Confirmed: Google is Getting Rid of Anonymous Reviews

Google has confirmed that anonymous reviews will no longer be published on Google My Business, and older reviews left anonymously will be deleted.

In a statement to Mike Blumenthal, Google confirmed some suspicions around anonymous reviews disappearing:

“We do not allow anonymous reviews today and we’ve removed legacy anonymous reviews.”

After people started noticing a change in the number of reviews businesses had, rumors started going around that the search engine would be changing its policy on anonymous reviews, which was only recently confirmed by Google. This change comes as Google is making more of an effort to legitimize reviews and make Google My Business (GMB) as reliable as possible.

Since Google is deleting previous business reviews left by “A Google User”, the first thing many reputation managers and business owners noticed was a drop in the number of reviews. This, of course, also directly impacts a company’s star rating, which might increase or decrease based on the average rating of the verified reviews.

While this might seem alarming to business owners—especially since it takes time and effort to gain reviews—it’s actually for the best.

Deleting these anonymous reviews helps both consumers and business owners by eliminating the potential for fake reviews.

For businesses, a review left by “A Google User” can be difficult to confirm as an actual transaction. If the review is positive, businesses might not care as much. However, if that anonymous review is negative, business owners have no way of knowing if it’s legitimate or not, since they can’t see the reviewer’s name.

Therefore, forcing users to put their names on reviews will show businesses what real customers are saying, and can help them find potential product/service issues brought up in authentic negative reviews.

Absolutely. Getting rid of anonymous reviews is just as helpful for consumers as it is for businesses. It shows them that every review on a company’s GMB page has merit, which is important when people are skeptical about reviews being fake. When a name is put to a review, it closes that gap of suspicion, which ultimately builds trust between the consumer and business.

From what we can tell, Google’s decision to delete anonymous reviews is a great move for businesses and consumers alike. Although there might be a decrease in number of reviews for businesses in the near future, the long-term benefits to verified reviews far outweigh these short-term disadvantages. And with more legitimate reviews on Google, we’ll likely see a more positive relationship develop among consumers, businesses and online reviews.