Caption: An example of a photo contributed to Maps that has been flagged as an unknown place!
While browsing through the photos that you have contributed to Maps you discover one that has been flagged as Unknown place, perhaps the place has been deleted from Maps or the business has closed and no longer exists. It has a reasonable number of views and as in the example shown above this could be hundreds of thousands of views or even millions of views.
So the question is, what would you do when you find one of your photos contributed to Maps is marked as Unknown place and in a comment below explain your reasons why?
Investigate why it has been marked as an Unknown place!
Nothing, just leave the photo as is!
Delete the photo regardless of the number of views!
@AdamGT this happened to me twice recently. The first time I did it to myself! A place (Wahlburgers) closed all of their Hi-Vee locations. Trying to be helpful I submitted an edit that the place no longer existed. I had reviews and pictures with thousands of views. No way I was going to delete all those views. The second time someone else had the place I added removed after Google maps had approved it. I might investigate this one because the place I added does exist! Hope this helps.
Had the poll been a multi-select, I would also have chosen “Delete, no matter the number of views”. I even once did this live when recording a podcast episode about pictures… my all time top viewed pic (with over 4 million views) showed a shop where a total makeover had been made. As the picture no longer showed the shop as it really was (after the renovation), I decided the old picture had to go. 4 million views down the drain in 1 click.
Well if all the Hi-Vee locations no longer existed you did the right thing and no doubt earned Edit points for each of the locations in your cleanup however, I’m curious @TravellerTom. Do you think the views of any photo you contributed to any of the stores will increase in views in future? Also, understanding that Local Guides don’t get points for views, what value do you see in hanging on to those Unknown place views? I’m just curious on that one!
I deliberated in making this a multi-choice poll @JanVanHaver but then I thought some might choose conflicting options. Doing it live might have caused some anguish to some attendees ooouch! Not sure what you mean by “total makeover” so are you saying that the store had “a facelift” for example repainted storefront, or did the nature of the business or name of the business change, or a new business move into the premises?
Bisher habe ich nichts getan, obwohl bei den meisten Fällen der Ort noch genauso existiert und ich nicht nachvollziehen kann warum so etwas gemacht wird @AdamGT
It still is the same DIY store, but it was a huge change, also involving changes to the construction of the building and surrounding area (e.g. parking lot and entrance are at a different location now). So the old pic might have been more confusing than helpful (esp since it was the featured photo for that POI).
Hello @ShailendraOjha there at least four situations, I actually did run into:
A historical monument suddenly disappeared from Maps, my photos were still there and public (i.e. could share a link with anonymous) but not linked to any listing and show unknown place under My Contributions. What probably happened, was that some user suggested a change claiming “Doesn’t exist here” and Google accepted it, because the listing wasn’t claimed by an owner. I reported it here, a Google moderator escalated it and several days, maybe weeks later the pin, photos and reviews were reinstated. This did work, because I reported quickly after it happened and still had the link to old listing.
Another time, a POI was converted into a geographic feature, where we cannot add photos. Again, my photos still existed, but shows Unknown Place. Also escalation via a Google moderator did solve that issue.
Yet another case, where a restaurant suddenly disappeared from Maps. A few days later, it was back: same position, same name, phone number … but no photos and no reviews. I assume, the owner changed and deleted the listing purposely or accidentally. In this case, I deleted my photos, the review disappeared anyway.
A museum, I added myself and included photos. The new listing was not accepted (I still don’t understand why) and my photos remain as “Unknown place”.
I have voted for “Investigate why it has been marked as an Unknown place!”
Photos hidden for the Unknown place are different from photos hidden because they violated the rules. We are responsible for the photos that violated the rules.
But for Unknown places, it might be a mistake or other reasons we didn’t cause. That place might even come back later.
So, I think we should investigate and report the problem to Google. We don’t need to delete the hidden photos for Unknown places. We don’t lose the views already gathered by the photo.
I thought I had two instances of this @AdamGT, but I can only find one at the moment. I uploaded a photo and a video of a place in May last year, but I remember I couldn’t find it on the map, so I had to create the place. At the moment, the photo has 2,125 and the video has 1,024 views. I don’t have any history on the photo as it is way below the 40,000 threshold on my tracking chart, but the video was 184 at end of May, 381 at end of June, 763 at end of July, and 1,024 at end of August. From September onwards I added (Unknown Place) to the POI name on my tracking spreadsheet, and it has remained at 1,024 since then.
I would’ve liked to make two choices In your poll - Investigate why it has been marked as an Unknown Place, and Nothing, just leave the photo as is! My plan is to monitor for a few more months before making any decision to delete. But of course, 2,125 and 1,024 views don’t compare in any way to your 594,785 so it’s not such a difficult choice.
Honestly, I would leave the photo as it is.
I have not encountered such situation yet, but now I can discuss with experienced LGs, CMs and GMs about it.
I selected “Investigate” because that would be my first step, but depending on what I found, my next step might be “Nothing” if the photo isn’t hurting anything/anyone or “Report” if I suspect a systemic issue.
“Losing views” isn’t an issue/factor.
I haven’t noticed one of these yet, but I have seen places, sometimes popular tourist destinations, inexplicably disappear from their previous location and appear in a new location with all new reviews/photos. This hurts because I have to remove the old non-existent places from my lists, add the new places to my lists, and all of my thoughtful reviews/photos disappeared with the old location.
@AdamGT you are right, the photos are frozen at the final views they received, but they contribute to my total photo/video views that just eclipsed 50 million. They were views, so they still count in my opinion. This metric is one that I track (among others) on Google Maps. On a related note, it can be hard sometimes on Google to locate the previous business at a given address and this can hamper getting new locations get approved past the AI. That is another reason I do the “place no longer exists” edit.
