There’s been a bit of an issue in more recent months where Reviews posted to Google Maps aren’t being made public. They appear for the review’s author while they are logged in, but if you log out or view the same business listings in incognito mode, the reviews aren’t displayed. This appears to go regardless for reviews that are either positive, neutral or negative.

Got someone at Google to investigate, but it feels like I’m being strung along. Appears Google deployed some rather crude and improperly set up Artificial Inteligence (AI) / Machine learning (ML) Algorithm (which is rather imprecise and inaccurate) in a botched attempt to moderate their review platform and battle fake reviews which has resulted in swaves of legitimate reviews also getting nuked.

Unfortunately, for affected reviewers, there is no way to either appeal or upload eveidence to support the authenticity of one’s experience. At the same, if you discover fake reviews, there is no way to upload evidence of such, only simply flag them which is frankly and utterly useless.

In the meantime, I’m encouraging people not to bother lending too much weight towards Google Reviews for any purchasing decisions going forward. Their automated vetting processes haven’t left me with confidence in it’s accuracy because pragmatically there aren’t enough inputs nor data points for such a system to make a sound enough decision on the authenticity of reviews.