23/09/2026
A quick note about our Google reviews
Some of our customers may have noticed that Google has temporarily disabled new reviews on our profile, so we wanted to explain exactly what happened.
We ran a competition a while back here on our page which encouraged genuine customers who had genuinely visited Köz to leave a review and participate in our competition.
The idea actually came about after one of our customers creatively displayed her five-star review on her nails, which we loved. From there, we launched a creative five-star challenge and incorporated Google reviews into the competition.
What we didn't realise at the time was that Google's rules don't allow incentives or competition entries to be connected to leaving a review. We should have been aware of that rule, and once it was brought to our attention, we immediately changed the competition and removed the Google review element.
Following the competition, Google removed just three reviews from our profile and temporarily disabled customers from leaving new reviews.
We wanted to explain this because the message currently displayed by Google refers to a “recent increase in suspicious high-rated reviews.” Without knowing the background, we completely understand how that wording could give customers a very different impression of what actually happened.
To be completely transparent, the original competition posts are still visible here on our page, so anyone is welcome to look back and see exactly what was posted and how the competition came about.
This wasn't a case of buying reviews or creating fake customer accounts. The reviews involved came from people who had genuinely visited Köz. Our mistake was incorporating Google reviews into a competition without realising that doing so was against Google's review policies.
We're currently appealing the restriction and have explained the circumstances fully to Google.
We're incredibly proud of the genuine feedback Köz has received from our customers since we opened, and we'll continue concentrating on what matters most — great food, great service and giving our customers a reason to come back.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support. ❤️
Berkan
Owner
Köz Turkish Restaurant Merthyr Tydfil