Notes, thoughts, and questions from reviewing one of my review and photo posts

(Reference links are at the end)

Recently I read @MortenCopenhagen’s articles on Getting in and out of trouble on Google Maps. At the end I followed the link to @JeroenM ‘s Account Health Check and took the quiz. These two pieces got me thinking about several things: review quality, photo quality and violations, so I revisited a review and photos I had posted back in December of 2022 for 1A Coffee Roasters. I also noticed some things for the first time and a couple of things that I find odd.

Writing better reviews:

I give my photos a great deal of thought; but to be honest I’d never really thought about exactly what makes a great review, in part because I don’t do them that often (<40/year). About 4 months ago I was in a nearby town that I hadn’t been to in a couple of years. I found a new coffee shop, took lots of photos and wrote what I thought was a good review. After reading Morten’s mini-series and taking the quiz, I realized it wasn’t nearly as good as it could be. I had started it off, something like, “I hadn’t been in Wilmington in a couple of years and I was surprised to find this great coffee shop….” I deleted this intro and left the rest intact and it is such a better review. I also noticed that the date of the review was updated but still shows a response from 4 months ago by the owner. My revised 1a Coffee Roasters Review

Review subcategories:

Searching through the reviews of this coffee shop I did not see mine listed, and thought perhaps it had been hidden. I have never noticed that the reviews have subcategories and that mine was under the barista reviews. I also noticed that when I opened the pictures attached to the review all I got was a black screen. I thought maybe they were hidden because some were duplicates of the other photos I had uploaded. When I opened the review in an incognito window, however, I could see them. Has anyone else had this experience?

Photos- privacy, sub-categories, duplicates/similar, etc:

Screenshots and photos related to this post:

Privacy: After I read Morton’s posts on photo violations I thought about one of my photos of this coffee shop that features the barista behind the bar. It is the cover photo for the shop and it has about 38,850 views. I did not obscure the barista’s face. Should I have, or are store employees exempt from this requirement?

Subcategories: I found it interesting that there are photo subcategories and that one is called “Vibe”. I only have one photo in this category.

Duplicates/similar/not useful: I noticed that I had uploaded 2 or 3 photos both with my review and separately as individual photos. The cover photo is also included in the review and that copy has 5,000 views. In addition to the cover photo I had uploaded a similar shot of the barista/bar (also as a standalone photo and with the review). These two copies have a combined view of around 3,000. I intend to take these two down as they are clearly not adding much value.

I added photos of the shop’s solar panels, thinking this “green” aspect might be of interest. They had gotten very few views so I took them down.

One other odd thing I noticed is that as you scroll through the photos for this shop, one of my interior shots (landscape) is rotated 90 degrees.

Thoughts: Just in the few weeks I have been active in Connect I have learned so much. Thank you to the moderators and everyone else that posts on the forum. I intend to do a post on “Tips for connect newbies” and a short series on “Developing a more thoughtful and disciplined approach to being a Local Guide” where I want to discuss how I have added reviews and photos vs the approach I am developing based on all the thoughtful posts I have been reading. I also want to have a discussion about value vs points and how to decide when to “thin the herd”, and how to decide whether to include a photo in a new post on Maps.

Reference links:

MortenCopenhagen ’s mini-series

How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main post

@JeroenM ‘s Account Health Check

Other posts by MortenCopenhagen
Review violations, Photo violations

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Good morning, @Rednewt74

Thanks for giving so much credit to @JeroenM and me, but I feel credit and links should also be given to the relevant guidelines and help pages provided by Google.

Google has improved the language of the guidelines since we wrote the posts you are linking to. So I think this more recent summary of the the review guidelines

and 4 Simple Steps to Writing Excellent Maps Reviews deserves a mention also. They make it easier to understand and follow the review guidelines.

Seeing black photos is likely due to connection issues. Try from another device or platform to test this. Clear cache will often help.

I don’t think there are Google guidelines for sharing photos showing the faces of staff personel. My private interpretation is that photos uploaded by the business are more likely to be shared with the concent of the staff. So I try to never flag such images for privacy.

Rotated photos are no longer that common. But I believe this is something you should and can correct. Just edit your backup copy of the image by rotating it 360 degrees and save it again. Then delete the rotated copy on Maps. Then upload the new version. You will lose the views.

I’m looking very much forward to reading your planned posts.

Cheers

Morten

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@Rednewt74 Thanks for the post. @MortenCopenhagen 's articles are very helpful.

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As long as you have permission, then a photo of a staff member or the owner(s) is totally fine.

Hi @Rednewt74 ,

If you have duplicate photos, kerp the one with the most views and delete the other(s).

If a robot does a “health check” on your account, you may get sudpended.

Play safe. :safety_vest: :rescue_worker_helmet:

@JeroenM ,

Thank you for your response. Asking for permission is kind of a gray area. I told the Barista I was taking pictures for Google Maps but often it’s not possible to have that conversation. Since the algorithm has not deleted or hidden any of my photos showing employees I don’t think it’s an issue. Also in those type of photos I think blurring the face would be very distracting.

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@JeroenM ,

Thank you for your concern. For the last couple of weeks I have been doing what I call “thinning the herd” . I’ve been scrolling to the least viewed pictures and deleting them; as I move farther up I will remove duplicates as I see them. Currently my goal is to keep my points over 20,000 and to not seriously decrease my total number of views.

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