I have noticed an improved feature of Google Map. Now it is easy to find out whether your contributed photo is available publicly or not.
Here, I will not make it a long complicated post to explain but in very simple form I am illustrating this new feature with the help of two snapshots.
Photo1 shows my contribution to the place with 24 views. On clicking on the photo the right window (on desktop) of the Google Map shows a blank black screen with a message 'No user photo availablehere’**.
So one need not have to struggle much to find out amongst the contributed photo which all are public and which all are hidden.
Hope you will like this.
Please share your experience in the comment box of this post.
This is available for all the contributed photos by LG. Upon clicking your photo beneath the place your photo belongs to (in my case the place is ‘Tandoori Hut, Restaurant, Amarpali Silicon City, Sector 76’ as depicted in Photo1), either the clicked photo will open on the right pane or the blank black screen with the message ‘No user photo available here’ will be displayed (as shown in Photo2 in my post.
It is not possible to see such details on mobile and hence I have categorically mentioned about desktop.
Having a flag on Private photos is really a great idea. It will save lot of time and effort of serious LGs who honestly wish to clean up their contribution data.
I systematically delete unpublished photos a few days after uploading them, so it took some time to scroll back in time in my photo contribution list to find a hidden photo.
It is most definitely a much easier way to check if photos are public or not. Thanks for sharing it.
I think I will be using it a lot. And I believe my procedure to check for hidden photos will include these steps:
Use the computer to do the following steps for each photo your want to check:
If the view number is more than 20 views, I will conclude that the photo is public
If it has under 20 views, I will then check if the small round place icon is my photo (mine is the cover photo). If so I will conclude it is public.
If still in doubt, I will click on the image to check if the screen to the right goes black = it is private. If the image shows up on the right = it is public.
One of my hidden photos has 1,227,992 views, @MortenCopenhagen . Quite unusual, but it may happen
The text “no user photo available here” is a pop-up, and disappear after 10 seconds
However there are things that we should keep in mind, before to consider a photo as Private:
you receive the same message if a photo is on upload status, and the upload in some conditions may take hours, so checking the photos after a couple of days, like you do, is definitely a good practice.
Photos may be hidden also because attached to a “private” reviews, however when the review is released the photos may take a bit longer to be visible again
First photo of some category is made visible on the location only after a few days, but it is usually visible in the public profile
Glad to know @MortenCopenhagen that my post is of help in formalizing the optimized process to look for hidden photos.
Yes - the earlier process was a bit complex and it was taking good amount of time and effort to identify such hidden photos. And, sometimes, it was not even possible using one device.
So, this one which I shared here has a merit in its own way.
The statement which I mentioned as ‘No user photo available’ gets disappear very fast from the blank screen. You need to be quick to capture the statement in your screenshot, the way I did in this screenshot .
Hidden photos with views happens when pics go private later = not immediately after upload. I seldom post photos with reviews, and I never saw photos being delayed in going public. What categories does this affect? And I will keep an eye on it.
Of course @MortenCopenhagen , I do not expect to receive a million views in one day. What I mean is that there are situations where also an old photo can be filtered.
I have seen photos delayed in going public, in my case, for Drinking Water Fountains. The place was approved instantly, but the photos appeared only a few days later. I am specifically talking about “first photos of a place”
Eu tenho mais de 16 mil fotos publicadas e cerca de 120 ocultadas. É “quase” impossível encontrar quais fotos estão ocultas. É muito trabalho para algo que sinceramente não vale a pena fazer. Outro dia li uma matéria de um Local Guides com um milhão de fotos enviadas. Imagine tentar achar alguma foto não publicada nesse oceano de imagens.
O Google poderia facilitar a vida de todos criando filtros, simples filtros.
Filtros separando fotos publicadas de ocultas;
Filtros separando edições por status de moderação;
Filtros separando avaliações ocultas de publicadas.
Esses filtros sim, facilitariam muito o trabalho. Qualquer outro sistema requer muita tempo e o emprego de muita paciência.
I completely resonant with your thoughts on the subject. That’s how the actual workflow should have been.
Possibly that may come in near future to make our (LGs) life easier, finger crossed.
That will also reduce such conversation chain if the tool itself is self sufficient.
Having said that in this post the existing process and feature is discussed for LGs, if they are looking to find out their hidden photos. This is the best possible way to find that out (if interested) at present.
At least something is there.
Keep building informed community stronger together.
@Kumaarsantosh , thank your post. I was just working on hidden photos when I found this thread.
I use an Android phone and a Windows desktop most of the time, but at the moment I am on my Chromebook.
When I view my Google Maps photos here, I find that if I click the POI title it opens a new sidebar that shows larger thumbnails of my photos and by clicking on them I can view a large version. (I can add screenshots if anyone is interested). The new sidebar also gives you a link to “Place Details” where you can view the POI and its photos. I thought I had seen the"By You" tab, but when I went back I couldn’t find it. If the POI has several categories, if you keep clicking on the right most tab, eventually (if you have them) the “Photos by You” tab does appear. Unfortunately the sidebar doesn’t seem to be expanded to prevent this issue.
I have now tested your new method. Here are my results :
I think it works, but not really for me. I’m more or also interested in knowing if my photos got featured or became the cover photo. For that reason I will still need to open the placesheet to check. So for me your method will be an extra an step that Is not needed. After opening the placesheet I can quickly check the newest tab ir the By you tab to check if it is not featured.
But I’m sure others can use it to quickly check if their photos were posted successfully.
@Kumaarsantosh I know this thread is almost 2 years old, but it was recently pointed up in another discussion. Is this only for testing recently posted photos? My present situation is that I was notified on the Top100 system by @AdamGT that I have 7 hidden media and 4 hidden reviews. Will I have to go through and click on all of my 1102 contributions to find those 7 hidden media? Please clarify, or let me know if I’m misunderstanding something.
No - you can do it for all your Photo contributions.
Yes. I am not sure if there is any faster way to reach directly to the hidden photo from your contributions.
It is a time taking activity but worth doing if you have more than 5-10% of photo contributions hidden but in your case only 7 out of 1102 is hidden, I dont think it is worth putting that amount of time and effort. (Just my views and you may take your own call).
together.