Recurring Technical Issue with Photo Uploads as a Local Guide

saud.q8e · August 21, 2025, 7:31am

Dear Google Maps Support Team,
I am a dedicated Local Guide and I am writing to express my concern and frustration regarding recurring technical issues I’m facing when trying to upload photos and videos to Google Maps, as well as an issue with the visibility of my reviews. I have invested significant effort in contributing to the platform, with my reviews having reached over 37 million views, which reflects my commitment to providing valuable content to the community.
The problems I am experiencing are as follows:
I recently uploaded new photos, but they appear with a yellow alert icon, indicating an error in the upload or processing.
When I attempted to re-upload these photos, I received a “500. That’s an error” message, suggesting an internal server issue on Google’s end.
Crucially, many of my meticulously written reviews are not visible to other users on Google Maps; they only appear on my profile.
These issues are preventing my content from being published and seen by others. They diminish the value of my efforts in capturing and writing reviews, and they hinder me from contributing new and helpful content to the community.
I kindly request that you look into these technical issues and resolve them as soon as possible. I consider myself a partner in improving Google Maps, and I hope my contributions will be valued and these issues will be resolved so I can continue to contribute effectively.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Saud Alshammari

WilfriedB · August 21, 2025, 9:23am

Hello @saud.q8e welcome to the Local Guides Connect community!
Regarding

It would be better to share a screenshot to understand better, what happened. Anyway, a yellow triangle on the upper left of one of your photos under My Contributions, means a filter, watching for obeying the rules and to prevent SPAM did reject your photo and did not publish it. So, you should watch carefully, if you followed all rules.

Indeed looking at your profile, I noticed two things:

Only 2,554 of the 2,938 photos plus 825 videos you posted and only 257 of your 358 reviews are public. Which means 1,209 photos/videos and 101 reviews were rejected, i.e. are hidden to the public. Note, if a review has photos or videos attached and only one of them is rejected, the entire review, including all other attached media, is not published.
Several of your photos are redundant or even duplicate, which is against the rules.

Regarding:

You must not upload (“re-uploaded”) the same photo multiple times, as this might cause a ban. The 500 error is very likely a temporary network problem.

I suggest to read @MortenCopenhagen’s series of articles How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main post and clean up your contributions.

saud.q8e · August 21, 2025, 11:12am

Thank you for your response, and for taking the time to look at my profile. I really appreciate your detailed explanation regarding the yellow alert icon and how a single rejected photo can hide an entire review.
However, I would like to clarify my situation. I have attached a new screenshot that shows multiple photos with the yellow icon that are clearly not duplicates. These are different photos from the same place, taken at different angles and showing different things, yet they are all being rejected.
I understand the importance of avoiding spam and duplicate content, but it seems the automated filtering system is rejecting my photos despite them being compliant with the rules. This is very disheartening, especially when I put so much effort into my contributions.
Could you please provide a more specific reason for the rejection, as it appears that the issue is not with the content itself but perhaps with the automated review process?
Thank you again for your time and assistance.
Sincerely,
Saud Alshammari

WilfriedB · August 21, 2025, 11:35am

Please read How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main pos to find many potential reasons. Duplicate or redundant was just one example out of many possibilities. Note, Google never tells us the exact reason for a rejection - we can only guess.

While I don’t see any duplicate in your screenshot, there are several redundant photos. Just one example:

You also might have uploaded the same or similar earlier - the filter compares all. But not only that: The more hidden contributions you have, the more rigid the filter becomes.

And these two posts, an absolute no-go. The same photos on two different listing and in total only two are unique:

saud.q8e · August 22, 2025, 10:40am

Thank you for your response and for clarifying the situation. I really appreciate your time and the effort you put into examining my profile.

Based on your advice, I have done my best to clean up my account and delete the problematic reviews and redundant photos.

I would like to ask if I can re-upload these contributions. I will be very careful this time to ensure there are no duplicate or very similar photos, and I will reduce the number of photos per review to avoid any issues. Do you think this approach would prevent the filter from rejecting my content again?

Thank you again for your guidance and help.

Sincerely,

Saud Alshammari

WilfriedB · August 22, 2025, 1:06pm

Hello Saud Alshammari,

if you mean by “re-upload” to post the same photos or reviews again, you now deleted, the response is No! It wouldn’t change anything, but might bring you even closer to a ban.

Regarding

I can see, you deleted 35 photos and 9 reviews, but you have still 1,182 hidden media, 92 reviews and 17 ratings. That might not make a big difference yet.

Talking about duplicate/redundant, this doesn’t only apply to new photos and videos, but we believe the filter keeps also track, what you posted in the past. It seems, a certain number of redundant is tolerated in the beginning until you are adding more and more and the filter becomes more rigid.

I looked at your 10 most recently posted photos and suggest to delete 5 of them:

I did notice, you deleted the photos for “Lamb Chef Restaurant“, which were the same as for the most recent post . In the same sense, you should check all your previous media posts, most importantly to get rid of the hidden contributions.

In any case, I tag @ErmesT, since I am sure, he can give some more advices and explanations.

ErmesT · August 22, 2025, 6:17pm

Thank you for the tag, @WilfriedB

Welcome to Connect, @saud.q8e

The first thing we need to understand is that when a review has media attached, if even one of the posted elements is identified by the filter as violating the rules, the entire content (the review and all attached media) is not published.
Of course, the filter can also make mistakes and block legitimate content. For this reason, Google Maps gives us the ability to appeal, to have our contributions reviewed by an operator and, if necessary, released.

In some countries, when our content is blocked, we also receive a notification, meaning a warning message appears on the content we post, like the one you see in your photos.
This doesn’t mean that the content with the warning is the only one blocked, but simply that the content was published in a country where the warning is implemented, such as the European Union. Generally, if you tap on the photo, you can get more information about the reason for the block.

As I mentioned, Google Maps offers the ability to appeal blocked content. However, this is an operation that must be handled with care. The filter can also make mistakes in not blocking prohibited content. This content would be seen during an operator’s review, which could lead the operator to take a drastic decision: expelling you from the Local Guides program.

Therefore, before appealing, it is important to do a complete review of our content and remove anything that is against the rules. There are so many violations in your images, and not just the recent ones, that in case of a check, expulsion would be assured.

My advice is to first do a complete cleanup of all your images, eliminating all those posted more than once (duplicates) and similar (redundant) ones. Many users believe it’s okay to post similar images, as long as they’re not the same image, but this isn’t true. Similar images don’t add any information to the locations and are simply considered a gimmick to gain more points. If you’d like some examples check here below

Some are disconcerting: you edited to remove some elements and then published the same before and after image. Only one of these 5 images should be published.

Once you’ve cleaned up, we can talk about the appeal.

saud.q8e · August 24, 2025, 7:00am

Thank you both, @WilfriedB and @ErmesT, for your time and invaluable advice. I truly appreciate you taking a deeper look into my account.

Based on your guidance, I have performed a comprehensive cleanup of my profile, deleting many problematic reviews and redundant photos.

After a few days, I plan to start uploading new contributions. I will be extremely careful this time, ensuring that the photos are unique and not similar to each other, and I will limit the number of photos per review to avoid any issues. I wanted to confirm if this cautious approach is the right way to move forward.

Thank you again for all your help.

Sincerely,

Saud Alshammari

WilfriedB · August 24, 2025, 7:47am

Thank you for the feedback, @saud.q8e!

One more tip:
While it is absolutely perfect to attach photos with the reviews, I personally prefer a different approach and never attach media to any of my reviews. To me, this has several advantages:

I see immediately, whether the text of the review is accepted (by sharing the link with someone else or opening it in an anonymous a.k.a private browser session).
If one or more photos are rejected, I can see (using the same method) which one it is and the other photos or videos are not prevented from being published.

In fact, I always spend some minutes immediately after posting and verify by looking at My Contributions → Photos resp. Reviews. Usually, it takes less than a minute (but more than 10 seconds) until the first photos appear, only once out of several hundreds of photos, I needed to wait till next morning until the last photo of a series appeared. I know, it takes a little more than just uploading and hoping everything was working correctly, but I feel more in control of my posts.

Photos being marked with the triangle (yes, sometimes happens to me), I delete immediately, watch at it carefully, if a crop might remove a visible face or similar and upload again or I watch, if I might have other photos to post or just accept the fact having posted one photo less.

P.S. In spite of the fact, I did notice some cleanup done, you have still 53 hidden reviews and 1,050 hidden photos or videos.