I have found some photos I took several years ago, which I would like to add to some locations on Google Maps. Those photos have proper dates recorded in their EXIF metadata. However, when I upload such photos, Google shows them with the dates they were uploaded. See e.g. the screenshot attached to this post: it says “Apr 2020”, while the photo was taken in November 2013 (and its EXIF says so in DateTime, DateTimeOriginal, and DateTimeDigitized fields).
Is it possible to force Google to show that actual date (Nov 2013) as the image date? I would not like to make people believe that this photo was taken in April 2020.
I agree with the need however I’m not sure how to do this if at all you can. Also, I suggest that you should edit your post and change it from Photography to How-Tos so that you will likely get better answers to this question.
At this time, photos are displayed based on the upload date. I suggest that you always add your photos on Google Maps as soon as possible. We currently have an existing feature to add a caption to your photos with the date and time the photo was taken.
For more information, you may check this discussion thread. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out again. In the mean time, I have accepted my comment as a solution.
Also, since your post implies that you’re searching for advice I’ve relabelled it to How-tos.
I agree with you that something fishy is going on with the photo month+year values on Google Maps. And I disagree respectfully with @Ekattotii that his issue is solved. The values can be off by several months up to a couple of years. But I haven’t kept an eye out lately because I thought this error was something we just had to accept and live with.
Hopefully, others will chime in and share some documentation on this issue.
@Maksym_Kozub either meanwhile the behavior did change or it works differently depending on the country. I did upload several older photos recently for places in Germany, Italy and France and the date always shows up correctly (month/year).
However, reviews are handled differently:
Adding a review for a German or Italian place it is treated as if I visited the place today. Attaching an older photo to the review, keeps the correct date of the image, though. Even worse, if I change some words or add more pictures to an old review, it appears to the owner, as if it were newly posted today.
A while ago I already noticed, when writing a review for a French place, I do have the possibility to manually select the date (again month and year). But this is not possible with reviews for German or Italian places.
P.S. The above applies to the desktop only. I just realized, on Android, I only see the date of uploading
