Positive Reviews Face Deletion as Google Tightens Moderation Against Fake Ratings

There has been a trend going on where the reviews of Google are declining and their local visibility has also started to decrease. Google reviews are important to bring trust among customers so this trend is worrisome for search engine optimizers (SEOs) and small businesses. Negative reviews aren't the only ones which are getting deleted, because positive reviews are also suddenly getting less visible. To uncover why this is happening and how to get through this, GMBapi analyzed 5 million reviews from customers in 70 countries and the results are surprising. Most of us must be thinking that negative reviews are the ones which are being targeted for deletion on Google, but the results of the analysis show that 73.1% of the reviews which were deleted on Google are actually five star rated.

This shows that Google is actually trying to make its platform free from fake reviews as there are many businesses which buy reviews so that they can attract more customers. One star reviews (12.8%) were the ones which were the second most deleted reviews on Google, probably because of the use of abusive and inappropriate language used in them. As the reviews with two to four stars (8% to 2%) are more balanced and mostly show honest reviews, they were very less likely to be deleted by Google.

Now the question arises whether review deletions can cause algorithm updates on Google, and the answer is that it is very unlikely. The rapid review deletions by Google also suggests that there were few changes made in review moderation by Google, but the SEO world hasn't studied how this can impact businesses and local ranking algorithms. There could be some algorithm changes as Google moderates more reviews but saying anything about it is too early.

One thing that the analysis of reviews found was that reviews which had no replies were more likely to get deleted (66.1%). This suggests that businesses need to get engaged with their customers and reply to their reviews as this will help maintain a positive reputation of the business. Only 33.9% of the reviews with replies got deleted by Google. The type of reviews that got deleted the most were “Service and Staff” which talks about staff friendliness, customer service quality and expertise of the business. The second most deleted reviews were about “product of Service Quality”, followed by “Environment and Accessibility”.

GMBapi also developed a machine learning model called Random Forest Algorithm to find out what factors in a review resulted in its deletion. Factors like review leng, sentiment and rating were the most important ones when it came to Google review moderation. This analysis highlights that it is important for businesses to embrace local SEO tools, engage with their reviewers, report fake reviews and avoid incentivized reviews.

Read next: AI Overviews Dominate Search, Taking 48% of Mobile Screen Space
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World