Greetings from Inside the SEOigloo!
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed something odd happening with two Google reviews I had written for local businesses. When I went back today to check on them, I saw that the same ‘weirdness’ was still going on, and this led me to performing some other Maps searches to try to reproduce the same odd thing. The following article demonstrates the peculiar thing I have found in Google Maps.
If you go into Maps and do a search for fabric store santa rosa ca, Google will bring up its list of results on the left. The result in the C position, Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Store, shows that 2 reviews have been written for this business. *See image below.

When you click on the title of the business, it makes the following pop-up appear over the map, again citing 2 reviews.

It is when you click on the link (which I’ve underlined in red) for 2 reviews that the full pop-up opens and shows you a different number. Now, the enlarged pop-up is stating that there are 3 reviews and, obviously, it shows all 3 reviews below it:

Two of the reviews are from Insiderpages and the other is mine written directly as a Google review.
I wrote that review on December 16, 2007, and though the enlarged pop-up is accurately displaying the correct number of reviews for this business (3), neither the small pop-up nor the rankings are in agreement with this number.
At this point, I wanted to see if this peculiar phenomenon was occurring elsewhere within Google Maps. I first checked another of my own reviews, and I will break the following results down into easy-to-read stats.
Search Term: the red grape sonoma ca
Age of Review: December 16, 2007
Number of Reviews in Rankings and Small Pop-Up: 5
Number of Reviews in Expanded Pop-Up: 6
Review Sources: 5 reviews from Insiderpages; 1 from Google Reviews
As with the fabric store, the restaurant in question was only referencing the Google review once I went into the expanded pop-up feature.
This struck me as very odd. Why would Google not be counting their own reviews?
I researched three other companies and found the exact same thing happening. Here are the results:
Search Term: florist denver co
Business in Question: Perfect Petal standing at C position
Age of Review: July 30, 2007
Number of Reviews in Rankings and Small Pop-Up: 2
Number of Reviews in Expanded Pop-Up: 3
Review Sources: 2 reviews from Insiderpages; 1 from Google Reviews
Search Term: chinese restaurant marin ca
Business in Question: China Palace at B position on second results list
Age of Review: November 6, 2007
Number of Reviews in Rankings and Small Pop-Up: 2
Number of Reviews in Expanded Pop-Up: 3
Review Sources: 1 review from Insiderpages; 1 from Tripadvisor; 1 from Google Reviews
Search Term: florist san francisco ca
Business in Question: Church Street Flowers in F position
Age of Review: October 20, 2007
Number of Reviews in Rankings and Small Pop-Up: 4
Number of Reviews in Expanded Pop-Up: 6 *see below
Review Sources: 3 reviews from Insiderpages; 1 from Judy’s Book; 1 from Google Reviews
* You will note the very odd discrepancy of this last set of stats. Google is listing 6 reviews on the expanded pop-up, but there aren’t 6 reviews there to see. There are only 5. I wonder what is going on with that.
My first question was whether the lack of cohesion between the results/small pop-up and the expanded pop-up numbers is simply a time thing. Maybe it only represents some type of lag going on between the different types of results. However, the Google review in the search for the florist in Denver, Colorado is 6 months old. That’s a pretty long time.
Why would Google Maps not be showing its own reviews in the first stats the user sees? Why is there a discrepancy between the different pop-ups?
With the talk in December focusing in on how important Google Reviews are likely to be to local businesses, this mystery of the missing numbers is one I’d like to see cleared up. If you know of some reason why Google would be treating their own reviews differently than the reviews they’re aggregating from outside sources, I’d love to hear about it. Also, if you’re interested, could some of my local-enthusiast colleagues perform a couple of your own searches for businesses you know have a mix of outside reviews plus Google reviews? It would be great if you could add some data to this post, showing either like or unlike findings. Thanks!
If the concept of Google Reviews is new to you, this tutorial on Google Maps Reviews will help you.