If you own a small business, then you know that Google is an essential tool for your online presence. It’s also one of the most important parts of your marketing plan because it helps prospective customers find you online and build trust in your brand. However, there can be some serious consequences if Google doesn’t approve your listing or if someone else has submitted fake reviews about you on their site. This article aims to explore the reasons behind why Google review disappears so that you can avoid such a case if possible.
You’ve changed your business location or name:
You’ve changed your business location or your business has moved or closed down. It can also be that your Google My Business account has been deleted.
If you have a few businesses, and one of them was a personal project that you built from scratch, then it may have been difficult to keep track of all of them. But what if you had more than one business? If so, changing the name of each business could be an easy way for someone else to lose track of what was going on with their account—and ultimately be unable to access their own reviews! This can happen when people use different names for each product or service they sell online (for example: “Person A” vs “Person B”), or even just change all caps into lower case letters (like this guy who did!).
You’ve added a new product or service to your repertoire:
This is the most likely reason why your Google review disappeared, because you’re no longer using it as part of your business anymore. If you have more than one product and/or service, then it’s possible that when no longer needed some reviews are removed (e.g., if you’re selling one-time use coupons). In this case, there are two things that can help: either re-ranking those reviews by priority (and possibly even adding them back into Google?). Or simply not using all of the products or services at once if still sold out. This is in order to prevent any confusion among customers who might think they’re seeing an older version when they search for certain keywords related specifically towards whatever recently discontinued items.
Your Google Review is no longer relevant:
If you’ve had a website, phone number, email address and social media profile since last year, your Google Review may be lost. If you have recently changed any of these things and they are still active (e.g., if someone with the old information has not updated their profile), then it’s very likely that the review will reappear at some point in the future. This can happen as soon as 24 hours after your change was made online. However, if this hasn’t happened within 48 hours (or even weeks later), then there’s no telling when or even if it will reappear on Google!
Your business has been hacked:
Your Google review disappears because someone who works for you has deleted it or changed your business location, removed the website from Google Maps or changed your name on the internet. That’s right: hackers can do all of these things! They don’t even need to know how to hack computers—they just have to get into your account and use an automated tool like HITSMAN by hacking software that makes it easy for them (and anyone else) to change reviews in bulk.
What to Do If Your Google Review Disappear
If you’ve recently had a Google review removed, it’s likely because something happened. Your site may have been flagged by a spam bot. Or someone who wants you to disappear from the search results. The good news is there are things that can be done to get your Google review back. But first you need to know what happened in order to take action on it! Here are six things you can do if your Google review disappeared:
Ask Google Support
If your Google review has disappeared, you can try to get it back by contacting Google support. Google support is a great resource for any Gmail user and it’s easy to reach them through the following methods:
- You can contact them directly through their help center. Or if you have an account there already, just click “Contact Us” at the bottom of each page.
- You can also file a ticket with them on their website under “My Account > My Account > Submit Ticket(s) To Us.” This will take you through several steps before reaching a live person who can help resolve your issue over the phone or via chat messaging services such as Skype or Facebook Messenger.
Check the website’s Webmaster
If a website has been removed from Google, it may be because of an error by their Webmaster. To check for this, go to http://www.webmastertools.com and enter your URL in the search bar at the top of their page. You’ll see a list of pages that have been indexed by Google. If you find any problems with them (such as missing files), contact them directly via email or phone call so that they can fix them and have them re-indexed properly within 24 hours.
Contact the site’s host
If you’ve tried to contact the site’s host and they haven’t responded, it may be that they’re not open to receiving messages from you. You can try contacting them again using another email address or phone number.
If your review has disappeared or been flagged as spam, this is often because of an issue with their servers. Contacting them again will allow them to look into why this happened and how they can resolve it for future visitors who have similar issues with their website content being affected by Google Panda updates (or any other algorithm update).
Check your spam folder
If you don’t see the review in your inbox, check the spam folder. If it’s not there, check your email and make sure that it arrived without any errors or delays.
But if you still can’t find it anywhere on Google, then it may be a phishing scam. Or it could also be some other kind of fraud attempt on your account. To verify that this is not happening to you, try checking your phone contacts list and seeing if there are any unfamiliar names in it. If so, contact these people through their direct email addresses (or call them).
Search for a new name for the page
If you can’t get your Google review back, there are a few things you can try. You can use a new domain name for the page and use it in all of its forms. Could be: .com, .org and .net. It won’t work if you use the same URL as before. This is because Google will think it’s an existing page with an old name that has been updated since then.
Or probably change up the URL (the part of web address after http://). Try something like http://example.com/new-name instead of what was there before! This way if someone were to go looking for information about your business on Google, they’d find themselves at their destination after typing the new address into their browser bar. Instead of seeing results from years ago when they might have searched earlier using just “example.”
How To Prevent Your Google Reviews from Disappearing
If you’re looking for ways to prevent your Google reviews from disappearing, you’ve come to the right place. In this section, we’ll show you how to block a reviewer and disable reviews altogether. And even how to revoke your own review if it’s been flagged as inappropriate or fake.
Blocking a reviewer
You can block a reviewer by clicking on their name and then clicking on “Block.” This will prevent them from posting future reviews, but they will still be able to see your reviews. They’ll also be notified that you’ve blocked them so they know why the review was removed. If you want to unblock someone but don’t want them posting any more reviews in the future, just click on “Remove blocking” instead. That’s all there is too it.
Disabling reviews
You’re probably wondering how you can disable reviews from appearing on your Google My Business listing. Well, there are three ways to do this:
- Go to the “Reviews” tab on your Google My Business page and click “Disable All Reviews.” Then choose whether or not you want Googlebot to be able to see these reviews in the future. This setting will only apply if it’s turned on by default (which is usually the case).
- If you have an account with other businesses that use Google My Business, they may enable their own reviews. They will do it by default or require users who want them enabled after adding them as a contact in their account settings. Either way works here. Just go into one of those accounts’ settings and look for “Disabling Reviews”. Chances are that option isn’t available yet. If it is though, head over there and turn off its “Enable Reviews” button before returning here where we’ll show how disabling works too!
Revoking a review
To be clear, revoking a review is not a good idea. It can lead to legal issues and negative reviews, which in turn makes it hard for you to get new customers from that search engine. If you do decide to revoke a review, make sure that you know exactly what you’re doing before doing so. Revoking a review will remove all of the other ones from your Google account. So, if someone is already giving you bad feedback about something else in addition to this specific issue, then those other reviews won’t come up when people are looking for information about products or services like yours on Google (or anywhere else).
The best way around this problem is by being proactive: instead of waiting until someone posts their thoughts online about how terrible working with Company ABC was, give them an opportunity first! Send out an email offering them free cake samples or some other incentive. So, they’ll feel more inclined toward writing something nice afterwards instead of leaving negative comments. That’s because they think no one cares enough about what happened between them and Company ABC anyway.
Deleting a review
Deleting a review is the easiest way to prevent future reviews from being published. To delete a review, go to the Reviews tab of your Google account and click on “Reviews” in the menu bar at the top of your screen. From there, select which reviews you want to remove and then click “Remove.” You can also undo this action by clicking on “Undo Undeletion” or using an automated tool like Review Eraser that will help you restore any deleted comments within minutes (a process called “undeleting”).
Conclusion
Considering your online presence, it’s crucial to weigh the significance of Google reviews. While many perceive them as essential, it’s wise to deliberate on their actual value for your business. Perhaps your company could benefit from them, but if not, investing in them presently might be futile. Even if you currently lack a single star review on Google (a rarity for most businesses), tomorrow’s landscape could easily shift. Therefore, it’s prudent to explore platforms like SocialWick for enhancing your social media influence, encompassing services for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and more, including followers, likes, viewers, and subscribers.