A Google review was left but does not appear: why, and what to do

A customer tells you they left a review. You check your listing: it is not there. Both can be true at once — and in most cases, nothing is wrong.

What happens between the tap and the publication

A review travels in two distinct stages, and they do not depend on the same people:

• From your customer's gesture to Google's form. They hold their phone to the plate or scan the QR code, and the review form for your listing opens. That part belongs to you — and it is instant.
• From the form to publication. Your customer writes, submits, and the review goes to Google, which alone decides whether to publish it, when, and for whom. That part is entirely out of reach — for the business owner and for the plate maker alike.

In other words: once the form opens on your listing, the plate has done all of its job. Everything after that happens at Google.

How long should you wait

Expect anywhere from a few hours to several days. Google publishes no official timeframe, and it varies with the account posting, the age of the listing and how many reviews arrive at the same moment.

A review left at Saturday lunchtime will not necessarily show up by Saturday evening. Before concluding that something is broken, give it at least two or three days.

Why some reviews never appear

Google runs every review through an automatic filter. It looks for signs of artificial activity, and it sometimes gets perfectly genuine reviews wrong. The situations that most often trigger filtering:

• Several reviews within minutes, from the same place. This is the most common case with a plate on the counter: if your customers use your wifi, they share the same public IP address, and a run of reviews from that address looks like an organised campaign.
• A brand-new Google account, with no photo, no history and no other reviews. Google extends it little credit until it has something else to go on.
• Text that reads like advertising: a link, a phone number, an address, a brand name repeated.
• Something offered in exchange for the review. This is against the rules, and those reviews are removed when the practice is detected — see our guide on reviews in exchange for a gift or discount.

A recent listing with only two or three reviews gets the strictest treatment. The first reviews are always the hardest to get through; the filter relaxes as the listing builds a history.

The case that misleads everyone

A filtered review can remain visible to the person who wrote it. Your customer opens Google on their phone, sees their review, and tells you in good faith that they published it. On your side, it is nowhere to be found.

Nobody is lying: this is how the filter behaves. If a customer insists, ask them to check your listing in a private browsing window, or from someone else's phone. If they cannot see it either, the review has been filtered.

Check before you conclude

In your account, every product shows its number of scans, with date and time. That is the figure that separates a filtered review from a review that was never written.

And above all, remember this: a scan is not a review. Between holding up a phone and publishing, you have to open Google, be signed in, write something and submit. Many customers stop along the way. A quarter to a third going all the way through is already a very good result.

Be wary of closely spaced scans too: three scans seconds apart is almost always one person trying again, not three customers.

What genuinely helps

• Spread your requests out. Asking a whole table at once is the surest way to get half the reviews filtered. A few requests per service beat one burst.
• Suggest mobile data rather than the venue's wifi, where that is practical.
• Never offer anything in exchange, however small, and never sort customers by how happy they are — that is review gating, and it is forbidden.
• Encourage a few words. A written review describing a real experience gets through better than a bare star rating.
• Check that your plate points at the right listing. An unclaimed duplicate receives reviews without them ever showing on the listing you look at — our guide on finding your listing by address explains how to make sure.

What cannot be done

Let us be plain: a filtered review generally does not come back. Neither you, nor your customer, nor we can ask Google to republish it. There is no appeal for a genuine review wrongly set aside.

It is frustrating, and it is exactly why prevention matters more than repair: five reviews spread over a fortnight beat ten on the same lunchtime, six of which vanish.

If the review form opens on your listing when you scan your plate, everything works. What happens next belongs to Google — and time is on your side: the more reviews your listing gathers, the gentler the filter becomes.