In some European regions, Google, likely because of the DMA laws, has to show review aggregated ratings from third-party sites. How does Google know which sites to take those reviews from? You would think Google has a trusted list of sites it would pick from but John Mueller of Google said, “These things tend to be algorithmic.”
Google’s John Mueller said this on Bluesky in response to a question that reads:
Google’s “Reviews” launched in EU a year ago, listing 3rd-party ratings. Allogarage was listed but vanished months ago. . Despite multiple inquiries, we have received no response explaining why this happened. Please investigate.
John Mueller replied:
These things tend to be algorithmic, so there’s nothing we’d be able to say about specific entries.
Here are screenshots of that box:
You’d think these would be more manually selected but I guess not…
Forum discussion at Bluesky.