What is happening with my Account

I recently uploaded 300-400 photos of a place at one go, after that some strange things are happening in my account like views are not increasing, badge level is decreasing, what is all this happening?Have I violated any policies? Please help me.

5 Likes

May be Photos are not published .

Below was the screenshot of your contribution visible to us.

1 Like

@saidevadiga “only” 300 of the 1459 photos and 147 videos posted by @Bharatkumawat are hidden.

However, he gave the response himself. How can you imagine other users looking at 300-400 photos of a single place, if they only want to get some impression of the place? This is way to many photos!

6 Likes

But that was not showing any violating policies

Even if all photos went public, you cannot expect many users seeing them all. Some might be hidden for redundancy, most others go to the very end of the list where nobody scrolls so far.

Keep in mind, the numbers of views is not a reward given by Google for posting photos, but instead a count of how many other users did open and watch your photo!

3 Likes

But what about my badge Trailblazer decreasing?

Hi @Bharatkumawat

I took a look at your public Maps profile.

You have uploaded a huge amount of photos to only two places very recently.

We should always ask ourselves if our contributions are helpful or not so helpful. And keep in mind how people use Google Maps to decide if they want to visit a place or not.

It seems that you have shared photos of pretty much each and every illustration, artifact, art piece, and signboard you came across.

If you as a Maps user wanted to use Google Maps to decide on a visit or not, would you then find it helpful to see so many photos showing random details? I would consider I a problem that such photos dilutes and makes it difficult to find selected high quality photos that captures the essence of the place.

Reading texts on small screens is not user-friendly in my opinion.

So in my personal opinion just photographing anything and everything is not helpful.

The algorithm the Google created to select the better photos and show them first seems to agree with me as none of your photos got featured.

Please review the photos that others uploaded and got featured (the first shown 10-20 images. Compare the quality of those photos with the quality of those photos you uploaded.

Better photos get priority and will get many views. I use the view counts as a simple indicator of what kind and quality photos Google wants us to upload.

I shared a series on how to take and edit photos for Google Maps that Maps will live and reward with a ton of views. See

https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t/storefront-photography-series-index/387319

Feel free to disagree and ask more questions.

I don’t think the app is failing, but doing what it was designed to do.

6 Likes

Uploading redundant photos are against the guidelines.

The trailblazer badge is based on these criteria

If you flood the map with redundant photos, the spam filter will start hiding your photos. This is probably the reason why your trailblazer badge was downgraded.

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First of all, @Bharatkumawat , be aware that for the first two / 3 days all photos in Maps will not show any views. This is happening to everyone, also for featured photos. So do not expect any views for a few days.
After that I fully agree with @MortenCopenhagen and @WilfriedB about adding a lot of photos. This action dilutes the information about a place, and it’s against the policies. In addition random photos with a quite low quality are usually demoted by the AI, so that to see them a user will have to scroll down till the end to see them, hence no or little views.
A good practice would be to carefully select only the best few photos, and to upload only 4/5 photos with good quality and good framing to get more views.
Just to give you an example a few months ago I visited The Museum of Modern Art in NY. I took 124 photos, and I uploaded 7 of them + 2 videos, and in total I am getting around 7000 views in the place.
I just checked the last pace where you contributed, and I had to scroll down 94 photos before to find a photo uploaded by you.

Regarding the trailblazer badge I cannot see it in your profile. As shown by Morten, that badge is related to “first contribution” on a place. I see that some of your photos is associated to an Unknown place, so maybe that place was removed from Google Maps, or some of your first reviews and photos of some place were made “private” by the filter, causing the drop on the counter.
Some of your first photos is duplicate or redundant, you uploaded many selfies, you uploaded some wrong “static” videos (probably the intention was to take a photo instead).
Again, Quality must be what we have in mind when we contribute in Maps, not quantity

4 Likes

Thank You For Guide Me And I will take care not to make such a mistake in future and you all explained it to me like an elder brother, so thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

This is great, @Bharatkumawat , fixing the existing issue would be even greater, to make Maps clean and usable. :folded_hands:

1 Like

I can’t imagine, how much time you have spent uploading! :scream: