If a point of interest (POI) is temporarily closed and its name is incorrect, should the name be corrected? Or is it less important since the place itself is unavailable? Updating the name could be done once the place is open again because the current priority is indicating the POI’s availability rather than its name. This question has been lingering on in my mind for long.
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It is appreciated to correct any wrong and misleading info on the map if we have enough info about its correct status. It helps to have a clean and reliable map.
So, no matter if a place is temporarily closed or not, correcting the name, or any other info if needed, is true. Correct info on the map not only helps people to better find places and commute but also helps the AI to understand the conditions of places/areas well.
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@JanVanHaver and @MortenCopenhaegen : what are your opinions in this case? I tend to agree with Amiran, but perhaps I’m wrong?
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@Amiran yes I understand that but idk how that thing is backed ? Because I tried 2 edits and they both got rejected.
Here I have 2 takes
If approval of such edits is done by AI then I don’t think it will get through unless the engine is tinkered to let it pass. ( Given that all such edits get disapproved not just the 2 I tried, which I will test )
If not , and humans doing it then no wonder what AI is learning here 
well jokes apart
By the way discussion and crux both have not matured here so I would wait for the comments of some expert LGs.
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Editing the wrong name of a place it is always helpful to keep Google Maps reliable, @Trail_blazer , so I agree with @Amiran , dear @KattyGeltmeyer .
However, as correctly indicated in the post, only place that are “open” can be edited in Google Maps.
I made several tests also with “temporary closed” locations, and my edits were all rejected. The same edits were accepted immediately once the location was flagged as “open”
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You’re right @Trail_blazer @ErmesT
In most cases, edits to closed places will be rejected but not all the time. I had several successful attempts. Anyway, as you mentioned, there is more chance for approval of the correction if we temporarily mark the place as “Open”.
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Hi Guys,
About a year ago my experience was that temp closed places were not even worth trying to edit. Always immediately rejected.
A few times I decided to reopen such places just to make the edit and then re-close them.
I have a vague suspicion that name changes to temp closed places might have become possible. It is worth a test.
All the best
Morten
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I experienced the same as others over here concerning editing temporarily closed poi’s. But I wonder why in the first place the edit option is available when a place is closed (temporarily or permanently) and let me try to edit the place. If maps were consequent, the “edit” button should not be clickable when a place is closed, and if you want to edit the place, you should tell google why you would like to do it (moved to another location, in that case you can edit the adress; rebranding or the business =name change, …) but the current situation is that I can click on edit and afterwards I accidentally see the place is temporarily closed. Sometimes some info slips out of my view (I don’t have a total overview of a page and if I didn’t check something at the page I simply didn’t see it), and this results in many pending or rejected edits. I think Google must rethink the procedure, but letting someone change name etc. without indicating the place can’t be edited because of temp or perm closed, this is a waste of time and energy.
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@MortenCopenhagen like @ErmesT said the most edits on temp closed POIs are rejected. I tried putting a category to a blank temp closed POI it got rejected and also a name changed too. But yes there are ways to get the them approved but I think it’s pretty futile on both sides. LGs has to waste lots of time (with still a chance of getting rejection) and also from Maps point of view I don’t know how legit is this to open a location just to get an edit approved. Given that we have no idea if this place would ever open again. Now I recall those old post at connect that just move on skip temp closed POIs I think that’s the best way ahead. If some edits or place addition don’t get approved they just don’t get approved, move ahead.
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@KattyGeltmeyer I think we can discuss more temp closed POIs if we have more information about how and when a location gets temp closure tag. I think there must be some good reasons like
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POIs getting zero searches and taps
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lacking critical information
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being too vague and incorrect
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too many users reporting it as closed
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sudden fall in searches of that specific POI
However last two can be few of the legit reasons for temp closure, with still a possibility of being open again. I have also noticed that a place might be totally working fine but still being shown as temp closed. I see a good side here that place at least has a possibility here.
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@Trail_blazer : there are many reasons why a place or poi should be closed, but these reasons are not visible to me, except when I close a poi myself. In that case I can indicate the reason; but in that case it’s not a temporary close. But reasons or not, I still wonder why I can edit such temporarily closed poi’s without seeing an indication that I first must re-open the poi before I can start editing. Or it’s also possible I did an edit and seconds after posting the edit the poi is indicated as “closed”. It’s a bit of a mess.
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@KattyGeltmeyer I don’t know if I understand that well but you can edit a temp closed location anytime you want ,the problem is that edit is very unlikely to be approved or being any productive. But if you re-open that POI and once it’s approved as open you can put more information about it by editing it and most likely the edits will go through.
However my point is, Does it worth working so much given that it’s still a probable condition that edits will get approved.
Reason I mentioned name changing is that you don’t have to avail (service) or physically visit a POI to see the status of it being closed or open which is necessary if one has to mark it reopened or permanently closed.
You can correct the name because you know it always doesn’t get perfectly well from English to Local Language.
Unnecessarily marking it open and closed for edits is ig a bad practice.
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I often edit places because they got incorrect category names or when the name is incorrectly written. @JanVanHaver knows what I’m talking about, he put me on the hunt for incorrectly categorised poi’s. It’s one of the few ways I can be of any help within google maps. Sometimes I e.g. find a Dutch name in the field for the English name, words that would be written in Dutch as one word like “kattencafé” are spelled incorrectly (e.g. “katten cafe” (fictive example, just for illustrating). But such things should be corrected, and if the place is temporarily closed and I didn’t see that before starting to edit, this can be a bit frustrating.
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@KattyGeltmeyer yes I’m with you on that. I correct Hindi names a lot there are some common mistakes while some people choose incorrect name because it’s easy to write or maybe then don’t know much about the keypads on their phone how to write it whatever the reasons are.
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@Trail_blazer , @KattyGeltmeyer
A temporary closed listing is related to an active business that is closed for a short period of time, like seasonal holidays or renovation activities.
Till 2019 the possibility of flagging a listing in Google Maps as “temporary” closed was available only to the owner of a claimed business.
With the Pandemic a lot of businesses were automatically flagged as Temporary Closed, according to the Local Laws. On the meantime, to help the not claimed businesses to have the status updated, Maps extended the feature to Local Guides. Myself I reopened a quite big amount of listings.
Generally speaking as the “temporary closure” of a business should be related to a short period of time, we can easily wait a couple of weeks before to make our edit. Otherwise we should act according to the information that we have about a businesses and his status
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@ErmesT : I follow what you are saying. I try to do what you said above: when it’s a business and I can find out why the business is temporarily closed, I leave the business alone and do my waiting. But when the poi is not a business but a public binn, a bottle bank, … etc. and I don’t find any info why the poi is temporarily closed and I see there are edits to do, I find this frustrating (especially when I did my edits and afterwards I see that the poi is closed). Public bins can be moved to another place, but closing them is a bit difficult. And as editing poi’s is one of the few things I can do for improving maps, I find it a bit a pitty that I can do an edit although the poi is closed or inactive.
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