I am writing to report a recurring system bug with the Trailblazer badge counter. Over the last month, my Trailblazer counter has dropped over 15 points. From 53 to 35 now.
This reduction happens right after I submit a brand-new first review on an established location and sometimes ones I added over a week earlier. Instead of adding a point to my milestone tracker, the system instantly subtracts a point.
Here are the specific details of the issue:
Account Status: Level 10 Local Guide with 102,000 overall contribution points. My account is in good standing and has no policy restrictions.
The Problem: Submitting the very first review on an established map location causes the Trailblazer badge point total to drop by 1.
Public Visibility Check: I have verified using an incognito window that the posted reviews are fully approved, live, and visible to the public. They are not being hidden or shadowbanned by spam filters.
Impact: This is happening on long-standing, established listings on the map, not just newly created pins.
Since my reviews are public and my overall profile points are stable, it appears the background indexing script for badge milestones is miscalculating data during live submission refreshes.
Could a Google Moderator please look into this badge sync issue or pass this bug along to the engineering team for a manual data refresh?
This has been reported repeatedly over the past few months. In most (if not all) cases hidden reviews and/or the fact that badge stats are only updated every two weeks or so.
If you want a check of hidden contributions, you will need to share the link to your unrestricted Maps profile.
I’m having an issue with this badge too. After I added a few new places, my “Trailblazer” badge went from “Unlock” to “Novice,” and I even got an email about the upgrade. It stayed at the new level for a while. Then I added another place, Google Maps approved it, and suddenly my “Trailblazer” badge dropped back to “Unlock.” The places I added are still active on Maps, so I really don’t understand why my badge level went down.
@MortenCopenhagen Thank you for taking the time to look into this and for the clarification. But those are old reviews, and they don’t have anything to do with the requirements for the “Trailblazer” badge.
For “Novice Trailblazer,” I need to add 1 “new place”, 1 “first review to 1 place” and 1 “first photo to 1 place”. On my side, it shows 3 “new places”, 0 “first reviews to 1 place”, and 6 “first photos to 1 place”.
However, over this two months, I added 2 “first reviews to 1 place” for places that I had added myself, and 1 “first review to 1 place” for a place that had already been added by someone else. These reviews are not marked as spam and are visible on Maps, but my “Novice Trailblazer” badge is still not active.
You are missing one first reviews according to your screenshot. If a first review gets taken down by the spam filters you will lose the badge. I’m sorry if I did not explain this clearly.
The spamfilters run continuously and will recheck your review now and then. Hence older reviews can get taken down also.
Or one of the places you added got removed - hence the review is gone too.
@MortenCopenhagen I just forgot to mention in my previous comment that, before replying to you, I asked some of my friends to check from their own accounts the places I had reviewed (“the first review to 1 place”). They confirmed that my reviews are visible and haven’t been hidden because of spam.
It looks like there really was some kind of issue with the “Trailblazer” badge itself, because my “Novice Trailblazer” badge is active now. Thank you so much for your help!
It is pretty difficult to document this convincingly as you have already 3 out of 10 first reviews as badge data rarely get updated. I wish we could design a test to prove the issue.
I believe what you write, but there a a lot of variables to control for.
