Unacceptable amount of photos tagged to our museum that are blatantly incorrect - TOO MANY TO FLAG

[thebassmoa]

Hello,

I manage the business page for our museum as our Communications Manger and there is simply an unacceptable amount of photos tagged to our museum that are simply incorrect. I recognize them as photos of other businesses & hotels, even people's personal pictures at the beach being tagged and coming up on our Google page. It is so many that I cannot possibly devote the hours to reporting each and every photo that is incorrect. I've also done this repeatedly over the past 2 years in my position and NEVER seen a photo removed. The only success I had was when an actual copyright infringement issue came about and I had to call customer support to have it taken care of immediately. 

See the below screenshots, in which only FOUR photos are actually at the museum.

The first two are the only correct photos below:

The very last photo is the only correct photo here:

And here, the third photo that is black and white is the only photo actually of our museum:

 

I simply do not understand why Google cannot correct this, nor seems to even care to correct this. It's giving your users completely false information. I also notice a specific user who has tagged HUNDREDS of photos to our museum that are of literally every other business in the area or just personal beach photos. Please let me know how to report this user immediately. 

Thank you.

[HiteshPapaniya]

Also when I free I'm flagged some photos that not relate with places. Some people just post photos for just points and improve their levels. We want to take some aactio against them .

[Csaba]

Hi @thebassmoa and welcome to the "club". We have been literally begging Google to find a more streamlined way of removing unrelated photos to no avail. Even for us who are not the managers of places it simply ruins the user experience. I can imagine (and sympathize with) the situation of someone like you. 

On the other hand, I have successfully marked unrelated photos but of course by the time they were removed, even more (often by the same people) were posted at the same locations.

[Anonymous]

I have experienced the same issue. Various individuals indiscriminately post unrelated photos to various maps listings apparently to run up their points total.

Marking them as inappropriate is very time consuming as each one requires the reviewer to identify Captcha images - sometimes several of them - to complete the submission. It is also unrelated to your Local Guides account as it only asks for an email address, so there is no way to know if your submission was accepted nor even if it was received. The only way to see if the submission was accepted and acted on is to go back to the listing and check. For some listings this may be several hundred photos making it the most unmanageable activity  in Google Maps that I have experienced so far.

Until Google resolves this and makes it easier to correct inappropriate photos loaded up to a Maps listing you are stuck with the current scenario. As Csaba said - wlecome to the "club".

[Csaba]

Absolutely my opinion,  @Anonymous, 

On the other hand, I would take it risky if "business owners" could (much more easily) screen admissions to the maps. It's not "their" property but Google's. Then need to understand that a "picture" of a business comes together from two major sources; the "owner" and the "customer". There is one thing they can (somewhat) influence: the "owner's" part". And they do not "own" the listing at Google. They just get a chance to (freely) put their business details (aka "free advertising" is you wish) onto the maps. But nothing else. No rights to "supervise" who is sharing what photo (well, this is an issue) or what review.

[FallsGal]

I have found the same problem with Niagara Reservation State Park. I would like for Google to correct this also. People come from all over the world here and the pictures some flood a " Natural Park" with is misleading to tourists visiting. And causes confusion seeing the people posting to this park are adding pictures of places over 40 minutes away. And some are actually in another country Canada. They had to go thru customs and across a large span bridge to get to Canada so I know they are posting these full well knowing it isn't the same place. This is not right and wish it could be corrected. I pride myself on giving proper information and pictures of the right place. I wish everyone would follow the rules!! If you find a way to correct this and remove improper photos let me know.

[Anonymous]

Your comments about businesses manipulating content they don't own is absolutely correct @Csaba!

But I am having a private laugh on that as so few businesses have actually made or claimed their listing that it's very small percentage of listings I have tried to edit. However, using the process Google currently uses to verify edits made by users and LGs might largely resolve the situation. For example, I currently answer photo questions on which photo of two presented are more accurate/appropriate. When this is scaled up across many many reviewers I'm guessing that the end result is probably pretty good. The only niggle with this is that it's easy to make a guess instead of doing the legwork to verify the accuracy of the photos but here again it may be irrelevant if enough reviewers are looking at them.

I think there is a positive outcome to this now that I think about it. Earlier today I was reading posts about "In the vicinity of" photo suggestions being inaccurate. One of the moderators noted that the appropriate place for feedback which would go to the relevant team at Google Maps was to submit FB in GMaps including this type of observation and improvement suggestions, so that is what I have done and would recommend others to do so as well.

Thanks again for your comments and pointing out that it's not as simple as it first appears!

[LucioV]

Hi @thebassmoa we are requesting this to GMB since years.

But the correct place where ask for this feature is the GMB support forum: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Google-My-Business/ct-p/GMB

Hope a day we will be able to directly remove user generated content from GMB console 😉