Thanks @TraciC for introducing Ian Leader to us all.
My questions are as follows:
Scrolling through our photo and review contributions is painful, in fact for volume contributors, a longstanding problem is that it’s impossible to scroll all the way though our photos. Is it possible to provide additional Contribution sorting options to help overcome the current scrolling problems. For example, currently we have features to sort our photos by date and views order. Is it possible to extend the sorting options so that we can sort in reverse date and reverse views order?
When viewing our review photos from within our Contributions area of Maps, we can only see a maximum of 20 photos! This has caused me some embarrassing problems.
(a) A restaurant I frequent advised me that I added a photo of a competitive restaurant and I cannot see it from within my Contributions to delete it.
(b) At the request of another business, I cannot delete out-of-date photos related to the business and update these with more current photos, and very recently.
(c) While showing photos of another review to a business I noticed that I had added a duplicate photo however, because of the 20 photo limit I cannot see either of the two photos while in maintenance mode to delete one of them!
When viewing photos from within our Contributions area we are essentially in maintenance mode and therefore for maintenance purposes we should be able to see all the photos that we have added to that review.
Could we get a notification or email when when of our photos becomes the feature photo for a Place of Interest This would be very helpful, encouraging and motivational.
As well as the current menu options including a By owner, Maps on desktop is missing a By you option for photos!
Hola @TraciC gracias por la oportunidad de conocer a Ian.
Mi pregunta es "¿ por qué está, tan restringida la categorización de un comercio, por ej., a “Tienda de Ultramarinos”, cuándo en realidad aplican varias más específicas por rubros y que lo harían más fácil de referenciar?
Thank you so much for giving an opportunity to ask and meet us!
I am happy to be part of the google family as a local guide! I heard that there will be testing opportunities for local guides and would like to know more about it! Also is there any meet-up we can expect for a local guide or any summit lined up? I would love to be part of the google family as Google too!
@ Ian, some questions that can help us to contribute better
When sharing photos to Maps, is it more preferable for the photo to be in portrait or landscape, or it doesn’t matter as long as the photo orientation best describes the place. (for example landscape mode for vast areas; portrait for taller objects etc)
Most of us don’t like people sharing selfies or group selfies that adds little value to the place itself. What if the selfie or group selfie is actually valuable in showing off the place. (for example, selfie showing off a cliff view of a great photo point etc), or we don’t want any selfies/group selfies at all?
As a solo contributor, generally for a location, how many maximum photos one should really upload before it is considered spammy (even if all the photos are different)? (for example if I went to a convenience store, typically, 1 photo of the front, 1 photo of the interior, 1 photo of the payment counter, photo/s of any accessibility facilities etc should quite well describe the place). What is someone took many photos of many products sold in the store and uploaded all of them, would that be considered spammy? Of if one visits a garden and took too many photos of each different plant in the garden, would that be spammy?
Perkenalkan saya iorikun, Local Guides dari Indonesia, Malang.
Jika diperkenankan saya ingin bertanya:
Tak jarang Google menyembunyikan kontribusi yang telah dibagikan kontributor karena dirasa kontribusi tersebut telah melanggar aturan Google. Lalu tidakkah Kak Ian (dan tim) ingin menambahkan fasilitas untuk memberitahukan (secara otomatis ataupun manual) kepada kontributor tersebut bahwa ada satu (atau lebih) kontribusi yang ia berikan yang telah melanggar kebijakan Google, beserta penjelasan/rincian peraturan mana yang telah dilanggar (misal konten tidak senonoh). Dengan begini si kontributor ke depannya akan semakin mawas dengan konten/kontribusi yang ia bagikan, yang pada akhirnya membuat konten konten di Google Maps makin berkualitas.
Demikian pertanyaan saya. Atas perkenannya menjawab saya sampaikan terima kasih. Dan untuk Bu Traci saya sampaikan terima kasih atas kesempatannya.
Hi @TraciC thanks for this series. I would like to ask about the possibility of putting our social media channels on Google Maps profile (i.e; Instagram, twitter etc). I wonder it’ll be an interesting experience to find out the social media platform we have. Absolutely we could set in our setting preferences. Will the team plan it for the future? Thanks in advance.
Thanks @TraciC for introducing Ian Leader to us. I love his Instagram profile.
My question is :
Sometimes I notice that people mistakenly upload facial images (selfies, group pics etc.) to Google Maps, which is against the map t & c. This error can be prevented if Google Maps has a built-in face recognition technology.
Can your team apply such features to Google maps in the future?
Thanks for posting your question. Climbing mountains and being able to see the world from above is an amazing experience, and I am sure Ian would have so much to tell us about it. Nevertheless, in this session he will be focusing on his knowledge as a Google Maps User Generated Content Product Lead. If you have a question about contributions, such as reviews or photos, your profile or the following feature, feel free to share it with us here in a comment.
Thanks for submitting your questions! It seems that Ian’s experience as a mountaineer captured the curiosity of more than one Local Guide, and I am one of them, to be honest.
But, since in this occasion we will take advantage only of his professional role within the Google Maps team, I wanted to let you know that he won’t be able to answer your first question.
Grazie per aver pubblicato le tue domande per Ian, sono tutte molto interessanti! Per quanto riguarda l’ultima, vedo che anche tu sei rimasto colpito dalla sua esperienza di scalatore, come molti di noi d’altronde!
Volevo però farti sapere che Ian si concentrerà sulle sue competenze professionali come membro del team di Google Maps, quindi dovremo aspettare un’altra occasione per soddisfare le nostre curiosità sulle sue avventure da alpinista.
Besides to ask a Googler, as a Lv 10 LG since 2016, I sincerely hope that Google Maps could build and improve a better AI system to judge the problem of ad reviews!
But with no doubt, ask a Googler is a wonderful activity on connect:))
Some people post the same picture 5-10 times with the angles slightly moved by 5-10 degrees. It looks like they are just trying to get more points. I’ve tried reporting some photos as duplicates (but they aren’t really duplicates). I could report the profile but there is no way to comment why I think there is an “offence”…
How does Google choose which photos to remain “private” (ie, can’t be seen by the public)? Is it by an AI algorithm? Recently I posted a photo of a 2-scoop ice cream cone with the background blurred using my camera’s automatic background blurring feature. The background was a large round logo with the company name and 4-scoop ice cream cone. Google rejected that photo. However, it accepted the another similar photo without the automatic blurring. Google has previously accepted my photos of blurred backgrounds.
Another example is a photo of a menu hung on a wood wall was rejected. However, the same photo taken by another contributor where the menu was crocked was accepted. Very strange.
I find it very hard to have my friends follow my profile on Google Maps. There is no name-search function. I have to get them to find a photo or review I’ve posted and then follow me from there. Also about 9 months ago, the “Follow” button wasn’t even available on iPhones so I gave up asking my friends who only use iPhones. I haven’t checked if that was fixed in the past 9 months.
Are edits done by a person? One time I changed a category from “restaurant” to “European restaurant” and it was rejected. A few days later I tried it again and it was accepted.
I’ve reported many photos that are not of that business. For example, a building would have pictures of lakes, sunsets, a tower, etc. I’ve reported hundreds of these pictures but it seems to me they are never deleted. Are they reviewed by a person and hence they don’t have time to process all the requests?
I’ve added a few businesses that keep getting rejected. I’ve included photos of the storefront with neighbouring businesses, the business phone number, and a website were it indicates the address of the business. I figured that someone could look at the info and/or call the number to verify. But it gets rejected within minutes. And no, the business had not submitted their own application to Google or used the “Google My Business” app.
When I write a review, sometimes I get to speak to the owner or manager and I find out the history of the business. But I find that if my review is long and it includes this kind of info, it is made private (not viewable to the public). When I remove that info, it becomes public. Should I be avoid that info in the future?
I used to get emails from Google congratulating me when I got to certain milestone for total photo/video views such as 1 million, 5 million, 10 million, 25 million, 50 million, 75 million. But I never got any more emails after the 75 million. I am past 200 million now and am still waiting. Is it because Google stops at 75 million?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us! The questions you published are very interesting but I wanted to remind you that Ian won’t be able to answer on subjects that are not related to contributions.
What you mentioned about including the Local Guides Meet-ups in the app, that could be used in a future session, but it would be also a good topic for a proposal in the Idea Exchange board, if you want.
