One of our favorite things about our annual event is having 1:1 connections with Googlers and Local Guides like you. Since we’ve been unable to have those in-person conversations with you recently, we wanted to bring the spirit of our Googler office hours to a new series on Connect: Ask a Googler.
With this new series, we’re excited to offer Local Guides an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek at the Google Maps features you love. We’ll aim to bring you a different Googler each month who will be on hand to answer your questions.
Next week, we’ll be joined by Ian Leader, Product Lead, Google Maps User Generated Content. Ian leads a team of product managers who bring your contribution experiences to life. You can ask Ian about basically everything related to contributions, from reviews to photos and in between, like your profile and following experience, too. If you’re curious about the photo above, you can learn more about it on Instagram.
If you could ask them anything, what would you ask? We know great minds think alike, so if a fellow Local Guides has already asked a question you had in mind, please tap the “like” (heart button) so we can see that there is more interest around that topic. Be sure to share your questions by Tuesday, September 14th.
Unfortunately, we can’t accommodate every single question submitted, but please feel free to ask your questions in the comments and we will answer all that we can. It’s also possible that your question could be used in a future session, so don’t be shy.
Leave your questions in the comments section below!
Is there any hard decisions to fight copy-pasted content? Many users are copying photos and reviews from the web and adding them to places. This caused we see lots of photos and reviews on places to be the same! And unfortunately Google puts these kinds of contributions on top! This harms the map. We know flagging is one option but we need better investigation for flagging and smarter system to filter such contributions.
Is there any plan to fight follow-and-get-follower activity on the map? Map should remain reliable and this behavior from some users aren’t really good. Also such users gets dozens of likes for their reviews and photos that reduce trustworthy of likes and affects users experience.
thank you for introducing our next guest Ian (btw nice photo, and story !)
I’m curious about the funniest request / feature which was ever brought to the table of the product managers
Are there plans to add any different type of contributions which we don’t have available in Maps?
I see you are a lover of mountain / skiing and well done for the Fuji adventure, what’s your craziest adventure ever? And if it was the Fuji one what’s your next dream craziest one to plan / planning?
Why some contributions (like some modifications) take a long time to be approved and others are approved instantly? Is there a manual process involved in those that take longer?
Do you have any tips for us regarding something we can do to have our contributions approved faster?
Do you plan to make an evolution in the follow up functionality in the future? Nowadays we can follow people or be followed, but we cannot interact with them.
Thanks for Thee episodes of Ask a Googler we really appreciate it. It’s one of those episodes the local guides look forward to and we kind of come together on it.
Hello Ian nice to meet you.
My first question is there are some photos that are not according rules and guidelines of Google like selfies etc and I have found some of them are even featured. Please is it in your scope to look into this? We do our best to mark them as inappropriate yet there are thousands of them.
My 2nd question is do we get points for photo paths just like the 360 photos?
This is more like a request, is it possible to get more points for a featured photo on the maps?
When will the desktop road mapper become part of the maps permanently like others? For now it’s a separate activity
That’s a great idea@TraciC , and I think necessary for all the Local Guides.
I would like first of all to thank Ian for his interest above us. I believe one of the keys to staying here and continuing to dedicate part of our time is to feel heard.
I take advantage of and appreciate the occasion to ask because these days my experience with Google Maps is not the best , due to certain problems that I am having with the photo editor and my reviews.For not making it too long, I explain it in this post and your comments Problemas con el retoque de fotos en Google Maps
My question is simply to know if, would it be possible to have a signal, an answer, something that tells us that our problems are being addressed?I am aware that there are many and many tasks to deal with, butI would be so happy to get a small attention
Well, another thing that I would like to know is if in the near future it will be possible to interact more with other Local Guides in Google Maps?
Thanks again for this opportunity and see you soon.
Hello @TraciC as per his intro and his Insta posts I would like to ask what is the best things about mountains ? Is he plannto travel the great Himalayas ? What is the craziest experience he face in his life ?
Hello @TraciC , thx for opportunity to ask question directly to one of Googlers. Here is mine:
I already saw some proposed ideas about ability to mark multiple photos and report them as spam, wrong place, bad quality, etc…But these ideas wasn’t feasible at that time. Wouldn’t be great to have some bulk reporting tool for experienced Local Guides to faster and better solve issues with photos in Google Maps?
!)
, and I think necessary for all the Local Guides.
, due to certain problems that I am having with the photo editor and my reviews.For not making it too long, I explain it in this post and your comments 
