Google Maps Updates Review Policy & Drops Yelp Reviews

The Google Maps Blog announced they have updated the maps review policy on how to write reviews and what reviews Google has the right to remove. In addition, TechCrunch reports that Google has dropped Yelp’s syndicated reviews from Google Maps. The new Google Maps review guidelines share tips on how to write constructive reviews. Some […]

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The Google Maps Blog announced they have updated the maps review policy on how to write reviews and what reviews Google has the right to remove. In addition, TechCrunch reports that Google has dropped Yelp’s syndicated reviews from Google Maps.

The new Google Maps review guidelines share tips on how to write constructive reviews. Some of those tips include make the reviews informative and insightful, use your real stories and not stuff that didn’t happen to you, be nice even with negative reviews by making them constructive and not disrespectful, and finally write them well using proper grammer and avoid excessive capitalization or punctuation. In addition, Google said they reserve the right to remove reviews when the reviews are illegal, inappropriate, spam, off-topic, or a conflict of interest.

TechCrunch reports that all of a sudden all the Yelp syndicated reviews have gone missing from Google Maps. TechCrunch spot checked several old map listings that contained yelp reviews just a month ago and now they are gone. This leads them to suspect that Google is removing all of Yelps content, which make spark some more Google/Yelp controversy.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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