I have more than one local guides account because I started adding places (especially Hospitals) while teaching in Saudi Arabia and then Japan. My main overseas Google mail account is about to be sunsetted and I don’t want to lose all the English language reviews I did over the years.
Anyone have an Idea how I can aggregate my MrBob account and those listings with this account I used mostly in the US before that accout disappears? I do not care about points, badges or levels. I added these to the map to help expats find places that were not available in English (especially Ejust want to be able to follow my activity abroad starting in 2011.
I do not know how to reach help through Google. Thanks for considering this issue.
Unfortunately, till now, there is no way to merge the contributions of two accounts.
On the other hand, only one account should be kept in the Local Guides program. So, you should opt out of one account. But since your goal is not points and badges, and is only to guide people (which is the spirit of the LG program) you can do it very easily.
But I don’t know why you say “before that account disappears”. You can keep that account as a non-LG account and all data will remain. Also, you can add a phrase in Bio to describe it and guide people to your current account.
Maybe one day in the future, Google enable such a feature to merge contributions of two accounts. Who knows?!
Please see my post Do you need to change your email address? should you not have a lot of contributions some can be copy pasted manually from one account to another.
Thanks for the reply Morten. There was no Local Guides program when I started identifying Emergency Rooms and other critical places in Saudi Arabia. At least I never heard of it or got notifications back in 2011. I was just making the area where I taught safer for people who did not read Arabic. I used an English Club account (which was through G-mail) most of the time so all my overseas correspondence with fellow teachers, government agencies and students could be kept separate from my main G-mail account.
I got permission from Google to make changes and corrections on the map and my iPhone seems to have defaulted to that MrBob account most of the time.
Later, after moving to Japan I still saw the need to add things for English speakers but GoogleMaps was constantly improving and very critical things like hospitals were easier to find than had been in Saudi. It is my Japanese additions that cause me to get messages about 300k views or 500k. I had a habit of adding a lot of places and reviews because I appreciated it when others had done so. Maybe I can’t recover these to keep track of my travels as my memory begins to fade but it would be nice if there was a way to generate a list of the things I’ve done on various accounts.
Like I said, I really don’t care about points but really just like correcting maps and helping people find places. In the US much of this is less necessary since everything is in English and there are many Local Guides to keep maps updated.
@WasBob regarding “… recover these to keep track of my travels …”: you can also download everything you contributed to Google Maps. After signing in with the old Id open the hamburger menu (at the desk top on the upper left) and select Your data in Maps. Then you get many choices what kind of information to download. Mostly (for example the reviews) in the form of JSON files, but also the photos or videos, if any. The JSON for the reviews not only contains the text you wrote, but also the date and a link to the place on maps.
Not sure though, how far back into the past it goes, but I think, it is worth a try. It seems, I was able to download all my contributions, but I don’t remember what year, I started to post anything to Maps.
For photos and videos (if selected for download) it generates a huge file and you need a lot of space on your computer, but you get them exactly in the form, you uploaded.
Thank you Amiran. When I say before it disappears I mean before English Club sunsets the email accounts. After some time in March it will no longer exist according to an email notification I received. I started helping people overseas with their English before I decided to go abroad and teach. I requested an email account and was given Mrbob@englishclub.com. I think all that will be lost when the email is ended. If I opt out or not the account will end.
@WilfriedB Thank you. I did log in with the account that is due to be terminated.
It looks like the oldest things are 8 years old. I saw the ability to export individual reviews. Is that what you were talking about? I just went through and marked all the reviews as favorites but did not try to download.
Not exactly @WasBob I didn’t mean individual reviews, but possibly it is another alternative for you purpose.
I meant the possibility to download everything you ever posted, filtered by many categories you can select of. I’ll prepare a screen shot, but need to change my UI language first.
Google will prepare the data in the background, which can take a couple of hours and send an email with a link from where you can actually download. The result is a single text file containing all reviews, date of posting and a link to the place on Maps.
At this point, I see my previous downloads, which you don’t have. In any case watch for “Create new export” or similar und you will get this window where I suggest to click “Deselect all” (for not to receive too much):
Scroll a long way down until “Maps (your places)” (not “Maps Your preferences and personal places in Maps” unless you want to download your photos too!) and check it:
Scroll further down and click “Next Step”. Now you can select how to receive the result (I choose to get notified by email for download) and the maximum size of zip-files, which shouldn’t matter of you download only the reviews.
I don’t think the Maps content will be removed when the account is sunset @WasBob I’m guessing you were either using Map Maker or some other tool?
Please make sure that you opt out from the Local Guides program on all except the primary account otherwise you could attract sanction as having more than one account in the program is against the rules. Having multiple accounts interacting with Maps is fine as long as only one is a Local Guide.
Note that if you don’t want that old account to sunset all you need to do is login to it.
@WasBob as long as you use a Web-Browser (Chrome, Firefox … etc), I doubt the operating system place a role. Things might be completely different, if you use a special app (as someone mentioned above). It might also be different depending on the region where you are. The described “takeout” function works for me in Europe with a Google profile registered in Europe.
Hello Morten!
Greetings.
The saga remains unresolved, with a drastic reduction in views and growth as a “Local guide”. In addition to the drastic reduction in views, many remain at zero. There is still confusion in the number of views described when accessing the contributions and another that records the individual and total contributions of the photos posted. This difference in views increased after the general mess in contributions.
At no point did Google make it clear that it couldn’t have two local guide accounts. In my case, I have different emails, one in my personal name and the other in the name of my company, but both are aimed at guiding the community, not just obtaining points.
Do you know what is happening in the system so as not to record views of certain photos? The curious thing is that photos posted to the company email were viewed and those posted to the personal email were not!
