Hello everyone,
I am experiencing an issue where my reviews on Google Maps are not appearing publicly. Initially, I suspected that certain photos I uploaded might be causing a policy conflict or a system flag that led to my contributions being hidden. Acting on this belief, I went ahead and deleted many of my uploaded photos, but unfortunately, the problem persists and my reviews are still not visible to the public.
Could anyone guide me on how to fix this, or check if there is an account restriction causing this issue? I want to make sure my profile and review visibility settings are configured correctly.
Thank you for your help!
Hey @Yousef.ar, sorry you’re dealing with this. Deleting your photos usually doesn’t fix it if the spam filters caught your reviews by mistake. Since this is about your Local Guide profile and review visibility, you’re definitely in the right place. Let me tag @ErmesT and @MortenCopenhagen so a Connect Moderator can check your account for any restrictions. Hope they can get it sorted for you soon.
Hello @Yousef.ar
To help other local guides to provide help, you should either share the link to your profile here or enable it to be shown in your Connect profile. In addition you should not restrict your Maps profile, so moderators or other local guides can see your contributions.
Indeed, the first step after identifying a hidden review would be to remove all attached media from it. If text-only is still not published, please share a screen shot here.
Thank you so much for your help
No @Yousef.ar just open your Maps profile by clicking on “My Contributions” then copy the link in the address line, like mine here:
The link should start with https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/@followed by a long number which is your identification.
In the mobile app, you can open your profile and tap “Share”.
Instead of doing the above, you can also go to your Connect profile, select Edit->Profile and enable “Display my Google Maps profile link publicly”:
Your link still opens Maps, but not your Maps profile @Yousef.ar.
If you do this on a desktop computer you need to click the “Hamburger menu” on the upper left:
And then select “Your Contributions”:
Bei mir kommt es ebenfalls sehr oft vor das meine Fotos nicht veröffentlicht werden. Meine Bewertungen werden auch nicht hochgeladen. Wobei der gleiche Text und Foto von einem anderen Handy aus auf Google Maps veröffentlicht werden ohne Probleme.
Unfortunately, my information on this matter is very limited.
I hope I have done the right thing.
With my apologies and thanks.
Correct, this is link, I meant @Yousef.ar. Either myself (a bit later) or other local guides or moderators can have a look at your contributions.
What kind of policy conflicts did you already discover @Yousef.ar?
Having a quick look, I still saw many duplicates and redundant photos and even more severe, the same photo posted to multiple places. The latter can cause a permanent ban.
Here are som e more details, @Yousef.ar:
- You did post 14,787 photos and 3,037 videos, but only 6,802 media went public. Thus 11,022 photos or videos, that is more than 60% were rejected by the filter. This alone may cause the filter to react even more rigid and eventually reject everything.
- You wrote 3,791 reviews, but only 1,447 are public and therefore 2,344 hidden. Rejecting a review can happen because violations of the rules in writing. If photos or videos are attached to a review and only one of them is rejected, the entire review including all other attached media will be hidden. Given your high number of rejected media, this might be the most likely case for you.
I suggest to search all your media contributions and delete all duplicate and redundant photos and videos as a first step.
For more tips please read @MortenCopenhagen’s series of articles How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main post and ask us here, if you have any questions.
Hi Wilfried,
Thank you so much for your help in identifying the issues with my Google Maps account and for your suggestions on how to fix them.
Over the next few days, I will work on deleting the photos and leaving only the reviews. Do you think this will be enough to resolve the issue completely?
Thanks again for your support!
Not sure @Yousef.ar. As I said, I saw this after a quick look, but there might be other and different issues. Also keep in mind, we, the users and moderators here in Connect, only see what is public and don’t have clue about your hidden contributions. Besides that checking all your contributions - hidden and published - is a big effort.
Hallo @gerald1 herzlich willkommen in der Local Guides Connect community.
Die gleichen Tips, die ich oben gegeben habe, können dir auch helfen. Ein kurzer Blick auf deine neuesten Fotobeiträge zeigt das gleiche Bild zwei mal:
Eines der beiden und alle anderen doppelten oder redundanten (ähnliche) Fotos sollte zunächst gelöscht werden und dann sehen wir weiter.
Ebenso hier zwei schöne Beispiele für redundante Fotos:
Bei beiden Orten sollten zwei Fotos gelöscht werden.
Und mehrere doppelte hier:
You may need to make an insignificant edit to your text to force the spam filter to do another check after deleting the photos and attached videos.
I took a quick look at your photo contributions and I fully agree with @WilfriedB that you need to start removing redundant/similar photos.
After cleaning up this the next step could be to fill this form
But please clean up first to avoid getting hit with more severe sanctions.
Do I also have to fill out this form?
