On both Android and Windows I’ve found that there is a problem when adding a missing POI within another existing POI. Let me try to explain the issue with my example:
Fresh Air in a Bottle is a retail health store that, you guessed it, sells fresh air in bottles. Fresh Air in a Bottle is a new store that just opened up in Health Mart Central, a large Shopping Mall. Health Mart Central is an existing place on Maps. OK so here are the steps trying to add Fresh Air in a Bottle
Select ‘Add a missing place’
Add name > Fresh Air in a Bottle
Add Category > Store
Add address
Select send
Improve your edit dialog appears for phone number and website etc.
Select send
Again message displayed “Place may already exist. We found a place similar to the one you are trying to add.”
Select Submit anyway
On Windows a Dialog appears with the message “Thanks for improving Google Maps! You’ll get an email when your suggestion is reviewed”. However on Android you immediately get a message suggesting that the addition has been Approved and that the Place has been added and shows that you earned +15 points. However, this is a false positive as the missing place hasn’t been added at all. What happens is that instead of the Fresh Air in a Bottle being shown as having been added, the Contribution, Edits suggests that we’ve been credited with having added Health Mart Central, the Mall that already existed on Maps.
As shown in the image here, repeated attempts result in repeated false positive Approved additions as described above o you end up with lots of bottles of fresh air!!!
@AdamGT Have you checked after 24 hours after the location is added by searching with the name on the maps? It takes time to appear on amps as said in the confirmation email.
The problem @SaifIS is that the confirmation email incorrectly says “Published: Your addition of Health Mart Central” which is the shopping centre or mall (a previously exisitng POI on Maps) and not the place (the store) I added. But yes will wait and see what happens after 24 houors.
This problem persists and now I’m finding it on similar other POIs that I’m trying to add so I’m reaching out to you @sonnyNg as one of the modertors here.
When I added the mising POI Ferndale Park Playground (which, as the name suggests, is a chidlren’s playground in Ferndale Park), the addition was approved however the link given in the approval email is to Ferndale Park itself (https://goo.gl/maps/bPbNZEgfziH2) and the missing playground wasn’t added. This happened again today to another missing POI that I added and I seem to recollect that this has happened to me on other missing place additions months before. The following screen grab may help:
(2) if part of the name of the place being added is identical to the name of a previously added existing place on maps! e.g. Ferndale Park and Ferndale Park Playground
Thanks for sharing with us the details of the Ferndale Park Playground.
Would you mind checking once again if there would be any update?
As for the first examples and issue, we are currently investigating on it. If there would be any development, please do not hesitate to share with us, as well.
I just checked once again and get exactly the same outcome so from this, I cannot see that there has been any update! Note that the Ferndale Park Playground example is one and the same issue as described in the first example and as I mentioned, this has happened before on other attempted addition of missing POIs. I look forward to hearing back from you on the results of your investigation.
I mentioned in an earlier reply that this issue happened to me on other missing place additions months before and while I couldn’t recollect specifically which POI it was, my recollection is that it was a new store in a shopping mall or shopping centre so given that it happened again, I tried to explain it in the original store/shopping mall context rather than the park and so made up Health Mart Central. Ferndale Park (an existing POI) and the playground within it (a missing POI) is the current real example and as previously advised, when I try to add the playground (as I did once again yesterday) I get a success email saying that Ferndale Park (not the playground) has been added (a False/Positive)!!! Not only is the email received nonsense but so is the advice given in the Contributions/Edits (see below for my attempt yesterday) as I didn’t add Ferndale Park, a previously existing POI on maps!
So just as I tried again yesterday (as you requested) I tried again just now adding the playground and the Contributions/Edits showed the following (note the pl;ayground and not the park place creation is pending), which I believe is correct:
This is nonsense for a number of reasons. Firstly, I was adding the playground and not the park. Secondly, how can one get a place creation approval for a new addition given that that place creation was previouly approved!!! Thirdly, why did the pending approval change from the playground to the park once the status changed from pendingto approved!!!
With the facts I’ve given I believe that the issue/bug should be easily repeatable.
Thanks @sonnyNg Will sit on this park/playground as I’m sure if I were to try again it would just repeat through this same false/positive cycle as it has done several times before on previous attempts on this POI as well as on other POIs in the past. I should also mention that while not wanting to cause the duplication of resources to this issue, earlier today I used the online feedback to report the problem.
This problem has happened two more times today in to different locations. In each case I added missing POIs which instantly changed from pending approval to approved and I received the approval emails for each!!! Each time thinking that the new POI addition was approved I selected the See your addition link in the respective emails and was taken to some other POI:
In the first instance to a POI which already has 173 reviews, and
In the second instance, instance to a POI which already has 620 reviews!!!
Again, as I’ve said before this is nonsense as given that I’ve just added new POIs, how can they already have a history of some 173 and 620 reviews respectively!!! This bug is preventing me from adding new POIs.
Appreciate @sonnyNg if you could provide an update on the investigation into this problem.
Thanks for your the update @sonnyNg I’m hanging in there and have kept the emails which clearly show “Published: Your addition of such and such” but in fact they are not published. I’m trying to see if there is any pattern but so far the best that I can see is that this happens when the name of the new POI is similar to an existing POI (but more likely to be in a different category,e.g. playground in a park) as can often happen when the new place being added is located within another. Here’s an example from one of the emails:
I’m not actually clear on the meaning of your last message so appreciate your clarification. In the meantime, I advise that I have gone through some of my historical place additions and have discovered that this problem has happened at least on 7 attempted but failed place additions since 5 February 2018, so the problem has been around for quite a long time!!! Could this issue be related to that in the following post My Place Addition submission is not appear in Edits tab by @emuniruzaman ?
It seems that the two names of the existing Ferndale Park, with the proposed suggestion for Fernadale Park playground would seem to be understood as one, as you have suspected.
For the moment, in case of the latest post example you have shared, we will continue check on that regard, but as separate investigation.
Yes my suspicion has always been that notwithstanding the different categories (the existing being a park and the proposed being a playground), this weird behaviour has something to do with the commonality between the names of the existing and proposed places and confirmed this by going back to some 7 previous instances, one as far back as 5 February 2018 and I have supporting documentation for each of these instances. For example, another case I had was that of the existing Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club (Category: Tennis Club) and the proposed addition Kooyong Tennis Centre (Category: Stadium) resulting in exactly the same weird/behaviour and outcome.
