About a year, I submitted an edit to add a road in my area that was missing from Google Maps. The edit was approved, and the road appeared correctly on the map, serving both residents and visitors.
Recently, however, I noticed that this road has disappeared completely from the map, not only the portion I’ve added, but another 500 meters or so in addition to it, and I submitted a new edit to restore it, but the update has not yet been reviewed or applied after a week. This issue was most likely caused due to how the trees around the road completely blocked the satellite view.
The absence of this road is creating significant challenges for the community:
Local businesses situated along this road are experiencing reduced visibility, as customers are unable to locate them easily.
Delivery and service providers face difficulties in reaching their destinations, causing delays and inconvenience.
Travelers relying on Google Maps are being rerouted unnecessarily, to a road that adds up 30+ km of unpaved roads, which impacts both efficiency and accuracy of navigation.
Given the direct effect on businesses and the community, I kindly request that this matter be reviewed at the earliest possible opportunity. Please advise if there are any additional steps I can take to assist in verifying the road’s existence and importance, including providing local city hall maps.
Thank you for your continued efforts in maintaining the accuracy of Google Maps.
Welcome to Connect, @paulofaustino
The approval of a road may takes 1 to 90 days for being approved.
Can you kindly share the link in Google Maps of the road? This may help to check it.
In this case I suggest you to add the road in small steps, as they can be approved faster.
Of course there are other ways to add roads:
Another option is to write a post to the Google Maps help community, providing a link to the road and a link to an official Maps (publicly accessible and issued by a Local Authority) for the community to escalate the issue to the team
In this case I suggest you to add the road in small steps, as they can be approved faster.
Of course there are other ways to add roads:
Understood, the actual length of the road that I had to recreate could be anything between 800 meters to 1000 meters max, in case I do split the edits in chunks of let’s say 200 or 250 meters I wonder how long it would take to get reviewed since I would have to do that again at least 4 more times until the road is connected again.
Another option is to write a post to the Google Maps help community, providing a link to the road and a link to an official Maps (publicly accessible and issued by a Local Authority) for the community to escalate the issue to the team
I will definitely do that right now, thank you for the advice.
I checked the route from the second link and, based on my own experience, I can say that the chances of it being accepted are practically zero—the problem is its lack of visibility.
Most of the added routes that are “hidden” under trees and other terrain obstacles are automatically rejected.
There must be a way to restore this, one can simply use older satelite data imagery to confirm the road exists, it’s not that difficult and it’s not acceptable to leave it the way it is, broken, I can see the road myself using Google earth and past years imagery data.
On top of that, I just recorded an hour ago the GPS data from that missing portion of the road, since I live here that’s not a problem, did that using Geo tracker and Wikiloc, will attach the gps files here and a YouTube video I recorded when I get faster internet.
What I’m saying is, there must be a way, the correct way, and I’m here to coop to find a solution.
Fique à vontade para se apresentar através deste post.
Como bem colocado pelo @ErmesT e considerando as opções também mencionadas, acredito que para este caso, o melhor, na minha visão, seria mesmo criar um post lá na Comunidade de Ajuda do Google Maps para escalar.
Mas gostaria de trazer uma coincidência boa.
Terça agora terá um encontro online realizado pela comunidade brasileira de Local Guides justamente para conversar sobre Edições no mapa e Inclusão de Estradas no Brasil. Podemos compartilhar o seu caso com a comunidade e conversar a respeito.
I didn’t know about it. In Brazil we have many trails in the forest. I also tried to add an important trail inside a national park but it was rejected.
The trail is official and used by many every week. It’s seen by Strava and other apps easily. There is no way to fix it? Google could use my own GPS to validade it.
I have marked the missing part of the path on the map in red. It is slightly obscured by trees in the middle and, despite repeated attempts to add it, the edit is rejected every time. This is a fairly common, well-known, and frustrating problem.
Due to geography, I realize that this problem will be even more noticeable in your country, so @paulofaustino@RogerOhayashi try using the option mentioned in @ErmesT post.
Irei fazer isso então, estou disposto a fornecer as evidências necessárias, só preciso de alguém que possa me auxiliar no processo, fazer os contatos certos.
Obrigado por avisar, será um prazer participar deste evento online e compartilhar o caso com a comunidade, nos vemos lá.
I’ll go ahead and do that then. I’m willing to provide the necessary evidence, I just need someone who can assist me in the process and make the right contacts.
Thank you for letting me know. It will be a pleasure to take part in this online event and share the case with the community. See you there.
By posting to the Google Maps help community forum I had an specialist to have a look at my case and he was able to help my out with getting the edit approved and the road restored, thanks everyone for helping me out!
Totally understand—it can take time if imagery is obscured or external datasets override prior edits. The ground evidence you share (coords, geotagged photos, city map) gives reviewers what they need to approve a restore even when satellite views are blocked by trees.
