Are Your Google Reviews Disappearing? Dental Marketing Google My Business has recently come out with a new spam detection algorithm that filters reviews. This algorithm does not run on real time, which means you could have a review up for several weeks or months before it disappears. This becomes disappointing and frustrating for business owners who are working hard on getting patient reviews. Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed way to get lost reviews back. By reviewing the reasons why they were removed, you can stop this from happening in the future. Duplicate Reviews Duplicate reviews can be caused by using certain review generation platforms. These platforms, such as Birdeye, tend to link reviews to landing pages or microsites, which then show up in multiple places across the internet. We recommend responding to every patient that leaves you a review to minimize the impact of this penalty. No Reviews on Other Sites If Google My Business is the only place where you have dozens of reviews, and zero on places like Yelp and Facebook, Google will detect this as spam. It is highly unlikely to have zero reviews on other sites and hundreds on Google. The solution to this would be to ask half of your patients to leave reviews on Google and the other half to leave reviews on other sites. Patients Are Leaving Reviews at Your Office Google’s algorithm traces a review based on its IP address. If many reviews are coming from the same address, it will be detected by spam filters. Google looks at these reviews as spam because they seem to be left by an employee rather than multiple patients. By looking at the reasons why Google filters content, you can instruct patients how and when to leave reviews so they do not get deleted. To avoid your reviews from being flagged, respond to every single patient. Your online reputation or lack thereof could cost you. For any concerns regarding your Google reviews, please contact us. (847) 629-4646
