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Level 8

How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

As an avid user of Google Maps and reader of reviews and uploaded photos, I find it frustrating when other users upload irrelevant and poor quality images to listings. 

 

I imagine it's often by mistake that they upload photos of the wrong place, but I've also noticed a lot of people will upload photos of other London landmarks to a listing specifically for Tower Bridge, for example. This reduces the clarity and accuracy of the listing and makes it confusing to know exactly which photo is correct.

 

Where I know for sure, I report each photo to Google as "Wrong place". This issue is though, that this is time consuming and its impossible for me as a single user to correct all these wrongly uploaded photos. 

 

My question therefore is: are there any way that this can be improved by us as Google Local Guides, or is this more of a UX/design/communication issue that only Google can fix? All thoughts and ideas are welcome.

 

Select photo, click flag in bottom right corner and report as "Wrong Place"Select photo, click flag in bottom right corner and report as "Wrong Place"Only 2 of the visible 8 photos are actually relevant to the Tower BridgeOnly 2 of the visible 8 photos are actually relevant to the Tower Bridge

8 comments
Level 8

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

Hi @nzjoel

This is very important topic, thanks for bringing it up.

It's also not new. I've seen many complaints of local guides that FOCUS on correcting misusage of maps. They don't feel supported by Google in their effort, e.g.:

- uploaded pictures are never validated

- signaling spam and other faults is not appreciated

- there's no appaerent activity of Google in this field

Recently, however, we've spotted a first turning point in this - amongst the quastions about a POI, you are asked to choose the most relevant/useful out of two pictures. Hopefuly it's not the last and this will continue until some reasonable AI will filter some of the wrong postings.

 

Bez názvu.png

Level 10

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

Bonjour à tous

@nzjoel je rejoins @ayann, C'est désagréable de voir sur une fiche des photos qui ne correspondent pas aux lieux.

Sur la version française de l'application, nous n'avons pas l'option préciser que la photo ne correspond pas au lieu.

 

Parfois la suppression pouvait prendre plusieurs semaines. Certains LG ont même attendu parce que un an. 

Il est vrai que l'algorithme concerné doit être amélioré pour nous rendre les contributions plus facile.

 

Bonnes contributions

 

Vincent

Level 8

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

That popup comparison looks very interesting! Definitely a step in the right direction. I'm sure it won't stop people uploading photos of the wrong location, but it will at least give us the chance to deemphasize and maybe even remove photos if they get too few votes. 

 

I hadn't thought about the fact that we don't get points for flagging incorrect photos. That would be a nice incentive to be even more thorough with reporting photos. Coupled with the ability for other LGs to validate a report as true/false would be a great step to starting to solve this issue! At least till the issue can be resolved at the root of the photo being uploaded in the first place.

Level 9

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

Hello @nzjoel

We facing same problem you know we trust the local guides just like you, me.. Maybe some of them are new or a beginner and the bad thing if he want to reach the next level quickly by adding phphot on the wrong place. all what I can do report it

Cheers

Saudi local guide 

Level 5

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

I had exactly this problem today talking to someone from Malaysia about "London Bridge" - trying to explain it's not one with the towers... but Google says it is! (as images show when searching for that)

I've tried reporting, but not sure if that's adequate... not tried going through the maps, not sure if that would make a difference as a LocalGuide?

Level 10

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

I think the very core of the issue is in the Maps App itself and Google's desire to encourage more people to share photos of interesting places. 

 

When taking a bunch of pictures, the Maps App notifies the users about excellent photo sharing options and many people push the button even without thinking what they are doing. The location is just an approximation by the app therefore many-many photos get automatically associated with wrong places. 

 

This way of making it too easy to add photos results in a much bigger number of wrongly posted photos than either LG's (when reporting) or Googlers (when checking the reports) could ever cope with. 

 

Here is a trivial example: a palace (now mostly in half ruins) where I deliberately do not add pictures (I have hundreds). Look at what photos are posted there: 

https://goo.gl/maps/x7DBTk9JrM62

it's practically used as someone's personal photo album. I doubt it's deliberate. This woman keeps adding these and I keep reporting them and eventually nothing really changes.

Level 8

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

I noticed this new feature and think it's a great addition! I have already been shown photos on it that were wrong and hope my input removed or moved the other image down the list.

 

I still feel like more needs to be done by Google. I highly suspect a lot of the images that are being incorrectly uploaded are because people are bulk uploading at the suggestion of Google because the photo has coordinates that are close to a specific landmark/place but it isn't actually a photo of the place. I personally find this feature extremely helpful because otherwise it's a hassle finding the photos in my phones photo album, but on the other hand it's being abused by people selecting and uploading all suggested photos.

 

With all the incredible AI photo detection Google has and utilises with Image matching and other products of theirs, im certain they could at least partially validate if a photo is suitable to be uploaded to a place or not.

Level 8

Re: How can we reduce users uploading photos of the wrong locations

@hugsbray I regularly report photos of the wrong places. I've never checked if they were ever removed though, and Google never tells you if they did or not which is a shame.

 

I think it's worth reporting none-the-less. Makes me feel like I'm doing all I really can to help Google Maps users.