So, I noticed several of my photos are displayed but show no location. This from 2+ years ago at Big Bear Lake, CA. To make this more confusing, these photos were originally uploaded to Boulder Bay Park, in Big Bear. They have all since been removed, however this still appear with view counts under the main Big Bear Lake. What to do? I can’t tell if they are private or not. Too many to sift through. Any ideas? Thx.
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Hi @StevenBerlin Have you tried viewing the site in incognito mode. If you can’t find them they are probably hidden. Is this a geographical site? A lot of photos have been removed over the last few years from these sites. Tagging @WilfriedB who is an expert in this field.
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Hello @StevenBerlin ,
The most likely explanation is that you did not attach them the to current POI that represents the park but instead to a different POI. If they are now attached to the lake then that POI was eventually marked as a duplicate of the lake.
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Negative. They were originally attached to Boulder Bay Park 100%. At tge same time, they are included in the main city, Big Bear Lake. That’s how all things work. For some reason they were removed from Boulder Bay, but still reside under the main city.
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Thanks for tagging me and calling me an “expert” @TerryPG 
@StevenBerlin even though not really feeling as an expert, I made similar experiences with some of my photos and Terry is correct, first step would be create a shared link and paste it into a private aka anonymous session of your browser without logging into Google. If the anonymous browser is able to show the photo in full screen, they are not hidden.
You said “For some reason they were removed from Boulder Bay, but still reside under the main city.”
I did see this recently in several cases: Some of the photos posted to a listing, never appeared under “By Me” and I never found them by scrolling through “All” or “Recent”.
This is even happened to the photo, I posted in June 2023 which still shows the highest number of views - probably gained in pin of the city or county. It never appeared under the pin where I posted it, but I did find it under the pin of the city (after scrolling down a lot). It did gain thousands of views daily for two or three months and suddenly only a dozen until today. So, the total number of views never changed since February 7.
What I do in these cases? Nothing, so far. Just assuming it is the way it is - possibly a bug, but could also been done purposely for a reason, we don’t know.
In other cases, very recently, photos really became hidden many months after posting and gaining views. In that case, I did send an appeal without any results yet. See this thread where I reported it very recently.
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Wow, interesting thing I just discovered. Ok so Boukder Bay Park has been around for years, maybe 10 years, however I thought what if google maps deleted this POI, by mistake, then it was re-mapped?
Well sure enough I looked at every photo posted and the earliest one in 1 year old, most not over 8 months. So, this place must have been deleted, then re-entered? This might explain all my lost and uncategorized photos? However, them still showing to the main city would make sense. If this is the case, should I delete all the photos with no category?
It’s too difficult to login incognito and try to find them. They were posted 2 and 4 years ago.
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@StevenBerlin great, you found out and thanks to let us know!
Reg. “So, this place must have been deleted, then re-entered?”:
Very likely. In that case, when you look at the photos under “My Contributions”, you should see “Unknown place” or similar.
Reg. “If this is the case, should I delete all the photos with no category?”:
Why would you want to delete them? I don’t see any reason for doing so, unless you are keen on seeing them under the place or hope to get more views, if you do so. Remember, deleting any photos results in loosing points and reducing the total number of views.
Reg. “It’s too difficult to login incognito and try to find them.”:
Not necessary, if you know, they do appear under the city’s pin, they are public!
Anyway, it is not difficult. As I said in my previous comment: Open the photo when you are logged in, click on "Share", click on “Copy Link”. Then open an incognito session, paste the link, do not log into Google, and watch, if you can see the photo.
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@WilfriedB just to confirm. And dot all the eyes, are you saying if the photo is listed under the main umbrella city, it is public? I have like 50 photos under Big Bear Lake and maybe 20 have no location listed. During the past few months about 100 out of 17,000 of my photos were suddenly marked private and I have no way of figuring out which ones. It would take too much aggravating time to look back and forth on two devices one regular and one incognito.
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@StevenBerlin just share a link to one of those photos with us and we can find out.
@StevenBerlin scrolling down all photos for “Big Bear Lake”, I found one of yours, but it is not Boulder Bay Park.
I just had a look at your profile: Only 111 out of 17,741 photos are hidden. This is 0.6% … who cares?
@WilfriedB thank you for checking out my photos. I realize 111 out of 17000 is not huge but I guess I wish there was some easy way to find the private photos. I am also a perfectionist so I would like to get the private back down to 10 or 20 photos.
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I fully agree with " I wish there was some easy way to find the private photos." @StevenBerlin
Sorry to continue with this. So, you mentioned you only found one phito by me under the main umbrella city - Big Bear Lake? Does this mean all 49/50 are private? Under the my contributions category several are from like Vons, Denny’s, etc. About 15+ from Boulder Bay Park. Each of the Boulder photos have no location.
I checked the dennys in incognito and they showed up under Denny’s but NOT the Big Bear Lake since in incognito you don’t see your category or another person’s. Also, not all photos are assigned to the umbrella city. It’s strange though that and this is the important part… when searching under all of Big Bear Lake I too only see one of my photos, but under my contributions I see 50+ photos? Does this makes sense? Is this normal? Any other ideas? Sorry for being so overly concerned!
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@StevenBerlin reg "So, you mentioned you only found one photo by me under the main umbrella city - Big Bear Lake? "
I only scrolled down until I found one of your photos. Very likely, there are more.
“About 15+ from Boulder Bay Park. Each of the Boulder photos have no location.”
Just share with us the link to one of those photos. Then, I can try if I can see it or not.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tDZ4NPpzCppYvLZSA?g_st=ac
I have clue if I did that right? That’s Boulder Bay Park listed only under big bear lake.
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@StevenBerlin correct, this is what I meant. I do see the photo, so it is public, it is one of those you were mentioning:
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@StevenBerlin Question? are you getting photo views on these photos any more, just wondering.
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Good point @TerryPG . Hopefully @StevenBerlin is able to follow up with this or any of the others, but it depends on, how many views it already has. If those hundreds of thousands or more, it can take a while until he notices a change.
Fact with my photos: The older they are, the less frequently the views increase.
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Imagine not being to upload multiple photos. Imagine having to check every single upload if it took public or private or even posted at all, and having to go into incognito mode every single time!
Google maps is failing slowly. Not a happy camper!
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@StevenBerlin I agree with you, from our perspective, the system is anything else but user friendly with a lot of room for improvements.
But don’t forget, the Local Guides are not the customers who generate profit for Google and I have the impression, many of us over estimate the value we do provide for Google.
So, we either can live with it as is or quit.
Before you said “I am also a perfectionist so I would like to get the private back down to 10 or 20 photos.” Fine, the same also applies to me, but we both cannot assume, Google will help us doing so - why should they? As far as I know, they never published any kind of guideline for how many media can remain hidden or what happens, if we have too many.
So if we - you, me or others - set our own threshold, we need to find a way, how to control these numbers.For myself, I did find some solutions, but they need some programming skills and other prerequisites.
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