Hello Local Guides
Edit, Jan 15, 2025: I completely missed this post by @Rakshith_LG : To Edit A Place / Road, How To Remember The Location?. It’s worth reading. I’m glad I’m not the only one who decided to adopt this solution. End Edit
There are many posts on the best way to Add Roads to Google Maps. Today I will not repeat my advice, which you can find in 3000+, and counting. My tips for adding roads in Google Maps, but instead I want to talk about how to make your contributions more efficient.
Adding roads to Google Maps is an occasional procedure for many. This post is not for you.
For others it is a daily routine, whose purpose is not only to add/correct the road near home, but to improve the global information in Google Maps.
We call them Roaders. Nobody knows them, they do not receive badges, but their work is extremely valuable for millions of people.
If you don’t know them, read here:
https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t/roaders-at-work-the-hidden-heroes-of-google-maps/402751
This post is for them, for those who need efficiency in their daily routine.
Let me explain: A Roader often adds entire blocks, new residential areas, villages in remote areas that have never been mapped before.
These are activities that are done in steps, first creating the main roads and then adding side roads.
Each individual step must be approved before you can move on to the next.
Google Maps approves a road in a time that can vary from a few days to three months.
Until a few months ago this wasn’t a problem, because approved edits appeared in our edits list by approval date/time. So it was easy to find them, visit the place where the road was approved, and hang subsequent roads.
But for a few months now, this hasn’t been possible anymore. Edits are sorted by the date/time they were added. For an active Roader, who adds, say, 100 roads a day, this means that he might have to scroll through up to 9000 lines of edits to find the approved ones, and repeat the process for each single edit. I add an average of 150 a day, so I had to find a simpler method: create private lists in Google Maps: Create a list of places - Computer - Google Maps Help
I divide my activity of adding new roads into 3 parts:
- Exploring the territory in search of missing roads. In this, working on a list helps a lot, because I can visually understand on the map the places that I have already identified, and those still to be explored
- When I find a new area where there are missing roads, I add the place to the list, and immediately after I identify and insert the main roads.
- I periodically explore the lists to see if the inserted roads have been approved, and I insert the side roads
When an area is completed I move it to the list of completed areas, so that I also have a track of the work done.
This allows me to carry out my mapping activity much more quickly and rationally.
At the beginning I started with just one list, but when it reached 300 places I started to divide it by country. Currently I have more than 1000 positions in progress.
Here, this is my way of exploring and adding roads in Google Maps.
What’s yours?
I’m addressing in particular the champion of this activity, @MarcoDavoli , who with over 100K roads added is the undisputed leader. Marco, do you want to tell us your secret?
I’m tagging @TerryPG , as requested
, I’ve not been tracking so it’s kind of just a simple way for getting back to areas I was looking at. I know that if I’m quite zoomed out when I load the link then it’s a whole area that needs looking at. Or some links are just zoomed right into a small town and that probably just needs connecting to a major road or other town.
About this scrolling problem and for remembering the place I too create a