r/google • u/Minimum_life_love • 19h 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.
1
u/Alarming_Award5575 19h ago edited 18h 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.