New reviews can be delayed for multiple reasons. Google review platform updates, a surge in new reviews to your profile, reviews from outside your location/service area, the history of the Google account leaving the review, etc. There’s no way to know the cause of the delays without knowing the logic behind the developers at Google. Remember that it is also a software platform that can sometimes be buggy. One thing to note, Google does not trust listings in the service industry. You can blame the black hat SEOs, shady marketers, and lead gen companies for that. They are why Google has had to go to extremes to prevent abuse of Google Business Profiles.

As for customers not using certain words in their reviews, well that’s a bigger challenge because you cannot coach every customer to write a review in a specific way. And honestly, you shouldn’t want to do that. Replying to reviews is much more important for a service company to do. This is the only thing you have control over with regards to the content associated with the review.

Also…any ideas on how to get customers not to use words that Google doesn’t like? I don’t know what those would be. I’m just happy they like us and want to share a review. I don’t want to be the review police.