I’m relatively new to Local Guides, but recently have been quite active and determined and have written 735 reviews of places that I’ve visited. Today, as soon as I finished writing a review for Shakespeare’s Birthplace and uploaded the photos, my “Master Reviewer” badge was downgraded to a novice one, and it shows only “27 reviews” next to my name. My number of reviews, and Impact are highlighted in red. I’ve spent many hours of my life writing detailed, genuine reviews from my first-hand experience, each accompanied with many photos. None of my reviews are “marked” by Google. I can’t figure out what is wrong. It’s horrible to be treated like this after all the contributions. Can anyone please help me find a way to solve the issue? I really appreciate your help, in advance.
Hola @Spacewalk Bienvenido a Connect! Según pude ver en la lista de tus contribuciones en Maps sigues teniendo las 735 reseñas, así que el cambio en tu insignia debe ser algún problema interno del sistema en Maps, una vez sucedió algo así y a varios de nosotros, éramos maestros y al otro día novatos en varias insignias. Al poco tiempo el problema se solucionó y volvimos a tener las insignias que nos habíamos ganado.
The note under Spam and fake content will explain why also most of the actually visible reviews should be taken down: “Your content should reflect your genuine experience at the location and should not be posted just to manipulate a place’s ratings. Don’t post fake content, don’t post the same content multiple times, and don’t post content for the same place from multiple accounts.”
I understand that you "spent many hours of your life writing detailed, genuine reviews from your first-hand experience" so I would like to ask you which one is “The most iconic park in London” . Is Hyde Park, The Hudson Memorial Bird Sanctuary, or Serenity (3 identical reviews)?.
What about “the best open-air attraction that you’ve visited in London” (4 identical reviews) ?
I am honestly surprised that your photos are not taken down too, as you are using the same photos multiple time in multiple places.
Hola @SilvyC ! ¡Muchas gracias por tus comentarios! Realmente espero que se solucione. y gracias por compartir el enlace. Definitivamente lo echaré un vistazo.
Hi @ErmesT thanks a lot for your response and feedback. I understand your point but are not those places parts of Hyde Park? Is it the same review for Hype Park and Gloucestershire Cathedral? Is it not specific rather than generic? Many places that I’ve visited have several pins, for example “X National Park” and “The X National Park” and I write the same review for them because they refer to the same location. Please put yourself in my shoes and see my point of view that I had the same approach for a small proportion of my reviews for the past weeks but did not receive a single red flag or warning or anything similar from Google. Instead, I was encouraged by receiving a Master Reviewer Badge.
Additionally, what equally surprises me is the fact that the numbers are not consistent and do not make any sense. I don’t understand how Google is considering only 27 out of 735 reviews to be “valid”. Where exactly is that number coming from? 600 and something could make sense to me if the issue is similarity of reviews. Please take some time and have a quick look at my reviews from the beginning. I’m definitely sure it’s entirely an automated, bot decision. I need human moderators (not automated algorithms) to see the countless hours that it took me to contribute to different locations both in terms of reviews and original photo uploads, highlight the problematic ones and keep the right ones so that the justice is served. This treatment is unfair, and ungrateful. Yes, I understand that as local guides, our contributions are voluntary and not paid for, but it doesn’t mean they are worthless. We’re sharing our time and experiences. Do you know how I can appeal to the decision? Is there any specific contact info? I really appreciate your help.
I’m going to change the topic of your post to How-tos, as that is the place where Local Guides like you ask their questions, give feedback, and more. You can learn more about Connect topics here: How to choose a topic for your Connect post.
You can follow the tips that @ErmesT kindly shared with you and read again what type of content can be uploaded to Google Maps. On our side, we will investigate what you’ve reported.
Hi @TsekoV Thanks! This is not a general question. I need to know specifically what has happened to my reviews, and badge. I need urgent human assistance. Can you please take some time and read about the issue that I encountered? Thanks.
Looking at your photos I can certainly see an issue there, you’ve added the same photos to multiple places I recommend that you clean those up and remove the duplication as that is clearly an issue that could contribute to your content being made private and in a worst case scenario possible suspension, I can’t imagine you’d want that to happen.
Hi @Madhu11 you seem to be a business and seem to have reviewed your own business entry including adding a photo of a child and your own selfie. I certainly recommend that you read the User Contributed Content Policy https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7422880 as well.
Thanks @TsekoV for moving the post on the appropriate board.
@Spacewalk , Being unaware of the rules, that I shared with you on my previous reply, cannot be an excuse because, to register to the program, you confirmed that you were aware of the rules and the term and conditions of the Local Guides program.
You wrote: “Iunderstand your point but are not those places parts of Hyde Park?” The answer is NO.
Should all stores in the same mall be considered as one single store? Do you write a single review for all of them, and then you paste the review in every place?
Should all places in Hyde Park be considered one place? Is this what you are telling us? If so, the best way for you to contribute in Google Maps is to Suggest edits to or closure of a place , asking for the removal / merge of the duplicate place. BTW, it is interesting to see how the Royal Parks official website is considering several different placed inside Hyde Park: https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde-park/map-of-hyde-park , so an attempt to merge them will not have any real result.
Regarding your question about "how Google is considering only 27 out of 735 reviews to be “valid” the answer, also confirmed by @PaulPavlinovich 's reply is: Google is not, and in fact while I am writing you only have 8 reviews visible, all written on the last 24 hours. You should give a few hours to the filter to work.
This said, a lot of your contributions are against the rules, but if you want to have a deep investigation on your profile there is an Appeal form that you can fill. Probably it will be useless, as you are not suspended - not yet - so you do not have penalties on your account, but simply the removal of the contents that are violating the rules. "It may take up to 3 weeks for our team to investigate and privately respond to you" (source: Why was I removed from Local Guides? ). One of the subject will be, as you can imagine, duplicate photos
Hi @PaulPavlinovich Thanks a lot for your respose. I read it. From what I’ve undersood, the duplication seems to be the issue. Do you think if I remove those duplications, my profile will go back to nornal? The vast majority of my reviews are not duplicates and they are detailed, specific reviews accompanied by photos. They do not violate any of the Google’s terms.
Hi @ErmesT thank you again for your response. Yes, it seems the duplicates are the issue. You think when I remove the duplicates, my profile will go back to normal? As soon as I get home I’ll go through my reviews and remove those duplicates. I told Paul too, the vast majority of my reviews do not violate any of Google’s terms. What do you think will happen to those? You say I don’t have penalties and not much to appeal to but to be fair what has happened to my reviews and the efforts behind them, is not much different from suspension. Without justice being served, I won’t have any motivation to write any new reviews. I’m aware of my mistake, and will remove the duplicates but I genuinely expect Google to respect my other reviews and put them back in a normal status.
I do not have an answer to your question, because I can’t see what is not publicly visible.
But I find your approach interesting: “I’m aware of my mistake, and will remove the duplicates but I genuinely expect Google to respect my other reviews”.
I think you should remove all the duplicate first, then you should check which of the remaining reviews are “original” and which one is taking inspiration from the internet. Actually you only have four review visible, but I remember that some of your 27 (as for yesterday) had a vague smell of wikipedia …
Honestly I think that, before to claim for respect, you should give respect, fixing completely the wrong contributions. None of your contributions should violate the rules, before requesting a profile review, and I actually see that the violations on the photos are huge. Most of your photos are uploaded in two or more places, so I think you will have to remove probably 60 to 70 % of your photos.
I can’t actually say anything about your reviews (I can’t see them) but I remember your previous reply: “Many places that I’ve visited have several pins, for example “X National Park” and “The X National Park” and I write the same review for them because they refer to the same location.” so looks like the reviews and the photos are following the same logic
They might @Spacewalk but I would think it unlikely. Once Google make content private they don’t usually put it back. You can try to delete the review and repost it on the same place with only original non duplicate content.
Be aware that doing a lot of deletes and reposts all at once is likely to re-trigger the spam filter.
Hope you’re doing great. A while ago I was downgraded from Master Reviewer to a novice one and the number of my reviews were suddenly displayed as 20-something rather than plus 700. I communicated the issue with you and explained the situation. The downgrade happened when I was writing reviews for England and I removed the identical reviews for different pins on the same location. I stopped writing new reviews, and appealed to Google’s decision, and requested a human (rather than a bot) review of my account.
Today, I received this response: “Thank you for contacting Google support. Based on the information provided, we are happy to confirm that there are no penalties against your account. Please log in on Connectin order to get full access to the forum and all the benefits of our community.”
However, when I look at my account, I don’t see any changes. I’m still a novice reviewer, my 682 reviews are highlighted in red, and the impact is 0 (I remember I had more than 170 likes on my reviews). It seems my account is still penalized but Google claims there are no penalties against it. I’m confused. Can you please help me with it?
Possibly, you will see a merging of this post with the previous one @Spacewalk
I find that’s a new way to penalised some profiles which are perceived to have some aberrations. The account remains active with all points & access to Connect. However, the system marks all reviews as private.
It will be interesting to know what was the stats before this phenomenon started. Do you remember how many views and likes you had to the reviews? That may provide some clue to this happening.
The computer/team writing “there are no penalties against your account” use this language about being suspended. Suspended LGs lose their access to Connect. So obviously you are not suspended.
You think having photos and reviews marked private is a penalty. I agree it feels like it. But Google uses the words differently. Having reviews and photos marked is not a penalty in Google language.
There are plenty of threads here on Connect where we discuss what local guides can do when reviews and photos get marked private.
Please lookup a few of them. And feel free to ask further questions as needed.
@Spacewalk I checked your Maps profile and can’t see any reviews listed under your account. Looks like all of your reviews are still in private. Try to reply back to the email explaining exactly what the situation is about. Explain to them that your reviews are still in private and ask what you need to do to get them unlocked.
It’s been a while since I’ve got my reviews changed to being private, but that usually means the system triggers a flag that your reviews need to be made private. If you say that your reviews went down from 700+ to 20 something, then take a look at the reviews and make sure they’re following the guidelines.
In that case I would just edit the reviews to follow the guidelines and it should be visible within a few days. This was years back though, so not sure if the steps still apply these days.
