the regular flow of leaving a review. Instead of asking all the clients you’ve done business with in the past month to write a review, instead ask clients from the past week.
If you would like to read more on this topic, Mike Blumenthal writes extensively on this and other Google+ issues.
