I don’t know if you’ve noticed it yet, it just popped up on my desktop a few minutes ago: there’s a new entry in the Your Contributions page in Google Maps on the desktop: Answers.
This is the second major change in less than a month in our contributions tab, after the one in Nov 2
This is one of the most awaited changes by Local Guides, who for years have often lost points due to a setting in their Web and App Activity that deleted the answers and consequently lost their related points.
Maybe the team already has some more details to give us about the Web & App Activity settings, @DeniGu , because that part is not clear yet, but apparently this setting no longer affects our responses in Google Maps, meaning that if we decide to delete our Web and App activity the responses will no longer be deleted.
Attention Please: There are two important points to keep in mind:
Web and App Activity must be on, if we want to have questions to Answer. In fact, the message that Google gives us is: “This activity was saved to your Google Account because your Web & App Activity setting was on while using Maps.”
“You can see and delete places you’ve answered questions about using the controls on this page. Important: if you’re a Google Maps Local Guide, any points associated with your place answers will also be deleted”
The interesting thing is also that apparently our Responses are no longer collected in Google Maps Activity. From the comparison screen you see below the last collected Response is from October 22nd, while in Google Maps the last response is from November 28th
I see Q&A available under Other contributions on my Maps profile page on Android.
And I see Answers as a new tab on desktop.
I recognize my Q&As listed on Andorid, but those listed on Desktop are not the same and I don’t think I recognize them. Could it be that what is named Updates from visitors somehow is blended into the Q&A on desktop as such updates are normally not to be found on desktop?
It is great news that we no longer need to deal with lost points due to expired/removed answers.
Thank you so much for your feedback, @Kumaarsantosh , and for posting about it, @PrasadVR . I saw your post but not having additional information (as I said it rolled out on my account just a few hours ago) I wasn’t able to comment about the importance of this change.
There are two very important points in this change.
not loosing (hopefully) points anymore because we choose to delete our Web and App Activity.
The possibility to delete our contributions, all together or one by one.
In this way Answers are now aligning the process with the one related to Photos, Reviews and Q&A, where we have the possibility to delete them. So I will not surprised if soon we will have also a button to “Delete all your photos/reviews” in a single shot.
I know that the next question could be “why should I delete them and lose the related points?”, and the first reason that come in my mind is that sometimes I start to answer to questions related to one place, and I don’t realize that after a few questions I was responding in a different location, without any possibility to correct my answers. Now I can fix it, providing a more reliable experience to Google Maps users. This because our answers are collected and managed statistically for Google Maps to provide more information to the users, e.g. to the one that are looking for specific product.
Nope, @MortenCopenhagen
In Q&A, available under Other contributions on our Maps profile page, we provide answers to questions made by other users.
The Answers on desktop are related to Quick answers we provide. I just responded to some of them
in the desktop version in ITALIAN languages there is an error.
“Risposte” (Answers) do not appears …always. Only if you select PHOTOS or EDITS also appears ANWERS.
Have look at this screenshot video.
This is not an issue, @MarcoDavoli , but simply how Google Maps works. In different languages the words have a different length, so a tab may be not immediately visible.
That’s why you can scroll them horizontally.
It is the same situation that you can encounter on the “photos” section of a business listing, where the photos “uploaded by you” may not be visible, and you will have to scroll the tabs a bit to see them
