I need assistance regarding my Google Maps account status. I am an active level 8 Local Guide with over 23 million views on my reviews and photos. However, for the past two years, I have been facing a severe issue:
Shadowban: Any new photo or review I post is only visible to me. If I check from another account, they don’t appear at all.
- Edits/New Places Rejected: Every new place or edit I try to add gets rejected automatically, despite having a long history of approved locations.
I haven’t violated any policies, and it seems my account was flagged by mistake by the automated system. Could Google moderator please look into my account and escalate this to the team for a manual review?
To try to help you I took a deep look at your public photos and found the following guidelines violations repeatedly.
You have lifted photos taken by other photographers and uploaded them to Google Maps without permission. Google takes copyrights seriously and so should we. Please delete all photos you have not taken yourself. Using Google Lens it is easy to check that some of your photos are stolen. Sometimes you even left the logo of the place on the photos.
This violation alone can easily explain your symptoms.
Further, I don’t think you are aware of the guideline not to upload the same photo to more than one place on Google Maps.
Uploading redundant (similar) photos is also a violation that you need to fix
If you fix these issues (also for your hidden photos) I think there is a reasonable chance for you to get your photo privileges back. But there are no guarantees.
Once you have cleaned up these issues I would be happy to check again and suggest your next steps.
Thank you for taking the time to review my photos and for providing detailed feedback.
I would like to explain that Google Maps is not very popular in our region, and my intention has always been to help improve the map by showing the nature, landmarks, and positive aspects of places that are listed. I never intended to violate any guidelines or misuse anyone’s work.
After reading your comments, I reviewed my contributions and removed many photos that could potentially raise copyright or guideline concerns. I understand the importance of respecting copyright and following Google’s policies, and I am making every effort to ensure that my remaining contributions comply with the guidelines.
I appreciate your willingness to help and would be grateful if you could take another look at my profile and let me know if there are any remaining issues that I should address before taking the next steps.
Salam Bara,
Did your issue got resolved?
I am facing almost the same issue (my edits get rejected almost every time) despite if follows the guidelines, and are very accurate edits.