I know my area quite well. It is mainly forests with a few buildings. I know all the roads and building names and 90% of the organisations and hot spots.
Whenever I see people add wrong markers in Maps, I ask for deletion. Most of them are not applied.
A few items (notably a meditation center) are overshadowed by markers with wrong names. I ask for replacement, renaming, removal, etc, all of them ‘not applied’.
Some people spam Maps by placing markers in tourist hot spots to attract attention, good for taxi business. I ask to remove them and… Not applied.
To my dismay, most changes end up “not applied” although all local residents agree with my change-requests.
Using Google Maps in India is a disaster because it is full of markers in wrong locations. Contributing to Google Maps is useless and FRUSTRATING.
The Google algorithms analyse different factors, such as the information submitted, the location of the input, your mapping activity, and other factors to make sure everything added to the map is accurate and follows our guidelines.
There are regions around the world where there simply is not enough information for some edits to come through successfully or immediately and it certainly has nothing to do with you personally. The more information you (or other Local Guides) collect about a place gives your input a better chance of getting through. Please check this post for more information on the topic.
If you believe that a certain location has been maliciously edited, please provide a Google Maps URL of it here.
P.S. Your post is relabeled to How-tos as the information in it could be useful to other Local Guides.
The more information you (or other Local Guides) collect about a place gives your input a better chance of getting through.
A better chance? If I want a reasonable chance I would go to the casino. I understand Google is not able to filter real information from the dirt because they rely on and hide behind 'The Algorithm '.
On top of the advice already provided I would like to let you know that most other local guides have experienced the same frustration at some point. You really want to help by providing good edits but none or only few are accepted. So frustrating.
In my experience it helps to turn your frustration into curiosity and learning how the Google maps computers decides to approve edits. And I can assure you it is possible to succeed in this matter.
Make simple edits and study what edits gets approved. And use the knowledge you gain.
I did this systematically and now 95% of my edits get approved within 10 hours (give and take). It took a lot of practice to get here. I have made almost 12 000 edits so far.
When adding new places my succes rate is much lower. Probably below 50%. Which is so frustrating to me. So I will need to learn more…
I like to emphasize that learning what edits are accepted quickly does not compromise the quality of the edits. But understanding the AI and the algorithm behind is key.
Hope this helps a little. Please keep trying and learning. There is light further down the tunnel.
I’ve listened to the podcast and tried to do what Jan proposed. I already was on Level 5, so I’m not a complete newbee. Anyway, I added a few new places and -once again- I get “Not Applied” within 15 minutes. There can not be anything wrong with my additions: I locate the place in maps and satellite, put a marker on top of the building, give it a name and category and then get “Not applied”. Absolutely ridiculous!
I refuse to try to beat an obviously stupid algorithm in order to improve Google’s product. Forget it.
Give me a ping when Google starts to seriously consider contributions.
The bank ATM problem was already solved a while ago thanks to the intervention of someone from Google after I furiously complained and accused Google on this platform.
