Reviews are integral to your marketing efforts, so ensuring they’re displayed on your Google Business Profile listing is crucial. All too often, reviews get lost in the mix, never to be found again. You don’t want that to happen. 

In order to ensure your Google reviews post on your GBP listing, you need to know the many reasons Google isn’t displaying them so you can take the necessary actions. If you know how to best create reviews the first time, you can provide that valuable insight to your patients (remember, the easier you make it for them to leave a review, the more likely they are to do it). 


Here’s what you can expect to take away from this episode on Google reviews:

  • Why you need to claim your Google Business Profile listing
  • Reasons your Google reviews aren’t displaying
  • How to ensure your Google reviews don’t appear spammy
  • How to contact Google Support
  • And much more

Are you ready to learn some reasons your Google reviews aren’t displaying on your Google Business Profile listing and what you can do about it? Hit the link, and let’s dive in!


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Show Notes:

  • [00:02:35] Is my Google Business Profile (GBP) the same as Google My Business (GMB)? It is. GBP has taken over for GMB.  

  • [00:03:05] Do I need to verify my GBP listing? If you haven’t, make this priority number one!

  • [00:04:32] Where should I start when trying to determine why my reviews aren’t showing up? If your GBP listing is inactive or set up incorrectly, your reviews may not display, so ensure your listing is completed and correctly set up. 

  • [00:05:19] Does language in a review matter? It does, indeed, so be sure your reviewer keeps it clean. 

  • [00:06:30] What’s an overlooked reason a review isn’t displaying? Your reviewer may have TOLD you they left the review but didn’t actually do it (yet). 

  • [00:06:40] Can I ask employees to leave reviews? Nope. If Google finds out, you’ll be flagged, and reviews will be taken down. Reviews must be real. 

  • [00:07:30] Does grammar matter? Big time. If grammar is awful, Google may assume it’s fake and not allow it to post. 

  • [00:08:35] What does Google consider to be spam? There are a handful of reasons your review may appear to be spam, so ensure your reviewer knows how to write a review that appears genuine (because it is!)

  • [00:10:06] Will Google’s algorithm affect my reviews displaying? 100%, Google’s algorithm affects everything. But, don’t worry, you have options. 

  • [00:10:48] Can I contact Google support to help me figure this out? Absolutely! support.google.com/business/gethelp 

  • [00:13:00] How long can it take for a review to show? Give it a solid six weeks before becoming concerned.  

  • [00:13:05] Should I keep collecting reviews even if they’re not displaying? YES! You always want reviews, hold on to them until the glitch is fixed (and remember, you should be using your reviews in more places than your GBP listing)

  • [00:14:24]  Is the proper setup of my GBP listing going to affect my reviews being displayed? If your GBP listing isn’t set up properly, you’ll have issues with your reviews, so ensure you’ve done all you need to for your listing before you examine each individual review.  

  • [00:15:06] What are other ways I can increase my online presence? Check out our free masterclass Five SEO Secrets to Owning the First Page of Google Without Buying Ads.

  • [00:16:09] Want to suggest a topic or guest? Please do so! I’m up for a challenge! Suggest a topic for an upcoming episode of the  Propel Your Practice Podcast 


GBP guide

Full episode transcript

It can be very frustrating to put in time and energy to collect Google reviews just to have them not displayed. On this episode of Propel Your Practice, we're looking at why your Google reviews are not displaying and what actions you should take to get those reviews to show up.

Hello and welcome to the Propel Your Practice Podcast. I'm your host Darcy Sullivan from Propel Marketing & Design. On this podcast, we discuss actionable marketing strategies to help clinic owners like chiropractors, physiotherapists, and acupuncturists, propel their practices' online presence.

And man, oh man, are we talking about a hot topic today. And that is Google reviews. It can be so frustrating when you put so much time and energy into collecting these reviews just to have them not display.

Before we do a deep dive into Google reviews, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to join a free masterclass I put together on the Five SEO Secrets to Owning the First Page of Google Without Buying Ads.

You can find a link to sign up for this free masterclass in the Show Notes for this episode or by visiting propelyourcompany.com/learn

During this workshop, we do a deep dive into strategies to help you improve your online presence. Including your Google Business Profile, that's what used to be called the Google My Business listing and what controls the Google Maps section. Along with how voice SEO plays a big role in today's search and where you should be focusing your efforts online for the biggest impact. 

Again, you can join the masterclass by visiting propelyourcompany.com/learn

Okay, back to the topic of this episode: Google reviews. 

So let's start with the basics. Your Google reviews are associated with your Google Business Profile listing. This is what used to be called your Google My Business listing and what controls the way your information is displayed in Google Maps, along with the knowledge panel when someone searches for your clinic.

If you have yet to verify your Google Business Profile listing or optimize that listing, that's step number one. And I'm going to give you a couple resources for that- we recently did a podcast called How to Use Your Google Business Profile Listing to Generate New Leads; you can find a link to that episode in the Show Notes or by visiting our website, propelyourcompany.com

There's also two great blog posts that you can find on propelyourcompany.com; one is What Every Chiropractor Needs to Know About Their Google Business Profile, and there is a Google Business Profile, the Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Listing

And you can simply go to propelyourcompany.com and search for “Google Business Profile” to get any of those excellent resources.

So, let's look at some of the reasons your reviews are not displaying, and then we're going to go into what actions you should take if you're having the issue of your reviews not displaying. 

Now, just a little note, I'm recording this in July 2022. Right now, these are some of the most common reasons why reviews are not displaying:

  • If your business listing is new or your business profile is inactive, it could cause your reviews to not display

  • Reviews that are left from the same IP address that was used by somebody else who left a review, usually do not display

  • If you offer public wifi, you've logged into your Google Business Profile account from that wifi, and your patients or customers have logged into the same wifi when they left the review, your review might not display

  • If the review contains a phone number, it will not display

  • If the review contains restricted language, like profanity or racial slurs, it will not display 

  • If you've hired a company to post your reviews, they will not display

  • If you have an on-site review station, you're going to have issues with those reviews displaying 

  • If the review is located nowhere near you or has never physically visited your location, then Google will flag it, and it might not display

  • If you hired a company to post reviews for you, again, that's another reason why Google might flag your reviews

  • If your business has recently changed locations, that also might be a reason why your reviews on your listing will not display

  • Now, one that people don't always think about is that the person might not actually have left the review. It could be that they just said, “Oh yeah, of course, I'll leave you a review,” but you want to make sure that they actually physically took the actions to leave the review

  • Reviews will not display if Google thinks it's from a current or former employee 

  • If Google thinks that you are paying for or incentivizing for reviews, they will not display, so one thing to think about there is you want to spread out the ways and the times that you collect your reviews- so if you're going after reviews by sending out email campaigns, don't send the email campaign to your complete list on one specific day, because they might all leave reviews during that specific time period, which could be a red flag to Google

  • Another reason why your reviews might not be displaying is because the user could have deleted the review 

  • It could be that there were bad grammatical errors that made that review look fake– and I've seen this happen a lot of times– where it's just that the person leaving the review really did not use proper grammar 

  • Or it could be even as simple as their wording, like they might've said, “Oh, the location provided a family-style atmosphere.” And so Google grabs onto the word “family,” and it's like, “Oh, maybe this is a  person talking about them being family instead of that it's a family-style atmosphere”

  • If in any way it looks like it was a bot that left a review

  • Or if the reviews are repetitive, meaning that there's three or four reviews in a row saying this person was an amazing chiropractor or this person helped me with my back pain, it could be a red flag to Google

Here are some things that Google considers when it's looking to decide if a review is fake or spammy:

  • Does the review reflect a genuine experience? 

  • Has the review been posted just to manipulate the practice’s ratings? 

  • Is the review content actually real and relevant to the location? 

  • Has the exact same review been posted before on different dates?

  • Has the person reviewed multiple times? 

  • They're going to check to see if it seems to be on-topic. 

And in fact, if you look at Google reviews, you'll see that they bold keywords that are related to your topic. So if you are a chiropractor and somebody leaves a review stating that you help them get rid of their back pain, you'll see the phrase “back pain” is bolded, or if they mentioned a chiropractic adjustment, you'll see “chiropractic adjustment” showing in a bold font. 

So you want to make sure that the testimonial that they leave, the review that they leave, sounds real, authentic, and it does not contain any bad grammar.

And we also have to remember that sometimes Google's algorithm is just really aggressive with the spam filters, and it keeps reviews from showing up. 

So what do you do? What do you do if you're missing reviews or if your reviews have disappeared?

I cannot promise you that taking the following actions will guarantee that your reviews will get reinstated, but the following are my suggestions for the actions you should take: 

You should put together this Google Doc before you contact support- on this Google Doc, you want to include examples. For instance, if someone sent you a screenshot of a testimonial that they left, which they can see on their phone or computer, but it's not displaying associated with your Google Business Profile listing.

You want to make sure that the Google Doc is accessible by whoever you are sharing the document with, so make sure that you adjust the settings on your Google Doc so that you can easily share it as a resource and as a place to collect all information associated with any of your Google reviews that are not properly displaying. 

It needs to show the team at Google, the support team, all of the details. In most cases, they'll be able to get your reviews to show up.  

In situations where you're not, they're not able to help, add your customer support ID number to the Google Doc, and then create a new thread at the Google Business Profile Community Forum

You want to keep it brief with one or two sentences explaining your problem and a link to the Google Doc, and that Google Doc should include screen captures of the testimonials.

So if somebody says that they're leaving you a review, they can show you the review on the phone, but it's not displaying, just drop that image into the Google Doc. 

It's also important to note that it can take a while for some reviews to show up, so keep in mind that your reviews might not show up for four to six weeks.

You want to be patient, and if you are using a third party to collect reviews and they're not displaying, try collecting them manually to see if that is something that is causing the issues. 

And whatever you do, don't stop collecting reviews. Keep on going, make sure that you continue to actively collect your reviews.

So, we shared tons of reasons why your reviews might not be showing up. And to be honest, it could be a number of things. It could be that Jan left a review, and she tried to include a link in it. And Bob left a review, and his grammar was horrible. 

It could be then that Jake tried to leave a review, but it looked like he was leaving it from your location at the same time as Sam was leaving a review from your location. 

So you've got to look at the reviews on an individual basis to try to figure out what's causing the problem. 

Now, of course, there can be the problem that umbrellas all of these, being that you have not claimed your Google Business Profile listing, have not filled out the proper information for it, or have recently changed locations, which can confuse Google. Or you have multiple listings for your Google Business Profile. 

So you want to make sure that you go through and that you make sure that all is in check and proper with your Google Business Profile listing before going through and determining the cause and the reason that each one of your reviews is not displaying.

Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you gained some value out of this and that it helps you start to identify what could be causing your reviews to not display and that you now know the actions you can take to help get those resolved.

Well, hey, before we head out, I want to invite you to join in on a free masterclass I put together on the Five SEO Secrets to Owning the First Page of Google Without Buying Ads.

You can find a link to sign up for this free masterclass in the Show Notes of this episode or by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn

During this workshop, we do a deep dive into strategies to help you improve your online presence. Including your Google Business Profile, that's what used to be called the Google My Business listing and what controls the Google Maps section. Along with how voice SEO plays a big role in today's search and where you should be focusing your efforts online for the biggest impact. 

All right. Well, that's it for today. Again, you can join the masterclass by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/learn. And if you have a topic that you would like to hear on an upcoming episode of Propel Your Practice, please send it in by visiting PropelYourCompany.com/podcast-topics or looking for the link in the show notes. 

Thanks so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon. 

Darcy’s SEO strategies are easy to implement and effective. She’s the #1 SEO expert I refer to whenever I need help with my rankings.

 

SEO queen! I can’t thank Propel and Darcy enough for holding my hand through the SEO process! I’m loving the podcast and all the insight! Also loving that my business is now getting the brand awareness and sales I’ve always wanted!

 


Wow! Clear, concise and impactful. Excellent details and tips - already seeing a return!! Worth the 20 min listen.

 

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Sponsors

This episode of the Propel Your Practice Podcast is brought to you by Propel Marketing & Design. Propel Marketing & Design helps Chiropractors, Acupuncturists, Physical Therapists, Wellness Practitioners, and other clinic owners improve their website rankings.


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