This may be more of a question than a problem/bug report … but, I sometimes find that when I upload a photo for a particular POI in Google Maps it will subsequently be listed under a different POI when I do the QC of my upload under “Your Contributions-Photos”. One example: I shared some photo’s of the “Great Scotland Yard” building in London. But, when I did the QC I saw that the photo’s actually arrived at the “Trafalgar Square” POI.
I have also experienced to upload a photo to one POI, and then find that two other POI’s, in the near neighborhood, contain the same photo. Is it perhaps so that some POI’s are mapped to other POI’s? Any idea @KatyaL or others?
To better understand your question it will be very helpful if you add a link of the photo, and on the POIs where the photo is visible.
This said, it is very possible that, photos added in a POI, are also visible on a square, or in a city.
This is an automatic process, that explain also why there are photos on Location (not POIs) where is not possible to add photos
Just to give you an example, if you search for my city, Treviso, you will find a lot of photos that in fact have been added to some Historical place, or landmark, in the same city. This is one of mine
If you look at the photo you will see, on the top left, the name of the location where the photo has been added
I took the photo’s with my Android cell phone, then clicked share on Google Maps. Google Maps suggested a location, which was not the wanted one. Then I clicked “select other location” and searched for “Great Scotland Yard”. That option appeared in my search, and I hence then uploaded to that “Great Scotland Yard” choice. No problems. But, when I then did an upload QC in “Your Contributions” I saw that the pictures landed at “Trafalgar Square”.
I have a hunch that I am confusing map locations and POI’s, and that I incidentally actually managed to upload images to a map location?
I just did an experiment. I found a previously unpublished picture (of me, I generally try to avoid posting photos with people in them, so still unpublished until now). I uploaded through my Android cell phone (Samsung S8+). I uploaded it to the location “Sola”. No problems. Here is my new upload list:
And my pictures appear at this place as well. Maybe the root cause to my confusion is that my app actually allows me to upload pictures to Map locations, which is contrary to Google Maps usage rules?
Thanks for reaching out and sharing these examples, so that we can better understand your inquiry. Please be aware that workarounds are not allowed and this may cause your removal from the program. Please make sure you follow the rules when contributing on Google Maps and keep in mind that the map layers on the map are not supposed to be updated or changed.
Please be assured that these shares were done in good faith, and with no intended workarounds. The fact that I explicitly shared these examples with you should be a strong indicator. It is sometimes frustratingly hard to distinguish between map locations and a POI’s in the list of suggested upload candidates. All software has bugs or deficits, and all humans make errors. It’s a question of what’s the acceptable level of error rates, I guess. I am thinking that Google easily could prevent e.g. the upload of duplicates, if you wanted to, but that the engineering and compute costs of that feature would not match the value it would give you. I.e. a regular cost-benefit decision.
Thank you so much for your comment! We welcome your valuable feedback! I would like to remind you that if you have any ideas for improvements, you’re welcome to suggest them in Idea Exchange.
