How to make sense of Google's responses to your edits

Google Maps tips & tricks
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There seem to be some misunderstandings related to what happens after you have submitted edits, additions, and feedback to Google Maps.

There are three types of responses you can get:

Approved, Not applied, or Pending

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Approved

If the resulting email says Published or Approved all is good. You can see your edit on Google maps immediately or after 24 hours when all Google Maps servers have shared the update (we call this to wait for the servers to sync or synchronize).

But just because your edit was approved does not guarantee it was correct and conforming

to all the rules and guidelines. It’s a very common mistake to think so. You need to know the rules and guidelines.

Not applied

If you get the infamous Not Applied response then it has already been decided that your suggestion is not going to appear on Google Maps. It doesn’t mean that your suggestion was wrong, but possible reasons for rejection include:

  • User-generated content is not allowed for security or political reasons in your area
  • User-generated content is blocked as a measure to prevent spam in the area or category
  • Your documentation was insufficient
  • The place is claimed or has lots of reviews or photos
  • It’s a chain store maintained centrally
  • You submitted more than one edit at a time
  • Your trust score is too low

Unfortunately, Google will not tell you the exact reason for not applying your edit. If such explanations were given that would be a huge help to spammers.

Sometimes edits are approved despite the email says Not Applied. So it might be worth checking this before wasting more time on the issue.

After receiving the Not Applied response you can:

  • Give up and leave it to other local guides to fix the issue later. This will often be your best option.
  • If your edit is related to a claimed place you can contact the owner and suggest they implement your edit.
  • If your suggestion is related to roads, public transportation, parks, lakes, or rivers or the names of cities, villages, or districts in a city you could reach out to the relevant local authorities and suggest they implement your edit or encourage them to contact Google about the needed changes.
  • If you want to merge two different places there is a lot more you can do to increase your chances of success. Read more here.
  • You can try teaming up with other local guides and see if coordinated edits and the skills of more experienced local guides can get your edits approved.
  • If all of the above fails you are faced with the choice to try again with better documentation or just give up and move on to all the next of thousands of issues that need to be fixed on Google Maps.

If you receive the dreaded Pending response - also phrased: ‘in review’ you have the following options:

  • Wait and see what happens. At some point, all edits time out. Unfortunately, you will not be informed if this happens.
  • Your edit might be sent to Google staff for evaluation. This often happens to feedback. Your feedback and attachments should be very clear and easy to understand. If you can use Google lingo and make it very easy to implement your feedback your chances of success are higher.
  • Pending edits can also go to peer-review. This means other local guides get a chance to evaluate your suggestion. In mobile apps, this takes place under Contribute / Contribute Now / Scroll far down to Check the facts. When “enough” other local guides have confirmed your edit you immediately get a new email informing you that it has now been approved and published.

Sometimes Google’s computers just wait to see if other local guides suggest the same edit before one of them gets approved.

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Don’t feel discouraged just because your edits are rejected or go into the pending mode. You are dealing with some computer algorithms. So trying again is very much okay - and continually learning from the feedback you get on your edits is an amazing (and quick) way to improve your mapping skills.

I hope these tips and insights gives you some courage and desire to continue contributing with high-quality edits.

Cheers

58 Likes
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Hi @MortenCopenhagen

This would be as well my summary for the 3 different kinds.

Nice that you did summarize it such clear!

Stay Safe and Healthy!

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That was a very helpful tips. I always liked your post and I understand now why I loved your post.

Your every details make me understand what to do more precisely

Thank you

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Hi@Mortencopenhegen How can we remove not applied or pending from our edits?

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Hey @MortenCopenhagen

This includes the complete information about all the responses to edits. This is what i was actually looking for. Thanks for sharing.

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Thanks, @TorM and @ShakilAK .

Hi @Mohan_Singh

As mentioned, when you build your experience from making more and more quality edits the rate of pending and not applied edits goes down dramatically. Mainly because you start being able to predict what edits are likely to get approved.

On my best days, about 90+ percent of my edits are approved within 60 seconds. This was before the corona crap.

Hi @VinayKrishna

I’m not saying these lists are complete. It gets too long, nerdy, and speculative to attempt to make complete lists. But certainly something we can discuss if you like.

Cheers

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Hi all,

I forgot to give much-needed credit to my friend, @JeroenM , who taught me a lot about how edits on Google Maps are verified. In fact, he made this excellent (although very long) video on the topic. So if you ( @Mohan_Singh and @VinayKrishna in particular) want more details this is for you:

Thanks, @JeroenM for guiding us and for reviewing my draft for the opening post.

Cheers

PS: For the super nerdy this unofficial group on Facebook Reasons Study Group of the Mappers Academy is a goldmine of further reading related to the “Not applied” response.

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Thanks @MortenCopenhagen for that particular video. It was really very helpful.

Further, Can you please elaborate a bit about the trust score ?

Is it possible to know my trust score ? (I guess no).

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Wow, that is a great and accurate summary. Awesome job @MortenCopenhagen & @JeroenM !

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No, @VinayKrishna , unfortunately, there is nowhere you can look up your trust score. It is integrated into the Artificial Intelligence / Maschine Learning system set up to automatically evaluate the 20 million edits proposed daily to Google Maps. And I haven’t seen Google communicate any specifics on this.

Furthermore, I find it difficult to unequivocal distinguish between the effects of a) me getting better at predicting the outcome of edits and b) the AI keeping track of and using a trust score related to me. I tend to believe the a) is more significant than b). But again most of this is just guessing and interpretation of Google feedback over time. I suggest you search and consider starting another thread on trust scores since a debate here could dilute the content of this thread.

Cheers

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One again thank you the the synopsis @MortenCopenhagen . I will look into another thread for proper information.

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@MortenCopenhagen I just learned several things I wasn’t sure of. You have done a great job putting together this guide that can be used to guide others complains why their edits are not being published. I have just bookmarked this post. Thank you so much!

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Thanks, @SaifIS

I’m always happy to help.

Morten

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Hello! @MortenCopenhagen This was really a helpful post. Till date, “NOT APPLIED” was not clear to me. I am really thankful to you. Have a good day!

Cheers!

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Thanks, you are a great man. :+1:

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I found your post only when surfing on the podcast from jan van haver. Good to read through all of your recommendations.

Thanks a million.

Have a nice day! :pray:

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This would be a nice presentation and explainatio it’s very clear thank you @MortenCopenhagen

As far as my experience in editing and adding places in maps
 When the places not applied which I add, it is because is incorrect data
 So I have to complete the correct data first
 It’s difficult to edit places which is not bound to your region.

When my edit is pending, I have to wait for 72 hours then I have to repeat it again and again.

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Thanks @Chefaugil

Be careful with submitting the same edits again and again. It will hurt your trustscore.

All the best

Morten

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how do we know the trust score?

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Intessante Infos, Dankeschön :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like