Google suspend new reviews, business responses and Q&A

Google has suspended the publication of new reviews on every business's Google listing, this includes the ability of businesses to respond to existing reviews as well as the Q&A function. The fact that the Q&A, which might be considered to be one of the most useful functions in the current crisis, has been suspended indicates that this is a staffing issue. We suspect that Google moderators are not being granted access to areas of the Google internal machine while they work from home.

  

The full article is here

The implications for businesses

Our advice is to continue to invite reviews to both your website, where we will publish them,  and to Google.  In fact, we are advising clients to ramp up their review gathering efforts wherever possible - see this article; Google will accept the review but not publish it for the time being. We will alert you as and when Google does publish reviews so you can then respond. Any reviews your business currently has will remain.

Don't do nothing: this will leave the field clear for any disgruntled customers who happen to use their current oversupply of free time to write their review which may then dominate the impression given on your Google listing when reviews are reinstated.