This was also my thought after realizing I couldn’t find 4 out of 670 reviews and 2 out of 272 ratings. The hidden photos I do know very well and decide for each to delete or to leave it.
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How are you finding your hidden photos @WilfriedB?
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Good morning, Anthony!
The method described in this thread does work for photos, if you scroll By Date. Scrolling By Views it also stops at a certain point, similar to scrolling down reviews.
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Hi Wilfred and @tony_b,
My understanding is that there is another way of looking for hidden photos. You open your Maps profile twice with the second time being incognito (just like when you do your monthly stats) . You put the windows side by side and scroll down alternately. There should come a point where you’re seeing a picture in your private profile but not in the public/incognito profile. In the T100 stats my number of hidden photos doubled from March to April. I used the method I just described and did not find any differences in the two views as far back as November. It makes me wonder whether the method really works or if all the hidden photos are from an earlier time, but all suddenly became hidden in April.
I have very few photos from April with no views. I will see what happens when I try the other method.
This is what I did with my Reviews but found only 2 of the reported 4 hidden reviews. I’ve been reluctant to spend the time on the much longer list of Photos.
Another thought I had was to test all my Zero-views photos, but the ones I checked so far appear in both private and public view, so that didn’t really solve the issue.
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I have too few hidden reviews for me to worry about. I’m pretty sure I’ve used the dual screen method before to find hidden photos. My hidden photo percentage is still very low, but the big jump in one month bothers me. If I figure anything out I’ll let you know. I have noticed that sometimes when I send the herd the number of hidden photos goes down but I never know which ones were hidden.
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I think I’m on to something @Rednewt74. I just had an increase in my number of Unknown Places, and it coincided with an increase in my number of hidden photos.
Please see this discussion Unknown place, so what would you do?
I think I’m going to delete the ones with the lowest views and see if it has an effect on these two numbers.
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Very interesting Tony. I guess my big jump last month was due to old photos changing. Have you looked to see if the places are marked unknown are closed or removed from Maps?
@tony_b, @WilfriedB, @TerryPG,
With you all revising the discussion of this topic I started thinking about it (which is always a dangerous thing) , and ended up going down a rabbit hole. You’re all familiar with the technique on a desktop where you can scroll away down and then search for the “0:” to find videos. Well I did the same thing except in the searching for the video time stamp, I searched for “unk” . I spent well over an hour doing this , and I found many this way. In my case they were all from businesses that had closed. And none of the photos were recent . I was aware that some of the businesses had closed in the last year, but was unaware of others that are not located in my home area.
I’m puzzled because I know of at least one business that I still have photos on that has been closed for years that you can still find searching Maps.
- I’m wondering if when Google Street View goes through and notices a change in a storefront that it takes the old business off?
- My other question is whether when a new business opens in an old location can they somehow ask for the previous business to be removed.
Yes @Rednewt74, I searched for Unknown and found a location two minutes from home which had closed and I never knew. The other place was an overseas location and I have no means of verifying it. Yesterday I re-ran the search and another place showed up as Unknown. Easy to verify, as I’m aware it closed a month ago.
My feeling is that other LGs report the places as Permanently Closed, then they disappear off the map. At that point, there is no POI for the photos to remain attached to.
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I’ve reported some myself. I don’t think it is the number of people that reported closed. It seems to me that there is some other reason. I can still find several places that closed several years ago that are still on Maps.
This is a very efficient and easier way to find out the hidden photos and a big step in optimising our Maps contributions. Thank you for sharing @Kumaarsantosh
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I don’t think so, @tony_b and @Rednewt74, I rather believe, Google makes it to easy to report a place as “Doesn’t exist here” (instead of “permanently closed”) whenever no claimed owner exists, as it happens often for historical monuments. I think it was @ErmesT, who mentioned that several times.
Of course, if a new business was opened, nobody should stop the new owner, after claiming a new listing, to delete the old listing to avoid old comments might be related to his own business.
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Thank you @Ssiddharth2000. I extensively used this method and found effective too.
I had noticed the doesn’t exist here option.
It is probably with it is reported this way, especially by a new business at the same location, that causes it to be removed from Maps. Thanks for pointing this out.
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Makes sense to me, but the POI near my home that became Unknown Place, does NOT have a new business occupying the space. It is now just an empty abandoned shop in a mall. So perhaps it was just reported by a regular Maps user.
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I think they can but I ran into a situation where the new owners changed the name of the diner. My photo became the featured photo. But Google in it’s wisdom a year later changed the photo to the original store’s photo with their name. I found out months later they had no success with Google. I had been trying in the meantime clicking on the report button. I also added a new photo of the POI and yes my new photo became the new featured photo. So I guess yes and no.
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Us small islanders don’t have the privilege of up-to-date Street View. I’m seeing a lot of areas on our map depicted as it was with 2019 dates. 
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I reported several times a “Doesn’t exist here” when I was sure there never was such a place as the listing implied. I was always surprised how quickly I got the “accepted” response and have serious doubts, whether they really verify the request, unless there is a claimed owner.
@tony_b @Rednewt74 @TerryPG
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