Adam, I don’t usually browse through my contributions in this manner, but now that you’ve raised this, I just discovered a 16,000 view POI photo, apart from the 1,000 view place I mentioned earlier. This one is very near home, so I went a short while ago to check the facts. It is an upstairs store in a strip of shops attached to a well known supermarket. (I rarely go upstairs, so was oblivious to the changes). The signs are all down and the space is completely empty. The photo was uploaded in August 2023. Searching the name on Google Maps no longer brings up any results. I don’t know how long it was closed, but there is no new business occupying that shop space yet.
In this case I feel I need to delete that photo. It won’t be a loss of “hundreds of thousands of views or even millions of views”, but still 16,000 is a lot on my scale. It is also minus 5 points, and 1 photo lost towards my Master Photographer badge quest.
Looks like my monthly average is an increase of 400,000 to 650,000 views per month, so I’ll soon regain that 16,000.
Thanks for this tip Wilfried. This confirms I only have 3 unknowns. Two are the photo and video at an overseas location 4,200 miles or 6,700 km away from home, while the other is 3 minutes away from my house.
I voted to investigate why it has been marked as an unknown place. I had a recent example and I wrote about this in my post here however my case is a little bit different than this scenario. By viewing the T100 stats summary report I discovered that I had hidden reviews and that the attached media were also hidden. Interestingly these 2 POIs were not flagged as unknown places. I wonder why that is?
Hi @WilfriedB I cannot get the End key to work for me! I am using chrome on a laptop. I have tried by scrolling manually first then pressing the end key and also pressing the end key at the beginning. Neither method worked for me. Can you shed any light on why it’s not working for me please?
Hello @IzzyOz and @tony_b
thanks for asking. I forgot to mention: To get it to work, I click only once at the scroll bar and scroll just a little and after that, either End or Page Down key can be used continuously.
End key is much faster than Page Down, since it always fetches 100 at once and you don’t need to display the other 95 or so between.
Oh yes a good example @TonysLists. I’ve never seen the “Can’t connect” message but I agree that it’s not very informative or helpful at all. The POI disappearing and then reappearing in roughly the same location is certainly suss!
I’m just spending a bit of time catching up with my countless number of messages and notifications @tony_b
It’s not clear from your description here if this has been flagged as “Unknown place” but I assume that it is. Anyway it’s clear that the place no longer exists.
I do appreciate the impact of deleting any photo and to be honest, having raised this issue I’m leaning more and more to the view that at some point in time the place existed and it was a legitimate photo. The place now doesn’t exist and so Google has correctly flagged it as “Unknown place” but I cannot see anywhere in the policy where we are required to delete such photos and Maps doesn’t have a facility to easily find them. It many come as a surprise to many but my thinking now is that we should only delete photos that infringe the policies. Hope this makes sense!
That’s another interesting case @IzzyOz. You said you that you discovered that you had hidden reviews and that the attached media were also hidden and that the 2 POIs were not flagged as unknown places" but you didn’t mention if the media were flagged as “Unknown place”. In this case, I would investigate if the 2 POIs still exist and if so, lodge an appeal.
I absolutely agree with you on that @AdamGT. Not only that Maps doesn’t provide us with a facility to easily find them, they don’t notify us neither, when it happens (unless attached to a review).
Just today, I found one again which changed from known to unknown between yesterday morning and today. This was possible only because I track the views of all my photos daily and immediately notice any name change.
I know, all my 44 hidden photos belong to places which did exist, but were deleted at some point on time. Because I also don’t see any reason to delete them, I don’t touch them, but keep on eye on it including the observation, if the numbers of hidden photos increase as it did today.
How does your method of keeping track of the hidden places/media compare to that provided by the Stats Summary report on the Leaderboards System@WilfriedB?
All hidden photos, I am aware of are tagged in my database of all photos. So I know, how many those are. Looking at my profile in an anonymous session (just by clicking a button), I see the difference:
I don’t think, there is a right or wrong @tony_b, but same as @AdamGT I don’t see any reason to delete those photos. My personal intention is to keep track of whatever I posted even though nobody else but myself can see it anymore. It doesn’t cost me anything.
Also remember, there are cases where a POI was deleted by mistake and reinstated later. That way, our photos would re-appear.
@AdamGT I mean that I can see the photo in my contributions list, but it has lost its name. No one else sees the photo, because the place has been removed from Google Maps.
Thanks for the clarification @tony_b. Yes we need to still be able to see our hidden photos but yes of course by definition because they are hidden no one else can. However I think my view on whether to delete them or not still holds merit.
Thanks @WilfriedB this is now working for me too! This is a great tip as long as I hold down the CTRL key and press the End key. It’s a much easier way to find the hidden media or reviews
