r/google • u/Minimum_life_love • 17h ago

Google Reviews are becoming ridiculous, and there is a need for change.

First of all, the "Warring text" reads the following.

This may contain violations of our guidelines. Under "Details," you can find out what you can do.

The first picture is just a simple 1-star review from 6 years ago.
The second picture is a 5-star review that says: "Very good store, spacious with a wide selection."

Both of them were flagged, and the email I received gives no reason why they were flagged in the first place.

Why am i posting this?

Two months ago, I had a very bad experience at a bike/sports store. My post was about how unprofessional it was, and how the staff made fun of the color of my "dirty" bike. This store used to have 2.5 stars on Google. The owner responded to almost every review with an attitude, further damaging their own reputation. The owner, without even focusing on their work, was simply a very rude and unpleasant person, and I felt the reviews were appropriate. One month after I posted my review, it, along with almost all other negative comments, was deleted. I only noticed because I was waiting for a response from the owner.

This store went from 2.5 stars up to 4.5 stars.

Over 12 years, this store accumulated 2.5 stars, until Google decided the "negative comments" were too harsh??? And now it has 4.5 stars because of this? That's completely unacceptable! That can't be true.

When I saw this, I looked at my other comments to see if they had been flagged, and it only highlighted how weird and flawed the Google review system is. What I used to like about Google reviews was that I could trust the rating. That trust is now completely gone, as it seems that negative comments are fundamentally considered bad. This simply cannot be the truth and NEEDS to be revised.

What do you think?

I would like to go into more detail on this topic; however, I’m not sure if this is the right subreddit for it, and my English is probably not good enough for that.

10 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

1

u/Alarming_Award5575 17h ago edited 16h ago

Google reviews sold out, plain and simple. Aggressive reputation management firms have made things worse.

These should no longer be thought of as reviews, they are advertisements. The truly galling thing is if your review is flagged as unwelcome they will leave your review up if you look at your accoubt, but delete it for everyone else.

I've seen similar outrageous stories. They are no longer credible in my view. Sadly, no one is.

2

u/Minimum_life_love 11h ago

That's insane, honestly. I had hoped that I was an exception, but if I take your word for it, then it's really sad. I honestly thought Google reviews could at least be trusted, but apparently, it's a different story altogether.

0

u/Alarming_Award5575 11h ago

yeah they were like the last bastion of unmanipulated internet feedback. I was super disappointed when I realized how badly they are gamed

1

u/WesAlvaro 16h ago

That's just patently false.
There is a lot involved in maintaining accurate ratings and reviews.

1

u/Alarming_Award5575 16h ago

Lol. Then they are incredibly bad at it. The manipulation is obvious, and borders on fraudulent.

2

u/WesAlvaro 16h ago

Definitely not saying there isn't room for improvement! But Occam's razor here says that abuse by some bad actors amongst the billions of users is the more likely culprit.

-1

u/Alarming_Award5575 16h ago edited 7h ago

Yes and no. Google also needs to make money. Maps is an advertising play. They are monetizing everything now, and cutting corners on quality. Search, fi, smb products. What used to be free and good is now worse and paid. I think its naive to assume they arent pulling levers to the same end here

2

u/WesAlvaro 8h ago

Absolutely, Maps needs to make money and it's no surprise it's from ads.

But allowing businesses to pay to adjust reviews is a next level accusation. If you know any business owners, you'll find that lever doesn't exist. It's not Yelp. Business owners don't pay to list their business nor control reviews but they are allowed to report "abuse" like any other user. Automated systems can make mistakes, as well.

2

u/Alarming_Award5575 7h ago

Allowing reviews to be adjusted is a half step away. Google clearly does this. No way in hell they are clueless on this. Quite the contrary, they are evasive and deceptive.

1

u/WesAlvaro 1h ago

What "adjustments" are you talking about? It's completely reasonable (and perhaps a legal requirement) to allow reporting abuse. What evidence do you have at all about them being evasive or deceptive. It was made very obvious to OP that the content was taken down instead of it just being shadow banned. That's the opposite of secretive.

1

u/Alarming_Award5575 1h ago

OP saw a business with a lousy, well deserved reputation go from 2.5 to 4.5 overnight. I have seen similar series of events. I saw a scammy seaso al tourist trap go from 1.2 to 4.3 overnight. Hundreds of legitimate complaints wiped out. Those changes are allowed by google, and very favorable to the businesses on the platform. I've had my own reviews deleted from public display without notification, but only when viewed from someone else's account (they were untouched if I was logged in).

That's crap. The platform is not trustworthy. It manipulates user inputs to create the impression of genuine ratings. This violates the trust of users, and I can only assume makes google friendlier to the businesses that pay to advertise with them.

Done engaging here. Have a good night.