I would like to ask for your help, if possible, with the following issue.
I have uploaded 759 photos to Google Maps over the past 7-8 years across 166 locations. Of these 166 locations, I personally created about 30, while the remaining locations were created by other users.
Recently, I noticed that 44 of these locations are no longer visible on the maps, and consequently, the photos are missing.
I sent 3 emails to Google Maps support describing the issue, with screenshots as they requested, and a file detailing which locations are missing, including their coordinates. However, I only received automated responses, and the last response advised me to contact you.
I would like to ask if you know what might have happened: Could Google Maps have removed these locations for some reason, or is it a technical error caused by an upgrade?
Sometimes this happens. Anyone can report a place as non-existent and if such a change is accepted, the place will no longer be visible on Google Maps and the photos you added will be automatically deleted.
Hello @DK58 welcome to the Local Guides Connect community. @new.user is correct in saying place listings (restaurants, shops, other points of interests ā¦) can be deleted from the map for various reasons.
However, you should still be able to find you own photos under My Contributions ā Photos. In those cases they are shown (only visible to you) under āUnknown placeā.
So, why donāt you check My Contributions ā Photos and see, how many photos, you can find.
Indeed, I can find the photos in my contributions as displayed in the picture below, but I am trying to understand why this happened when the locations and the photos were valid and correctly aligned.
Does it mean that I will have to manually reupload the photos on all locations that were deleted for some reason?
Hi @DK58 - was one of the places a footbridge/bridge across the Corinth Canal? I think I recognize the location of some of the pictures shown on your profile as Unknown Place. Clicking on the pics in your profile shows a label of Ī ĪµĪ¶ĪæĪ³ĪĻĻ ĻĪ± ĻĻĪæĪ½ ĪĻĪøĪ¼Ļ ĻĪ·Ļ ĪĪæĻĪÆĪ½ĪøĪæ. When I go to that bridge on GM, I donāt see any location listed now. I donāt speak Greek, but Iām curious if perhaps the bridge has a more specific name? Iām curious if someone removed it because the name wasnāt specific enough? @WilfriedB knows much more than I do so Iāll tag him, as well.
Thanks for the confidence @SCJohnnyG
Not sure, I know more, but if one of the locations is indeed a bridge, it would be a geographical feature (same as streets, rivers, cities ā¦). Only Google can add photos to those and if @DK58 was able to create a listing for a bridge in the past, which was changed to a geographical feature later, this would be one of those examples, why the photos are no longer published (not deleted!).
Unless there is an outlook or some other touritstik point of interest, there is no solution.
My opinion somebody is marked that placeās as āDoesnāt Existā or maybe like as @WilfriedB mentioned. Are you sure that placeās are still in business? You have added 759 photos but from this only 461 photoās are visible and remaining all are hidden.
In Your Profile
I opened your profile to check the photos as how many are in public. But unfortunately I seen the similar (duplicate) photos which is against for the Community Policy I have a suggestion remove similar photos for the your account safety purpose and follow, respect to our community rules.
Also you have added mostly photos to the canals / river / pond (I am note sure what is called that) donāt much focus on this try to focus on the business like restaurants, storeās etc which will be useful for the people & the business owner.
I am tagging a connect moderator @ErmesT. He can give you detailed information about this issue.
Hi @DK58
I see you have received a lot of correct answers here.
In fact a photo will be appear as associated to an unknown place of the relevant Point of interest is removed from Google Maps.
This unfortunately happens frequently, and if a location has not contributions other than the ones uploaded from the person who added the place, the related place can be easily removed from Maps of flagged as āthis place doesnāt exist hereā.
Yes, if you add the place again first.
If a removal is very recent sometimes the team, with the proper information, can reverse the action and reinstate the listing. But if the removal is older than a couple of weeks it will not be possible to fix it.
But if you mean just to upload the photos directly to the coordinates, no, you canāt.
You have a lot of photos already added to addresses (villages, in your case) where there isnāt a button for uploading photos, and this is a practice that should be avoided because it is against the policies
If a POI is in Google Maps and it has a button for uploading the photos, where is the issue in uploading photos in there, @Rakshith_LG ?
Not all the Local Guides are posting only photos of businesses, and they can help hikers and nature lovers exactly in the same way other people help with photos of restaurants.
A different story is if you add photos on addresses or coordinates, as I mentioned on my previous reply
I am not sure why you guys mention the canals, but most of the photos that disappeared are actually in very specific points outside of the city, in mountainous areas which could help hikers. These photos included mostly small churches built in theā¦middle of nowhere, and these spots are hard to access so I believe they were very useful.
I am not sure I am able to create 44 place locations and upload the pictures that were deleted again as this would be very time consuming, and also because unfortunately nobody guarantees that they wonāt be deleted again.
Is there any other way to recover these places and photos so that they reappear in the map?
Once again, thank you all for your help, I truly appreciate it!
I am sure they were useful, @DK58
Being a hiker myself I really appreciate when I can find that kind of information.
To ask Google to try to recover the listings we need to provide the link to the original Listing, and the removal, as I said, must be very recent.
Last year they recovered some of the places where I contributed, because I was able to act quickly (24 hours after the removal) and to provide the link. My photos and reviews were reinstated in a couple of business days.
If this is your case too, please share the information here, and I will escalate it to the team
Thank you for your understanding. Could you please clarify what do you mean by ālink to the original Listingā? I have the coordinates of all lost locations where I had uploaded a photo. Would this suffice?
Or do you mean this link, as displayed below in red?
Yes, this is what I mean, @DK58
Without the exact link to the listing it will be quite difficult for the team to locate and fix it.
But we can try. What do you think @DeniGu ?
Oops, @DK58 , my bad.
In fact the link to photos that are not associated to any place is sending me on the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
Letās try in another way:
Click on the position of the removed Listing in Google Maps to position the pin in there, then click on the coordinates
I can already see that 40/41 missing locations (and related photos) have reappeared in the maps. Thank you very much for your help, I truly appreciate it!
