Contributions & points diminished

[SirB]

Something curious I noticed lately on my maps profile. I used to have roughly 30,000 contributions with about 130,000 points. I just had a closer look (something I've never done before) that my contributions are now 27,607 & 127,825 points. What gives? 

[StephenAbraham]

@SirB  Some of the time when contributions numbers go down, may be due to Photos and Reviews that don't adhere to Google Maps Contributed Content Policy are subject to removal by the automated system filters or flagged by others. Such items that could be up for removal and or may be marked as private include duplicitous photo uploads or low quality reviews. When this happens, the contribution is no longer counted in the total contributions. You can check the situation by looking at your Maps contribution profile when logged vs in incognito mode.

There could be other scenarios when contribution number goes down, for example if a place gets deleted, contributions towards the place is no longer counted as well.

Or another more likely cause, there is also the situation about if one deletes personal Google Maps activity history records, which will remove points from Answers given on Google Maps. Read here

The above are just possibilities, and may not necessarily apply to your situation. 

[SirB]

Thanks @StephenAbraham 

It's possible that some places had been flagged as non existence that I reviewed. I noticed places I reviewed in Nancy, France, had been marked unknown place on my photos uploaded for that place. Just worried that being on level 10 would eventually place me lower which would be disappointing. But alas...

Cheers 👍

[Bobiisha]

Hi @SirB,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

Since @StephenAbraham provided you with a valid answer, I just wanted to let you know that I will move your post to our How-tos section, where Local Guides ask questions and express their doubts. More information on Connect's labels is available here. 

[SirB]

Appreciate it @Bobiisha 

Cheers 🙏

[ErmesT]

Hi @SirB 

Sorry about your issue, that is mostly related to your reviews: 674 of them are flagged as "private".

On the photos side, only 291 photos are private, or not associated with a place, and this is quite normal.

So definitely I think you should concentrate in your reviews.

Flagging a review as private can be an automatic operation (made by an automated filter based on keywords), or manual, if your review have been reported, and checked.

The filter is working on keywords, e.g. prices, because they can be interpreted as spam. However, this is possible to fix, as you can see here below.

This step can help to see if there is an issue (another Local Guide recently reported a similar situation).

BTW, I know that with a large amount of review it will not be easy to compare the public and the private profile. To view your public profile, simply open this link in Incognito mode.

If you can identify one or more review "private reviews", please try the steps here below (Fixing your issue). Please let us know if the review will be published again

I am also tagging @DeniGu here, as she followed the previous report

Fixing your issue

As you can read in Flag and fix inappropriate content "If a review you wrote has been flagged and removed, you can fix it yourself. Edit your review to follow Google review policies — for example, you might remove a phone number or URL from the review. Your review will be automatically republished.

Google uses automated spam detection measures to remove reviews that are probably spam. Although legitimate reviews are sometimes inappropriately removed, these spam prevention measures help improve people's experiences on Google by ensuring that the reviews they see are authentic, relevant, and useful."

[SirB]

Thanks @ErmesT always appreciate your detailed response. 

It's very daunting to track all reviews being flagged as private, & I'm not even sure how to spot them! From memory, I've done reviews as old as 5 years ago. 

I'll do my best to correct them but perhaps it's just a sign to take a break from Google maps. 

Cheers 🙏