#LGCTM: Deep clean - How to remove your worst and oldest photos

Google Maps tips & tricks
1

Inspired by a longer discussion starting hereunder the Photo Views Leaderboards (January 2022) by @AdamGT I would like to share what I learned from trying to go back to my earliest photos on Google Maps to delete the worst ones.

MortenCopenhagen_0-1643102996086.jpeg
MortenCopenhagen_0-1643102996086.jpeg1600×947 196 KB

Please accept my apologies for this nerdy and long post. I doubt this will be of interest to a lot of Local Guides. But I believe it will be very helpful to a few colleagues who feel strongly about making the best possible photo contributions.

The process of scrolling back thousands of photos is very time-consuming and it often fails. This makes it practically impossible to reach and remove very old photos if you have uploaded a lot of photos to Google Maps.

@TerryPG suggested using a tablet to scroll back as this should be faster. And we joked about making an artificial and rotating finger to automatically do the scrolling for us. Then I went hunting for an app. I found one calledEasy Scroll for Android phones.

In the video below you can see it in action.

Easy Scroll can scroll back 15.000 pics on my phone in about 20 minutes while I do other stuff on my computer. You want to keep an eye on it and restart the scrolling should it stop for some reason.

A few tips for Easy Scroll:

Turn off auto-rotate since this will stop the scrolling

Set the Screen timeout to high or off

Close other applications

Notification can stop the scrolling

Turn off the right menu in Easy Scroll. You only need the left one.

Open Easy Scroll before opening Maps

You need to see a stupid 30-second video before you can use the app!

After you hit Start in Easy Scroll go open Google Maps

Go to your photo contributions and select sort by views

Pull down on the overlay slider from Easy Scroll. Preferably so the speed will reach 164

Then wait until the scrolling reaches the end. You may need to restart the scrolling a few times if you have a lot of pics.

Now be very careful not to exit Google Maps since this will take you back to the top. Without going back to the Easy Scroll app start deleting the photos you want to be removed. When you have deleted one image Google Maps will jump to the next one below. So it might be a good idea to scroll up manually and delete downwards from there.

So what images should be deleted?

This is up to you. I went for my early photos not adhering to the photo guidelines and those with very few views. Here is a more detailed list of what I decided to delete:

Pics uploaded to “Unknown place”

Nude statues

Pics of interesting details (Close-ups)

Pics with People

Too far zoomed out pics (wide landscape / long-distance pics / pics showing how it looks seen FROM the place = not OF the place)

Recognizable faces

Signs

Logos

Art in museums (individual paintings and sculptures)

Vacation pics

Close up products

Animals

Flowers

Food

Theater street performances

Bad weather

Dark pics

Pics of individual storefronts posted to the shopping center and not the individual stores

Pics where I turned the phone and made the horizon not horizontal

Pics that everyone else have already uploaded

Opening hours pics

Redundant and near duplicated photos (If I uploaded more than one to each place)

If you are interested I could create a Google Photos Album with examples illustrating the different types of photos I deleted. I still have them all stored in Google Photos.

While sorted by views it goes very quickly to delete from the low end. I deleted every pic at that end. Most were quite horrible and certainly not up to my current standards to good Google Maps photos. After deleting maybe 400 pics I started seeing better pics that I like for their subjective qualities. So I started to leave some = not delete them.

In total, I deleted 1227 photos over a couple of days.

Here are the stats:

Number of pics: From 14.897 to 13.670 = 1.227 photos deleted (8%)

Number of videos: From 78 to 75 = 3 deleted videos

Public pics + videos: From 15.005 to 13.749 = 1.256 gone

Photo views: From 570.180.734 to 570.965.117 = reduction of 784.443 (less then 0.2%)

Average views/piblic pic: From 37.999 to 41.528 = increase 3.527 views/pic

Points: From 370.742 to 368.239 = reduction of 2.503 points

Level: No change

Number of contributions 79.717 to 79.286 = 431 fewer.

Most pics with less than 50 views are gone. Quite a few pics with 50-150 are gone.

These stats are not consistent. I think is mainly due to the delay in getting the numbers updated on Google Maps. I tried to wait a few days for them to stabilize, but I also contributed a lot of new photos and tons of edits, so, unfortunately, I don’t have better stats.

My subjective interpretations of the result:

First I was disappointed to only increase the average views/pic by 3500. But in the subsequent days, I noticed a huge jump in total views. So let us wait and see. But it feels good to no longer have a lot of embarrassing pics on Google Maps!

It was a lot of work.

PS: I also deleted some pics uploaded to reviews. Then the reviews are moved to the top of your list of reviews. And I noticed that 2 businesses replied to some very old reviews just because they now seem new.

Cheers

Morten

PS: This post is associated with the Local Guides Clean the Map-project.

2

Hi

@AdamGT

@TerryPG

@JonBekkevoll

@katydarhel

@OliverKIWI

I just wanted to let you know that I have summarized my experiences based on our earlier discussion.

Your comments are most welcome.

Cheers

Morten

3

Geez! That’s a helluva work! I deleted two hundred photos last time (mainly recognisable faces) took me quite some time. Thank you for sharing @MortenCopenhagen

4

Hi @MortenCopenhagen

Having done all this in a totally manually, time consuming, boring way, I most certainly do appreciate the time and effort involved. Some of your stats are confusing.

  1. If you deleted 1,227 photos that equates to 6,135 points yet you show a reduction of only 2,503 points. This might be explained by the fact that you have since made more contributions and if so you should have waited a few more days to see the true impact of you time and effort - you need to maintain a controlled experiment.

  2. You quoted Photo views: From 570.180.734 to 570.965.117 = reduction of 784.443 (less then 0.2%) but the reverse is true!

But still all very interesting.

5

Hi @AdamGT

I don’t consider this all manual since I found an app to do the biggest and most repetitive job = the scrolling.

And yes the numbers are not adding up. An experiment can not stop a dedicated local guide from making contributions, hi hi!

Cheers from cold Copenhagen

Morten

6

Wow @MortenCopenhagen now this is what I call a helpful post!!!

I have been deleting photos under 50 views too, this app will help me find them easier, I’ve removed some I not proud of, let’s level up the quality of our contributions, thanks for sharing the tip and this great post!

7

Hi @MortenCopenhagen ,
thank you so much for tagging me in the comments. I was surprised to find how many criteria for deleting a photo can be. The Easy Scroll app you recommend is a godsend. I will keep in mind for the future how to deal with a large number of photos. And I am insanely glad that many conscious Local Guides have taken up the revision of photos. This will make Google Maps better.

8

Hey @MortenCopenhagen .So glad to see you got to the end of your photos finally, Your app definitely scrolls faster than my finger , I did manage to get to the end or the beginning of mine in 22 minutes on the tablet but was a lot of finger scrolling. I like your criteria for deciding what to keep. I just wish more guides would do stuff like this instead of having 17 pictures of the exact same thing just cluttering the space, Great work,

I am going to go thru my reviews soon and weed them out, During this Co-vid period so many business have gone under,

9

Hi @MortenCopenhagen

La revisión que hiciste suena como un ejercicio muy interesante y creo que dedicaré tiempo a hacer una limpieza parecida. Tengo una pregunta: en tus criterios indicas que también eliminaste fotos de comida. Supongo que eran fotos de comida que no estaban en negocios relacionados con comida como restaurantes o cafeterías, pero prefiero confirmar contigo a que fotos en especial te refieres en ese punto.

¡Gracias!

10

Hi @LightRich

Thanks for your comments. I’m happy to hear your will do some deep cleaning as well.

Regarding food photos I can share the following:

  1. It was in my notes from when I did the cleaning, and I also did wonder a bit about it!

  2. I’m not a food photographer guy even though I have a Master’s degree in Nutrition!

  3. Food got on the list probably because I found some food photos with very few views. This might in turn be because there is so much competition in making good food pics that mine did not make the cut.

I’m very focused on getting a lot of views and since most other LGs upload tons and tons of food photos, those get relatively fewer views compared to storefront photos that are much more likely to become cover pics. Storefront pics are a lot more helpful when it comes to finding the places after using Google Maps navigation to get near the places.

I understand that food pics are a lot more important to foodies trying to decide where to go eat next. So I’m not generally against we should share food pics.

Sorry, I could not give you a better answer.

Cheers

Morten

PS: Natural light yields so much better pics. There are not a lot of natural light inside most restaurants compared to when we shoot storefronts.

Update:

Many of the food photos I removed were of fruits and vegetables in close-ups in a market. Even though they were good, colorful, and sharp images they were not attracting a lot of views. Pics from a market showing more than just some products did better. So it was not so much prepared (ready to eat) food as it was raw ingredients. One could argue that details of apples and onions are not really telling Maps users anything of value. It could be apples and onions from any market. I hope this helps.

11

As always @MortenCopenhagen , apologies NOT accepted! :heart_eyes:

Your long and nerdy posts are one of the reasons I still check in on Connect every week…and your YouTube videos are great!

Geeky, verbose map nerds UNITE! :fist:

Samantha

12

Hi @MortenCopenhagen , this is really a time consuming task, and others might not like it as it will result in deduction of points, views, content and may be level drop. But I understand someone matured as you, does this, which is what I did my self some time back. Well, I can see my points have decreased and even view counts, the computer is getting confused as well since it had higher view counts and now it goes back and forth.

You must be one of the few heroes we have here. Well done and keep up the good work!!

Cheers!

13

Thanks. @Raphael-Mahumane

Yes, it can put some heavy strain on your computer to make it all the way back to your oldest photos. If you run out of RAM or almost do the performance deteriorates or the computer can freeze. Maybe I should have included this, but I got so absorbed to make sure the scrolling did not break.

Happy to hear you also did some deep cleaning.

All the best

Morten

14

Great! @MortenCopenhagen how did you do the auto scroll, and what is easy scroll, can I use it too or where can I find it, if using android?

15

Just search for easy scroll in the Play store, @Raphael-Mahumane

It is an app. Maybe this link will help you: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jettoast.easyscroll&gl=UK

Cheers

Morten

16

Thank you @MortenCopenhagen , I will try it and give you feedback.

17

I just read this @MortenCopenh, thanks for summarizing your work and efforts. I wish I had seen this earlier, as I have gone basically through the exact same pain and found the same issues, but without the autoscrolling app!