Maps Photos is the way to look at your city and at different places located in it. And changes in the city require new photos to make Google Maps actual and usable, but as a Google Local Guide, as an Expert Photograph you can deal with situations when your photo with the huge number of views must be renewed, i.e. you have to delete your ‘star’ photo and, maybe, place another one. What does it mean? It means you lose in total number of views and you will not see your interesting photo at the top of the profile list any more.
Previous photo 
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New photo 
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It is not an easy decision (maybe just for me). Nevertheless, I made up my mind. I have removed the image with more than 60000 views. It was the image of public notary office.
What was your photo (place) with maximum views excluded by yourself from Google Maps, from the list of most viewed photos? Do you have the same viewpoint as I have? I will wait for your comments with interest.
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Nice topics my dear friend @ghhost158 @
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I am grateful to you @MAHBUB_HYDER .
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Interesting post and thoughts @ghhost158 . I never felt the need to remove a picture because it’s outdated and if you think an outdated picture has no function I think you are wrong. Pictures always show a moment in time a very, very short time and freeze that moment. So a picture taken an just minutes ago can be outdated already.
Should i remove it from Maps because this metro has left lang ago and isn’t arriving anymore?
For people that pay attention there is a perfect way to see and find out when a picture was taken so if it’s an old one you could ask yourself is this place still looking this way? Google itself (the AI) promotes newer pictures and older ones sink down in the list of a POI. So it’s a self ‘cleaning’ system in some sort of way.
Why we should not remove older pictures (IMHO)
Removing (older) pictures is like erasing history. Pictures taken over a long period of time at a POI can perfectly show changes,good ones but also bad ones. I think these older pictures can be worth a fortune as they are time stamps. New pictures can be taken every second but these old ones can never be taken again.
In fact all these photos piled up at a POI could be perfect places for historians, developers and perhaps even future archaeologists.
Nothing better shows changes over a period of years than pictures of a place. It’s done also on purpose and called Re-photography .
If you are interested in this topic you would love to browse this site.
Reviews
The same it is for old reviews should they be removed? Or what about a very bad review that could be just one because a company had the bad luck of having hired an terrible person that on top of it all had a bad day too?
I’m very interested in reading other comments and ideas on this subject so I will follow this post and it comments.
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Thanks @Erik_van_den_Ham for your comment. I read it with interest, but for me there is no doubt that you need to put new photos on Google Maps and remove old ones if the place has changed. Street View acts in this way. Maps are needed for navigation for a person who is going to visit a new place, if it has changed, then traveller have to see the current situation. As for your example, if trains on the line are replaced and the old type train never arrives at the metro stop (tag), then all photos with such trains should be removed, if the train shown in the photo can arrive, then the photo should be left (Street View does not clean passing cars, passers-by. Here I ask to treat with the same detail). I looked at the links in your @Erik_van_den_Ham comment and I think to look even more closely. Yes, removing old photos, we also remove the history, but at the same time we make navigation easier.
The review should not be removed, because in the review at the very beginning the date of writing is indicated.
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Hello @ghhost158 so why should old reviews not be removed as you think old pictures do need to be removed (many reviews contain pictures of the same age)?
As I told you Google shows a month and year for when a picture was taken and the AI makes sure recent and more important pictures are on top. So in no way older ones will give you troubles in navigating or discovering places but it can provide extra information for those who are interested. Some places change very rapidly others remain virtually the same over many years so how could one know when to remove a picture anyway? Many places a Local Guide will visit and he will never revisit again so how could he even be sure if a picture is still accurate? I do hope that most map users are a little smarter that just expecting to find exactly what is shown in a picture. More important is that info at POI’s is up to date as these are presented as facts. Anyone knows (or should know) pictures could be deceiving. What a picture shows and what is left out (by the photographer) is also a huge factor. So should we only have 360 pictures to make sure to get a true idea of a place?
If I decide to go to the beach and find me a great spot maps and it shows a nice sandy beach not too busy and sunny. I know that things could be different when I get there. It could be raining and high tide not leaving much beach left to be on.
I looked up if there is any policy or rules on this from Google and there is no such thing. This might be the closest rules about it.
Of course owners of pictures on maps have the right to remove pictures as he/she pleases. I see many very bad pictures posted to POI’s and I wish the owners of those would be responsible and decide not to upload those at all or remove them if better pictures are available.
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You are most welcome my dear @ghhost158 @
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I totally agree @Erik_van_den_Ham that the places are very different from each other. And the place can change from the weather, from the choice of window design, from a festive event, etc. But there are two factors at the core: first, if you understand that the place has changed so much that the old photo can be misleading, then the photo must be replaced, the second is crowdsourcing, local experts who can say it is worth removing the outdated photo or not (both options do not give a clear criterion to delete or leave a photo). In my opinion, such situations are not fictitious. And the question is, what was the maximum number of views of the photo you had deleted, if there were such photos. Once again, my number approximately - 60,000. I thought that excluding image would be better, but I understand that there are other points of view and I am looking forward to your comments.
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Thanks once again @MAHBUB_HYDER .
I have deleted some pictures @ghhost158 from my account mostly because I had double uploaded them. What the maximum views were on those I can’t recall. I don’t really care about those views ‘getting lost’ (not sure even if that would be calculated in ones total views, do you know if that happens?).
View count is a fun fact but I and many others can conclude that view counts of any picture do not mean the picture is of great quality or a good representation of a POI. If you are interested in the subject I would recommend reading this post and some of the excellent comments below it.
The crowd sourcing or local expert function is something that would have to be implemented as is not a current thing.
At this time maps users could report a photo to Google or even a complete account.
I have reported quite some photos through this system mainly because they were ‘Not a photo or video of the place’
Some users seem to bulk upload pictures from their phone to a POI they have taken the last several days at various places miles away from the POI. Some of them are reported even more than once by me as they remain online. I think these are more harmful than even an outdated picture.
This is however a good post and discussion. I hope to read more opinions from other users on this topic.
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I am totally agree with you @Erik_van_den_Ham that more viewpoints will be better. When I were talking about count of views I meant aproximate number, not exact and I meant few words about photos. There are two ways to exclude photo by yourself and by crowdsourcing. One case - you will decrease total number of views, another case - you will not. I was interested in the first case and in the great sacrifice you have ever made.
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I don’t see it as a sacrifice @ghhost158 to loose some views. Why should be more viewpoints be better?
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There are different motivation between Google Local Guides @Erik_van_den_Ham . Everything counts and handmade minus … How great it can be? Just one answer, but I am glad to hear it.
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@ghhost158 @Erik_van_den_Ham Your discussion is really interesting and helpful. It makes me think.
It’s really hard to search for all loaded photos if they are still actual. Some places you visit often can be determined of course.
But which photos should we regard as non-actual. If the shop looks in the same way, but the shop nearby had closed - should we delete such photo?
As for your example, @ghhost158 , I think the colour of a signboard is not a necessary condition to delete a photo. But you are right, the place can be changed absolutely, and a photo can become misleading.
By the word, not long ago I had noticed that a lot of my photos disappeared from the common access absolutely without my help. And they were not replaced for other more actual. Some places were left without any photo at all. And I am sure that those my photos were not outdated. So maybe Google algorithms delete old photos automatically? I am not sure, it’s only my thoughts. Sometimes I see really old photos in Maps and they are not yet deleted.
As for me, I think it would be great to report a photo as non-actual, like we can report the photo as being inappropriate or being a photo of other place; or as we can report questions for places as non-actual. This would solve a problem with not only own non-actual photos, but all old photos loaded by other users also. You can write such idea in Idea exchange section.
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Thanks @OlgaKlimchik for your comment. At the beginning, I would like to consider the usual situation: you had downloaded the photo sometime ago, you visit the place again, you know that this place was photographed by you, you have often seen this photo in your most viewed photos list. You decided to shot this place once again, uploaded new photo (as in example) and at the end excluded photo from Google Maps (dustbin pictogram). All this action lead to decreasing total number of views. The question is about the number of views you have lost. I describe my situation and my decision. It causes a decrease of 60 000 views. There are no strict rules to determine whether the photo should be renewed or not, so I am interested in your situations, in your decisions (possibly with examples) and final approximate loss in views in your profile. Then, when crowdsourcing marks the photo should be deleted and, as we said, you would not lose in total number of views. This is ability of Local Guides to renovate Maps and it cause no losses, but to renovate such a way takes time. And more interesting is the individual actions in Maps, on my mind. There other cases when Local Guide can not see uploaded photo, but I prefer to discuss what in our hands.
@ghhost158 У меня не было такой ситуации. Когда я хотела загрузить новые фото и только начала переживать, что нужно удалить старые, я обнаружила, что старые уже удалены из общего доступа. Вопрос был решен сам собой. Специально я никогда не проверяла, соответствуют ли мои фото действительности. Их много в разных местах, картина на картах меняется слишком быстро. Даже соседние магазины, которые попали на фото вместе с объектом.
Если следить за ними, некогда будет добавлять новые.
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There was no need to make a decision to delete the photo, there was no loss in the number of views. Thanks @OlgaKlimchik .
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