Reviews and ratings disappearing

Friday 17 at 07:04, two more ratings have disappeared and now my average score is starting to drop...

Hello RamonBosch,

Both customers and Apple have the ability to remove reviews, customers for any reason; Apple usually because they'd determined it's inappropriate in some manner.

—jasonag.

So, it's usual for users to re-evaluate the apps? This never happened to me on Google Play.

I'm genuinely curious because this didn't happen until this week. I've had a steady growth of 5-star reviews and suddenly, this week, 9 5-star reviews are missing which is almost a quarter of what I had and I haven't even updated the app or changed a thing. I'm really concerned and want to do something about it!!! It's also annoying to see there's no way to track the reviews, no history to show increase or decrease, which is available for many other metrics, but not for this very important one.

Also, are Apple's rules for proper reviewing shown anywhere? It is already hard enough to get reviews so the least Apple could do is let users know if they're reviewing wrongly when they post their opinions.

Friday 17 at 09:35, two ratings less, it's 30 ratings now...

Just baffled at how users will just re-enter the App Store to delete their reviews, what an odd behaviour! Really, never seen anything like this on Google Play. If they liked the app enough to give it a 5-star rating it would just make more sense if they re-evaluated the app with a lower score if they saw something they didn't like, right?

I ran into the same problem, I had 164 ratings, and now 156, and it is not yet known how many more ratings will be "cut off", because users probably do not delete their ratings.

I still haven't figured out why the ratings come and go, just so strange for a user who give you 5 starts and then delete the rating. It is also odd that there is no tracking system to keep a record of this.

At the time of writing the last post, I had 150 ratings, and now 130. It's really incomprehensible

Hi,

Did you implement SKStoreReviewController in your app? How do you get reviews? Additionally, what is your app id?

just so strange for a user who give you 5 starts and then delete the rating.

Yes, in the event that they wanted to revise their 5-star rating (e.g. after finding a problem with the app) I imagine at least many of them would want to change it to a lower rating, and you are not seeing an increase in lower ratings.

Is it possible that some users are getting refunds, and that ratings/reviews for refunded apps are removed? (Is it a paid app?)

Hello, I have the exact same problem. Had 32 ratings in total, which decreased to 15 during a week. The app is completely free, without ads.

I hope someone from Apple would clarify the situation, as usually Apple is way more responsive than Google in terms of supporting app publishers.

Do we have any answers from Apple here? My app went from 160 ratings to 78 seemingly overnight. All were legit from real people too...

We also are facing the same issue. Rating count has been reducing since Nov last year, but last week we lost 83. Did anyone get any response from Apple here?

Released my first app a couple of months ago – currently have three reviews visible on my product page even though I've received 10+ (from friends). Though I was going crazy, are there any updates on this?

Happened to me as well, rating count just dropped for no reason after an update. App is still new so I'm monitoring the rating counts very closely, so ratings didn't shift, it's just the amount that decreased. That's so weird.

I just sent Apple an email about this. We will see what they say. My gut is that this has something to do with whatever spam filtering they have. I think any brand that allows users to write reviews these days has a tough job on their hands in terms of fighting fake reviews. If your app is new or the reviews are coming from devices with very little history, I wonder if Apple does not count them or removes them when stronger reviews come in with more history. It's confusing, for sure, and the lack of transparency on Apple's part is annoying. At the same time, if they open up publicly with their exact methodology, it will be easier for people to spam it, so I partially understand.