Decreasing points

[Nguthijosephk]

In the past one week my points on reviews with over 200 hundred characters have declined from 49 to 46 despite the fact that I have contributed more reviews many of which have more than two hundred characters. On the first instance the points declined by to points even though I had made more than three reviews. Yet on another day they declined by one point and on that particular time I had written three reviews which had more than two hundred characters. What could be the reason or could it be an error?

[ErmesT]

@Nguthijosephk 

Unfortunately we can't see your 149 hidden 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.

A review is made private when it violates the Maps User Contributed Content Policy 

Making your review visible again is indeed possible, by modifying and republishing it, as you can read here below

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."

However, you have a huge amount of violations also in your photos contributions, that I can summarize in:

• Almost useless (not really representing the place) and redundant (a big amount of similar photos) taken by driving. Honestly you should avoid to upload that kind of photos
• Redundant photos
• Duplicated across locations (same photo posted in more than one place).

According to the Community policy :

• "Take photos that clearly and accurately represent a location ...."
• "Dark, blurry, and redundant photos will be removed. Users who duplicate photos across locations, ..... will also be removed."

Maybe some of these photos were also attached to your reviews. In addition I would like to suggest to avoid getting "inspired" by online contents when writing a review. A review should reflect your personal experience of the location, not sharing general information that we can easily find with an online search.

Also look at this review: https://goo.gl/maps/qqAKyLKPR4yPgNie6 . The place should not be in Maps (a roundabout is just a road), but someone added it as an Historical landmark. What you describe in your review is what we can better see just looking at the map, and the four photos of people in your review are not representing the place nor what you are telling us in your review.

I suggest to read ALL your reviews again thinking as a user of Google Maps, to fix everything useless, off topic and irrelevant and make them real and personal, and submit them again. And of course delete all the photos that are not really and clearly representing the location

This may fix the issue. You will lose a lot of points, but you will probably save your account, and in the future maybe you will become an helpful Local Guide.

Good luck

[Nguthijosephk]

Thanks @ErmesT for the timely and detailed response. I've learned a lesson and feel more wiser .

 However please note I never indicated that my points were 149 as stated in your statement. Like I said before they decreased the points were 49, and these were for those reviews with more than 200 characters. In any case my total reviews are 300plus.