If a place is "claimed" by a business, why can't guides suggest edits? They are always NOT APPLIED.

Can someone explain this to me:

Here is the scenario:

  1. A business is started

  2. A Local Guide adds this place to the map and the addition is approved.

  3. The owner of the business claims the business, adds the website, phone number and hours.

  4. Local Guides are now LOCKED OUT from suggesting edits. All suggested edits are programmatically NOT APPLIED because the business has been claimed.

5)_ The business owner sells the business and the new owner changes the name.

  1. The old owner never tells the new owner about the listing of the business on Google Maps

  2. What was Pete’s Pizza Restaurant only open for dinner is now Harry’s Huge Hamburgers open for lunch and dinner.

HOW CAN WE LET GOOGLE KNOW? OUR SUGGESTED EDITS ARE IMMEDIATELY REJECTED EVEN THOUGH OUR DATA IS CORRECT AND THE GOOGLE MAP DATA IS WRONG?

We here on the ground know all this. We live here. But since the business had been claimed, how can we ever let you know things the owner hasn’t bothered to convey or update, like an entirely new name, a new category and new hours…

Can someone who knows the answer please explain this? I suppose in my scenario I can report the pizza place as closed and add a new place, in the exact same location that is the hamburger place.

4 Likes

Yes you are correct @FogCityNative

the businees must be reported as “closed”, as a new business is taking place now.https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895

It is true that sometime a business owner simply forget to “close” the listing on Google Maps.

The simpliest think for the new business is to contact Google Mybusiness help center for asking them to close the old business

@ErmesT Sorry, but this is going to be a long message.

I am concerned that a business can claim its location and might do so with the pin in the wrong place or an incorrect name.

For example, where I live, I cannot get Google Maps to correctly name a transit station. I have submitted the edit multiple times and it never gets updated. I have sent it as feedback with screen shots. My feedback is discounted.

Google Maps has named the Envigado Metro Station as La Estrella which is not correct. You can use Street View to clearly see multiple large neon signs installed by the transit authority that say “Envigado” station. Look at the POI blue icon that is correctly labeled.

But the place is named La Estrella in Google Maps and nothing will convince Google to fix it. There is a La Estrella station 3 more stations to the south. This point is not La Estrella.

All kinds of directions for getting to the Envigado Metro Station are labeled as Go To La Estrella. If you have lived in the Medellin, Colombia area for any length of time you will know that this data is WRONG. But I am guessing it has been claimed by someone and locked so there is nothi\ng any local guide can do to convince you the data is simply wrong.

A similar situation exists with the pin for the Poblado Metro Station. It is duplicated, one POI in the correct place and another pin on an overpass or the middle of the river to the north which is not the Poblado Metro Station or even a way to get to the Poblado Metro Station.

So I see an inherent problem in giving no weight whatsoever to Local Guide data submitted if it conflicts with a locked location because it has been “claimed” somehow.

Please look at these screenshots and tell me how a Local Guide can get
Google to budge and fix the map when a “claimed” or “locked” point is simply not correct.

I submit the correction and all I ever get back is NOT APPLIED. This is, to me, a huge problem to the integrity of Google Maps just like the reCAPTCHA issue is a total disincentive to guides to make multiple corrections to photos that are not correct yet still attached to a point.

For example, in my neighborhood, the restaurant Burro in Envigado moved from a smaller location to a much larger location a block away. There are 20 or more photos that show the old location, which looks nothing at all like the new location. The food shots are the same, but the interior photos need to be removed.

To fix this, a local guide must suggest an edit 20, 30, or more times. Each edit leads reCAPTCHA to intensify its attempt to validate the user as real and not a 'bot. Meaning reCAPTCHA demands the user “solve” ten or more “puzzles” before the Guide can move on to the next edit.

At some point, the time it takes to solve the reCAPTCHA is much longer than the time it takes to enter the edit. So I just gave up and left a whole bunch of outdated photos in the database. Too much work caused by Google thaty prevents the map data from bein g as accurate as possible.

Part of the problem may be caused by the fact the the page to submit changes is protected by Version 2 of Google’s own program, reCAPTCHA. There is a version 3.

Yet the one and only way to bring this to the attention of a Googler with the ability to prioritize and fix a highly technical and complex bug is to use Idea Exchange, where it is subject to a vote of Local Guides before anyone at Google will even look at and consider it.