A few months ago I started a project to add any bicycle parking I could find in my city to the map, and had successfully added around 200 places with approved creation status. They were searchable by name or category and displayed on the map. I named most “Bicycle rack”, and used the “Parking area for bicycles” category rather than the “Bicycle rack” category (as there were some preexisting with this category, and this showed results for more related search terms). Address normally started from street level as they’re generally street furniture without no property address. Some I added photos of in an attempt to add more “weight” to the data.
Today as I do a search many are missing from the map. Even pressing down on a spot in the app where I know I added a place does not bring it up. If I go into the list of my edits and click on the missing ones (which still say approved) nothing happens, whereas other edits bring me to the map pointer. The photos I’ve added still show in my contributions but it now says “Unknown place” next to them.
I suspect what has happened is that since these have identical names and many have the same street address (though they might be 100s of metres apart) is that Google has flagged them as duplicates and some other overzealous contributor has confirmed this without checking first, though in that case you’d think the pictures would be associated with the duplicate place so I’m not sure. If I do add another point on the same street Google immediately insists the new place is a duplicate so I have to use a different category when creating the change it to the correct one when it’s accepted.
Any ideas what went wrong or what I can do to avoid in the future? I’d prefer not to add address information to the place name, that’s a major bugbear of mine, but I’m not sure how else to make these places more unique (if it’s a duplicate issue). If Google is removing them from lack of use they’ve barely been published a month and the nature of a bicycle rack means people aren’t going to be adding reviews, though it’s a very useful thing to be able to search for. They wouldn’t have two categories for it if they didn’t want the data. Many thanks.
I’d be surprised if the local authority are in an agreement with Google, they basically had to be forced to provide the racks in the first place, they are not proactive on this sort of thing.
No there is no attendant, these are just items in a street, like a monument or park or other motor vehicle car parks which are just open spaces and listed on maps. I didn’t know a place had to be a business to qualify to be listed?
→ The ones part of the basic map layer. LGs can not add such places. Nevertheless, we can suggest an addition through the send feedback route.
However, if the agency which created such a facility does that, then that can happen faster.
→ Points of interest. We can suggest edits to include such places if those match with the expectation as explained in the link. The link also clarifies what can the exceptions.
The source of your issue is in your post @TheChizler you have used two work-arounds to avoid the automated systems namely using a different category and incomplete addresses. This creates bad data on the Map which will inevitably be discovered and removed. You need to use the most complete street address possible, where there isn’t a complete street address the item really can’t be added to the Map unfortunately.
I would suggest the best approach would be to make a complete list and submit it via the Maps Support Community, OR encourage the responsible authority to join Maps as a partner to provide the information via https://support.google.com/mapcontentpartners/answer/9359574
In my culture the category “Parking lot for bicycles” applyed to such a small facility (2 iron bars sticking out of the ground) would be very misleading since “Parking lot” sounds a lot bigger and we have huge areas set a side for bike parking.
You twisted the system also by naming the POI with a Category name.
PS don’t give up on forehand about encouraging your Municipality to partner up with Google to easily update Maps info correctly, automatically, and quickly. It is in their own interest. Use the media if they won’t listen.
Thanks Paul, I guess that makes sense, in an effort to be truthful I’ve accidentaly made my submissions more inaccurate. There is a general problem in our city of maps adding superfluous and commonly outright wrong information to addresses (e.g. adding the name of a distant suburb to a city-centre address, I’ve been trying to fix this for years), and I would always remove this information before submitting, but I guess that’s not playing by their rules. From now on I will go with what the autocomplete gives me.
That’s interesting about making a custom list to submit, either to support or to the authority, would this be done through the My Maps feature or a Google Earth file?
Morten, in my region the category displays as “Parking area for bicycles” which is a fairly accurate description IMO, I agree “parking lot” sounds like a much bigger facility. But that’s a good point, whoever designed the category might have had the bigger “parking lot” definition in mind. I used the “parking area” category mostly because there were a few existing POIs with that category before I started and I thought consistency would be valuable.
I’ve tried adding back a few disappeared places in close proximity (not so close that they are arguably the same place!) using the “Bicycle rack” category and they were accepted immediately as individual places, whereas before with the “Parking area” category it would say they were accepted but were immediately merged with an existing nearby place. Maybe that is the solution.
The municipality did share a custom Google Map of a few dozen planned racks they were planning to install after government intervention, maybe they would submit this to Google for the official map if I asked nicely , it would be something at least.
Thanks for the help. It must be nice being from somewhere where you actually have parking lots for bicycles! Here even basic racks are rare and you have to go looking for them, hence I started this project.
@TheChizler it seems our spamfilter has another false positive on your last comment to @MortenCopenhagen here; you edited it shortly after publication and that triggered the spamfilter (editing after publication is a known trigger). I have now released it from the spam folder.
, it would be something at least.