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Google reviews and how to respond to them...

My respond button disappeared! I have a negative review that I want to respond to, but I see no way to do it?

If I am logged in to Google Places, it does not show the respond button for that location (but does on our other locations). It acts like I haven't claimed this particular place, yet it shows in my locations and when I try to claim it, it directs me back to my existing listing?

Anyone else having a problem with this??
 
My respond button disappeared! I have a negative review that I want to respond to, but I see no way to do it?

If I am logged in to Google Places, it does not show the respond button for that location (but does on our other locations). It acts like I haven't claimed this particular place, yet it shows in my locations and when I try to claim it, it directs me back to my existing listing?

Anyone else having a problem with this??

We are having the same issue. Here is Google's email response:

"Hello,

If I'm understanding the inquiry correctly, it sounds like the user is having trouble responding to reviews because of multiple accounts on the same listing. Having multiple owners on the same listing can cause a problem with being able to respond to reviews.

In this situation, I would advise you to delete the listing from one of your accounts by logging in and clicking the link "Delete" and choosing the option to remove the listing from your account. You may have to wait for that delete to register in our system and for you to become the only verified owner. This usually takes 1-2 weeks.

Please let me know if there is any additional questions that you have.

Sincerely,
Kristopher C.
The Google AdWords Team"


Our issue stems from the fact that when Google merged Plus and Places (we had separate logins for each), they merged our two logins to the same G+L account. This caused our account to be flagged for TOU violation causing us to have our reviews deleted and locked us out from being able to respond to reviews. We also had a secondary issue due to the fact that there are two separate dealerships that share the same address (same owner).

We went in and changed the address to the dealership(s) (Added and "A" and a "B" to the address) and this gave us back half of our reviews. As of this morning, I deleted the old Google Places account and I'm hoping this fixes our lack of ability to respond to negative reviews. Google stated in a previous email (see below) that this could take up to 2 weeks for their system to fix once I removed one of the accounts.

"Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Google.

The two accounts you are referring to are actually sharing the same listing. Being they are the same business our system has automatically merged the listings together. Being it is "owned" by two accounts it can cause issues with replying to reviews. In order to fix this issue you will need to log in on the email address you do not want associated with and delete the listing from the account. It may take some time for this to take effect, being the change will not go through until the next update it may take 1-2 weeks. Thank you for your patience while we looked into this.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team"
 
My respond button disappeared! I have a negative review that I want to respond to, but I see no way to do it?

If I am logged in to Google Places, it does not show the respond button for that location (but does on our other locations). It acts like I haven't claimed this particular place, yet it shows in my locations and when I try to claim it, it directs me back to my existing listing?

Anyone else having a problem with this??

You can do it through your Google+ account from the local tab - did you claim your business with Google+ Local? When you go to your previous Google Places page, Google is forwarding it to the new Google+ page now.
 
You can do it through your Google+ account from the local tab - did you claim your business with Google+ Local? When you go to your previous Google Places page, Google is forwarding it to the new Google+ page now.

When I look for the "Respond" button from Google + Local, it is not there. It was properly claimed, but as suggested above, it is probably somehow related to having multiple locations.
 
When I look for the "Respond" button from Google + Local, it is not there. It was properly claimed, but as suggested above, it is probably somehow related to having multiple locations.

Emily, I'm not sure if this applies to you or not...but, I manage a couple of different pages and it seems that Google shows the respond button one way for one and another way for the other.

Look at the screenshots below:


  • Log into your G+L account as you normally would
    • If you notice on my screenshot, my "Respond" link is missing
    • At the top of the page there is a bar that should state that, "You are a manager of this page"
      • There is a button next to it that says, "Switch to this page" <-- click that button
Respond 1.jpg




  • The top of the page should now say that, "You are using Google+ as a page"
    • Click the "About" tab
      • You should now have a RESPOND button
Respond2.jpg


Hopefully you are not in the same boat that I was in...I had to delete one of my accounts and Google was able to re-sync it back...there was a lot of risk in that in that I had to be prepared to lose everything on Google.
 
Emily, I'm not sure if this applies to you or not...but, I manage a couple of different pages and it seems that Google shows the respond button one way for one and another way for the other.....
Hopefully you are not in the same boat that I was in...I had to delete one of my accounts and Google was able to re-sync it back...there was a lot of risk in that in that I had to be prepared to lose everything on Google.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be an option for me. If I log into Places, and click on "See your listing on Google", it sends me here:
G+Local.jpg

There is no "Respond" button, and there is no place to switched between managed pages. I have successfully claimed this page or Places would not show it as an active/supported listing in my Account. Also, on the right side of the screenshot, you will see the Manage this Page button. When that is clicked, it takes me back to my listings.

Another side note. The information in the backend of Places still does not match what Local displays due to a mashup of places from a long time ago. Local displays it as Fitzgerald Auto Mall with incomplete categories, missing info, etc. The backend shows Fitzgerald Volkswagen with a different description and info. I don't want to delete it because there is a history with Google there and alot of positive reviews that I really don't want to lose.
 
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be an option for me. If I log into Places, and click on "See your listing on Google", it sends me here:


There is no "Respond" button, and there is no place to switched between managed pages. I have successfully claimed this page or Places would not show it as an active/supported listing in my Account. Also, on the right side of the screenshot, you will see the Manage this Page button. When that is clicked, it takes me back to my listings.

Another side note. The information in the backend of Places still does not match what Local displays due to a mashup of places from a long time ago. Local displays it as Fitzgerald Auto Mall with incomplete categories, missing info, etc. The backend shows Fitzgerald Volkswagen with a different description and info. I don't want to delete it because there is a history with Google there and alot of positive reviews that I really don't want to lose.

Looks like you have the same issue I had. My screen was the exact same as yours until I deleted one of our accounts. The account I deleted was our original Google Places (and Youtube) account. Our reviews weren't affected, but we did lose our YouTube videos.

It took 3 days to get the respond button back after deleting our original account.

Good Luck. You may try reaching out to Google's adwords team. That's how I started this process with our dealership.

Another option to try is to change your address just slightly. We share the same address as Ewing Buick GMC and when I changed our address (added STE 1) we got half our reviews back. That may work...like above, it took 4 or 5 days for the change to make an impact. For what ever reason, the STE 1 does not show up online anywhere.