Best Practice: Submit changes one by one

[JanVanHaver]

[As an experienced Local Guide, I now sometimes come across inconsistencies or notice that errors have been made that I used to make myself when I started out. So I am now publishing a few 'best practice' posts, in the hope it can help others.]

Image by annca on Pixabay

Sometimes you come across a point of interest where several pieces of information are missing or wrong. Then you click 'Suggest an edit', make all the changes and click 'Submit', right? Well, my advice is not to do this in all cases, but instead submit the changes one by one. Admittedly, it's a few extra clicks, but I have experienced that if you submit several changes at the same time and for some or other reason one of the suggested changes is not applied, none of the changes get applied.

And for those who are eager to score as much local guide points as possible there is another reason as well: the counter that shows you how many points you have earned always only counts to 5 when clicking submit, no matter how many suggested changes you submitted - just one single or 2, 3 or 4. Compare this to what happens when you post a review for a point of interest: the counter then does produce a different result if you submit a review that is over 200 characters long, as it takes into account the 10 extra points for a long review. So, my interpretation is that 'Suggest an edit' brings 5 point per time you run the module, not always 5 points per changed piece of information - unless you submit them one by one.

One final remark: people with bad intentions (spammers, drug dealers creating POIs on Google Maps to publish places where they are selling - not a random example, there are documented cases) also sometimes use this method, so the Google algorithm might interpret it as a 'suspicious move'. 

Other posts in this series:
Best Practice: Entering Opening hours
Best Practice: ALL CAPS / all lowercase
Best Practice: Correcting pin location
Best Practice: Choosing a more specific category
Best Practice: Find the right zoom level 

Best Practice: Reporting duplicates

Best Practice: Adding places without house number

Best Practice: Correcting errors you accidentally made

Best Practice: Filtering 'Check the facts'

Best Practice: Find the right category

Best Practice: Create on mobile / Complete on desktop

Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Best Practice: The best order for suggesting edits

Best Practice: Get rid of legal names

Best Practice: Attempts to add bus stop or train station

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don't claim any level of official endorsement.

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[saabfan]

I have found the same recently when making changes to lots of POIs. I made all the changes and it was not applied. Made them one by one and it was applied instantly.

[JanVanHaver]

Hello @saabfan, from all the 'Best Practice' posts I have published it is no doubt the most controversial one, as it actually goes against the official guideline to enter as much information as possible. But it is based on my experience which is the same one that you described. So in the end the result is a more complete and more correct map, and that is what I consider to be the primary target of a truthful local guide.

[ChristyFromCanada]

Thankyou for this fabulously simple list!!

[Flash]

Hi @JanVanHaver,

I would suggest that you not promote this, as making multiple edits in the fashion you describe is a known spammer technique.  It's not going to get someone flagged as a spammer every time it's done; and occasionally it might be necessary to follow this technique to get something changed; but someone's use of it would be combined with their other actions and using this technique might be what gets them flagged as a spammer or causes trust levels to not rise or even lower.

[JanVanHaver]

OK, @Flash, I get your point, and I will make some additions to the original post (and the other one linking to it) to point this out.

From my entire series of posts, it is already the one I share/promote the least because I am aware about the controversy.

However, if someone using this methodology is only adding correct information to the map, and still gets marked as spammer, then in my opinion there is also something wrong with the spammer detection method.