Like a week ago I posted a review with photos for a homestay we visited in my country and it’s not showing on their page. There are no spammy content or anything like that, it was just an honest review about the pleasant stay. Why is this happening? Am I shadowbanned?
Hello @pjr welcome to the Local Guides Connect community!
If your review doesn’t appear on the listing within twelve hours, it was very likely rejected by the AI filter and hidden to the public. However, if videos are attached the review, it might take a day or two, but not a week.
No, your profile was not banned, but we can see you posted 112 reviews, but only 96 are public. Likewise you uploaded 780 photos and 39 videos and only 780 media are public, i.e. 39 photos or videos are also hidden.
All our contributions - the review text, photos and videos - are verified by an AI filter. Not only to enforce the rules set by Google Maps, but also to prevent potential SPAM.
If your review has photos or videos attached and only one of theme is rejected, the entire review and all other attached media is hidden. Therefore when you notice a review was not published, the first step is to remove all attached media and watch, if the text-only review is accepted. If so, you can attach the photos/videos again one by one, each time checking again.
Looking at your screenshot, I suggest to avoid mentioning the name of someone. Removing it, would be another thing, you might try.
I recommend reading @MortenCopenhagen’s series of articles How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main post for more tips and feel free to ask here, if you have questions.
Hi @WilfriedB I’m curious: how do you got all this statistics about published photos and hidden ones?
I’d like to see how am performing.
Thanks
Thank you for asking @RogerOhayashi. This is not so difficult:
You share the URL of your Maps profile, for example https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/116508272440890666477 in your case, with either a different Google user or paste it into an anonymous browser session without logging into Google.
You see your contributions, as viewed by the public and can select either photos[1] (by date or by number of views) and videos or reviews. On top of both lists, you see the total numbers being publicly visible.
When you click on the profile picture, you get the total number of contributions, including those, which are not public. Here for example your profile:
On the right, you can see, you did upload 4,043 photos and 269 videos. On the left it shows “3,962 photos” which in reality contains photos and videos, but only those, which are public. Doing the calculation now, I can tell you, 350 of your photos or videos are hidden to the public. The same for reviews: 68 of your reviews did not become public.
The tough part is now, to identify which media and reviews are indeed hidden. The only approach I am aware of, is to compare two browser sessions: one being logged in by yourself and the other one being logged in with a different Google profile[2].
You can find a detailed description here: How to find your hidden reviews
I hope, it is understandable, otherwise please ask.
Wow that’s awesome. I could never imagine it.
Now I’m wondering what happened to have some reviews hidden 
Thank you
I have had that same issue with 2 reviews and 2 photos before. It’s very frustrating when that happens.
it could be pending, shadow banned or not posted. just take it some time. editing a few words could help, but with my 2 reviews that are shadow banned, I’m fine with it being shadow banned, as I have plenty of reviews. I actually have 21 reviews but my profile says it has 23 once you click on the point bar, but I do not have a public profile. You still have plenty of reviews anyway, so maybe just leave it or if you are still not okay with it, try editing a few words, it might help.
Your suggestion worked @WilfriedB The culprit was the video but I don’t understand why it is the issue. It’s just a video of a view from the rooftop terrace. No copyright music or anything. First I removed all media and the review started to show up, then I kept adding back in one by one. When I added this particular video, the review disappeared again. Thanks anyway for your help!
I am glad, you found the issue and thank you for the feedback, @pjr!
Regarding:
You are not alone and I’m afraid, it won’t be the last time, you find a hidden contribution and don’t understand why, since Google never tells us any details about it.
However, if you are completely sure, you did obey all rules, you can submit an appeal by filling in this form. It did work a couple of times for me, but not always.
In the case of photos, we found recently that all photos made on a Galaxy S24 or S25 are rejected immediately, but after deleting and slightly cropping the photo, they are accepted.
“Some” would be OK, @RogerOhayashi, but the more you have, the more rigid the filter might become. It think, it was Morten who once wrote, if the number of hidden contributions stays below 10%, we are fine, but that was just common experience and no word from Google.
But all hidden contributions, although we do earn points, are simply useless and not helping the community of Maps users at all. Personally, I check after each upload, if all photos and reviews are public and if not, I try to fix it immediately.
I also keep track of total numbers of hidden photos daily. If an increase happens, I identify them and mark in my database, what became hidden some time after uploading, which can also be some years later and also try to fix the situation.
When I said “fix”, I distinguish these situations:
Long after posting a listing turns into an “Unknown Place”
This happens, if accidentally or purposely a place listing was deleted. In those cases, I never delete my photos. Some times, this happens to historical monuments and an appeal can be successful. If a business was closed, the listing should be marked as “Permanently closed”, but sometimes users delete the pins.
A review with media attached is hidden
Remove the attached photos or videos and see if text-only is accepted. Personally, Since two or three years, I never attach photos to reviews any more and rather post them directly to the place.
A text-only review is hidden
Depending on how important the review appears to me, I try to edit parts of it until i find the culprit and remove it. In one case, it was just a hyphen ( - ), in another case remove a misspelled word. But this is time consuming and I might decide just to delete it.
There is a special case in Germany and Thailand, where business owners can declare a review as “defamation”, but hopefully that never applies to you @pjr and @RogerOhayashi.
A photo (or video) is hidden
Unless linked to an “Unknown Place”, I just delete it and try a different one showing that place, if I still have more. In some cases a crop helps to remove a visible face or some text.
As I said above, recently we found out, photos made with a Galaxy S24 or S25 either need to be slightly cropped or handled as I described in Cannot upload images to reviews - #25 by WilfriedB
As a bottom line, to me it is important to be aware at any time, how many hidden contributions I have and which photos and reviews those exactly are. The latter is the toughest part and I still have four hidden reviews, I never identified.
Hope, this helps