Google Reviews Disappeared!?!?!? What's the deal?

[yagoparamo]

I see what you are saying. I apologize if my post came across sounding like I was implying that any of the dealers here would be trying to game Google or were duped by one of these companies. It was merely what I had observed in my area and for the sake of those who stumble on this topic. For a while it seemed like every other vendor had a Reputation Management program they would pitch, but not all are created equal.
I actually do understand why Google would not allow reviews from the same IP and would filter them out, far too much abuse was going on and Google reviews got to the point you couldn't trust them at all. We hired sales people from some of our local competitors and they would talk about the previous dealer giving extra incentives to customer for reviews on the spot, they would hand out tablets to the sales staff and spiff them to write reviews while they were waiting for ups. So Google had to do something to make the reviews legit and repair their own reputation. It’s a shame it has affected dealers that were playing by the rules and got burned because of the practices of those who were not. I am just not sure how Google would be able to tell the difference though.

No phun intended just trying to stay on subject. Most of the review threads deviate quickly into what I do Vs what you do type of argument.

The adwords team said that they are going to try to get our reviews back...but also told me not to hold my breath as they have very little control over manually fixing an account.

OK so at least of you are spending money with G you can reach out and you may get some help. For those of you in need of help: Spend $500/month in G adwords and ask for help!

 

[yagoparamo]

Good story and some feedback about the issue from Greg Goebel:

Man Bites Dog? A Way to Fight the Deleted Google Reviews Dilemma - Auto Dealer People

 

[ryan.leslie]

Yago,

The author of this post is missing one very key component to this issue, the site hosting the data has the right/responsibility to monitor the content and protect their own brand from degradation by enforcing a reasonable TOU.

It pains me to say this, but it appears that there was finally enough evidence in Google's mind that they had a problem big enough to warrant a sweeping change that resulted in a lot of dealers losing reviews. I don't think the FTC is going to be able to force them to host content they believe breaks their TOU, and that is clearly the case here. I'm no Google Fanboy mind you... Shame on Google for allowing the content to post in the first place and shame on those that tried to exploit Google's weak enforcement with shady "strategies" like "review syndication" and abuse of in-store collection. (I'm not assuming all stores that lost reviews were doing this. I realize that stores that weren't engaging in this lost content too. That isn't fair, but it is expected.)

The one thing that is consistently true about Google is that they consistently change things. They give and takeaway with each update.

Here's a flashback for you to the last time Google made a change that dramatically impacted reviews:
http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f43/...-third-party-reviews-search-results-1936.html

The lesson learned was don't put all your eggs in one basket and Google is ever evolving. I'm afraid that is still the lesson to be learned for some stores.

 

[yagoparamo]

Yago,

The author of this post is missing one very key component to this issue, the site hosting the data has the right/responsibility to monitor the content and protect their own brand from degradation by enforcing a reasonable TOU.

It pains me to say this, but it appears that there was finally enough evidence in Google's mind that they had a problem big enough to warrant a sweeping change that resulted in a lot of dealers losing reviews. I don't think the FTC is going to be able to force them to host content they believe breaks their TOU, and that is clearly the case here. I'm no Google Fanboy mind you... Shame on Google for allowing the content to post in the first place and shame on those that tried to exploit Google's weak enforcement with shady "strategies" like "review syndication" and abuse of in-store collection. (I'm not assuming all stores that lost reviews were doing this. I realize that stores that weren't engaging in this lost content too. That isn't fair, but it is expected.)

The one thing that is consistently true about Google is that they consistently change things. They give and takeaway with each update.

Here's a flashback for you to the last time Google made a change that dramatically impacted reviews:
http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f43/...-third-party-reviews-search-results-1936.html

The lesson learned was don't put all your eggs in one basket and Google is ever evolving. I'm afraid that is still the lesson to be learned for some stores.

I think of a lesson further beyond that:

Don't put your eggs on other people's baskets because they can change the rules any time they want.

This is why Ive been in favor of dealer branded sites and databases. I see some website companies now doing reviews within their site and I even disagree with that, you must have an external, shareable, transfereable review system.

I also completely disagree wit your statement:

"the site hosting the data has the right/responsibility to monitor the content and protect their own brand from degradation by enforcing a reasonable TOU."

If you are Dealer rater I understand this, you own a site that promises some type of QA to the consumer, Google is more than that. Arbitrarily creating rules to suit and/or advance their programs is dangerous because unlike you they are not just one website. the issue is not just enforcing the rules, the issue is that they create rules at their convenience and without warning they implement them. It will be like the US Gov. changing the day you need to pay your taxes, not telling anyone, and just rack up the penalties.

 

[Agrrip]

I guess my situation is a little different. Our social media company had set up a Google + account and a Google Places account (not sure why, it happened before I was hired). When Google merged to G+L they merged the two accounts together. After the merge, we lost the ability to reply to reviews and we lost all of our positive reviews.

It is, and has always been our dealership'(s) policy that we do not collect any reviews on-site and we have never used a reputation management company. In our eyes, we followed the TOU very closely.

Since we pay a LOT in adwords, I reached out to the adwords team to see if they could help. They told me that the two accounts (Plus and Local) created a conflict and when they merged, they threw out everything that was not duplicated between the two and removed our good reviews due to the duplication of data.

The adwords team said that they are going to try to get our reviews back...but also told me not to hold my breath as they have very little control over manually fixing an account.

Their suggestion to me was to delete one of the duplicate accounts and hope and pray that the algorithm adds the reviews back.

I should point out that we do have a review link on our website that directs people to leave reviews for us at a number of sites... See This Link. I wonder if Google is flagging our leads because the referral source on the bulk of our leads is from our site...we send a thank you card/email with every sale and from service with that link provided...

***UPDATE***

After many phone calls and emails with Google, they replaced 1/3 of our missing positive reviews as of this morning. It brought us from a rating of 4 to 17. Not quite the 24 we had, but at this point, I'll take what I can get.

They did tell me that part of the problem is that we share a business address with the Buick GMC dealership next door (same owner). They said that 2 dealerships sharing an address can flag one or both dealerships a having possible fraudulent activity. They said that if we change the addresses, we should be able to recover more reviews after 2 weeks or so. I'm not going to hold my breath...but, it's worth a try.

 

[kevinfrye]

Great article that just came out on seo.moz - note that Google is targeting automotive for "heavy spamming" in this area. Lost Your Google Reviews? Take A Proactive Stance! | SEOmoz I singled out some dealers guilty of this at my last Digital Dealer presentation for doing this. Many thanks to those dealers who tried to cheat the system and are making life miserable for the rest of us doing things right...

 

[ryan.leslie]

Great article that just came out on seo.moz - note that Google is targeting automotive for "heavy spamming" in this area. Lost Your Google Reviews? Take A Proactive Stance! | SEOmoz I singled out some dealers guilty of this at my last Digital Dealer presentation for doing this. Many thanks to those dealers who tried to cheat the system and are making life miserable for the rest of us doing things right...

Thanks for sharing that article Kevin...

I'm very against Vendor Wars as Ed puts it, but I feel like this side of the desk owns an awful lot of responsibility for this happening. I don't want to see the Vendors and consultants that enabled and/or encouraged "cheating the system" to be able to simply write this off as a "Google Change."

In a lot of ways, the only thing Google really changed was it's enforcement of their TOU.

 

[yagoparamo]

In a lot of ways, the only thing Google really changed was it's enforcement of their TOU.

I don't think that is 100% accurate, the TOU was in parts ambiguous and open to interpretation.

 

[kevinfrye]

We had 2 of our dealerships that lost reviews, and are seeing them come back now. This has been a great thread, I would highly recommend any dealers read Brian Pasch's white paper regarding this for some good direction on how to move forward from here in collecting Google reviews. Google+ Local Reviews Whitepaper

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Kevin, I was getting ready to post a link to Brian's Whitepaper. Thanks for beating me to it. Thanks for posting!!

Look as if Brian did a nice job with the WhitePaper.

I feel fortunate that none of my dealers were effected by this change Google has made. My mission from day one was to go after 100% legit reviews from outside of the dealership. Only asking customers by phone or email that had a Google account to begin with to rate their experience on Google+ (Places).