{"id":7861,"date":"2010-11-05T09:31:34","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T13:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=7861"},"modified":"2010-11-05T09:41:45","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T13:41:45","slug":"google-places-reviewer-names-no-longer-showing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/05\/google-places-reviewer-names-no-longer-showing\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Places – Reviewer Names No Longer Showing. Feature or Bug?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week the name of review posters disappeared<\/a> in Canada. It appears that they have now stopped showing for reviews in the US now as well.<\/p>\n

Here is a review on Places<\/a> today:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Here is the same review<\/a> from October 20th of this year:<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

For a serious student of reviews I find this loss of information regrettable. Who knows why Google made this decision to add another level of anonymity to reviews. If anything, a great review site should be shining the light of transparency on reviewers. This change not only makes thorough investigation of review abuses<\/a> impossible, it makes reviewers less accountable for their actions.<\/p>\n

Being able to see the corpus of reviews by a given reviewer allows readers to understand the context of the review and more about the reviewer as well. <\/p>\n

The lack of accountability on the internet has lead to significant review abuses. From where I sit, Google should be moving in the opposite direction. Given Google’s bogus review removal policy up to this point, requiring real names for reviews and making the poster more responsible is the best way to bring the system into some sort of balance.<\/p>\n

It is possible that this change is but one bug among many in the pantheon of Google Places bugs. Jim Rudnick reports<\/a> that the names appear to be coming and going in the review space in Canada. Here’s one time that I for one, am wishing for a bug!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week the name of review posters disappeared in Canada. It appears that they have now stopped showing for reviews in the US now as well. Here is a review on Places today: \u00a0. Here is the same review from October 20th of this year: For a serious student of reviews I find this loss …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local","category-reviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t