A happy customer leaves a review on your Google listing.
Five stars. Well-chosen words. A detailed description of your experience.
It almost makes you want to print it and frame it.
But… surprise!
Google decides it is not worthy of seeing the light. It hides it. It buries it. As if it never existed.
Why?
Because Google filters reviews like a paranoid antivirus.
One of the most common reasons is that the review was written from far away.
According to their logic, your customers can only be a maximum of a two-hour drive from your business. If someone leaves a review from another city or country, Google gets suspicious and sends it to digital limbo.
Other times, the system gets picky about certain words and decides that such well-intentioned text looks like spam.
In short: your happy customer speaks well of you and Google muzzles him.
How to recover a missing review
If this has happened to you, don’t worry. Here’s a trick that works better than rebooting a troubled computer:
1️⃣ Ask the customer to delete the review. (Yes, one step back to move two steps forward).
2️⃣ Search for your business on Google.
3️⃣ Click the call button and talk to you for a minute. (No need to philosophize about life, a simple “Hi, I was calling because…” is enough).
4️⃣ I will rewrite the review.
🎩✨ The result?
It appears instantly.
Google, satisfied with the real interaction between customer and business, decides that it is now a valid opinion.
Moral of history
If Google plays hide and seek with your reviews, you now have a way to win the game.
And if you have not yet started to take care of your online reputation, now is the time to do it. Because a well-managed review can bring you more customers than a thousand ads.
