Count your hidden contributions (Mobile)

Google Maps tips & tricks
1

Faces HIDDEN Mobile.png
Faces HIDDEN Mobile.png1750Ă—1000 310 KB

This is a post in the miniseries called Getting In and Out of Trouble as a Local Guide. You can find the main post here or scroll down to find an overview with links to more posts in this miniseries.

This post will help you find out how many of your photos and reviews are made private by Google if you are on an Android or IOS device. It is a bit easier to do this on a Desktop computer as explained in this post: Count your hidden contributions on a Desktop.

For these steps to work you need to have the “Show Google Maps link” turned on in your Connect settings. Tap your Profile photos on Connect, then My Settings to make sure Show Google Maps link is blue as shown below.

MortenCopenhagen_0-1615805545832.png
MortenCopenhagen_0-1615805545832.png432Ă—358 15.1 KB

IOS Steps

First follow these steps on your Apple device to find out how many photos, videos, and reviews you have contributed to Google Maps. The steps for Android users are listed further down on this page.

  1. Open the Google Maps app
  2. Tap your profile picture
  3. Tap your profile
  4. Tap your profile picture
  5. Scroll down a bit and write down how many photos and videos you have uploaded. Also, write down how many reviews you have made. See the yellow markings in the screenshots below.

MortenCopenhagen_2-1615805545851.png
MortenCopenhagen_2-1615805545851.png1600Ă—706 263 KB

  1. Write the numbers down on a piece of paper. First, calculate Photos + Video. In my case this is 13288 + 61 = 13.349. So I have uploaded 13.349 photos+videos. My number of uploaded reviews is 572 as seen to the left of the image above underlined in yellow.

Now it’s time to figure out how many of your photos and reviews are public. This is done by opening your Maps profile in an incognito window in your browser. Follow these steps:

  1. Open your web browser
  2. Navigate to LocalGuidesConnect.com
  3. Tap on your profile picture
  4. Tap on your profile name in blue at the top of the page
  5. Tap and hold on “View Google Maps profile” and a menu will pop up
  6. Select Open in New Incognito Tab
  7. If you are asked to use the app instead, then don’t. Stay on the website.
  8. Then tap PHOTOS
  9. Now write down how many photos are mentioned to the left on this screen. This is marked with green in the screenshots above. In my case, this is 13.035.
    Then tap REVIEW
  10. Write down how many reviews are mentioned to the left of this screen. Marked with green above. In my case, the number is 571.

Finally make the calculations using this formula: Yellow minus green = number of hidden. In my case, this is 13.349 minus 13.035 photos = 314 hidden photos. And 572 minus 571 reviews = 1 hidden review.

ANDROID steps

Follow these steps on your Android device to find out how many photos, videos, and reviews you have contributed to Google Maps.

  1. Open the Google Maps app
  2. Tap your profile picture
  3. Tap your profile
  4. Tap your profile picture
  5. Scroll down a bit and write down how many photos and videos you have uploaded. Also, write down how many reviews you have made. See the yellow markings in the screenshots below.

MortenCopenhagen_4-1615805545846.png
MortenCopenhagen_4-1615805545846.png1600Ă—850 176 KB

  1. Write the numbers down on a piece of paper.

  2. First, calculate Photos + Video. In my case this is 13288 + 61 = 13.349. My number of uploaded reviews is 572 as seen to the left of the image above.

Now it’s time to figure out how many of your photos and reviews are public. This is done by opening your Maps profile in an incognito window in your browser. Follow these steps:

  1. Open your web browser

  2. Navigate to LocalGuidesConnect.com

  3. Tap on your profile picture

  4. Tap on your profile name in blue at the top of the page

  5. Tap and hold on “View Google Maps profile” and a menu will pop up

  6. Select Open in an incognito tab

  7. Then tap PHOTOS

  8. Now write down how many photos are mentioned to the left on this screen. As marked with green in the screenshot above. In my case, this is 13.035

  9. Then tap REVIEWS

  10. Write down how many reviews are mentioned to the left of this screen. As marked with green above. In my case, the number is 571.

Finally make the calculations using this formula: Yellow minus green = number of hidden. In my case, this is 13.349 minus 13.035 photos = 314 hidden photos. And 572 minus 571 reviews = 1 hidden review.

If you don’t see any reviews or photos listed on the left (Green = 0) this tells you that all of your reviews or Photos have been hidden. This is NOT good. You are in trouble. If more than a few reviews are hidden your need to take action and fix the problems ASAP. Keep on reading to learn what you can do to fix some of the problems.

This is the end of Count your hidden contributions on a Mobile. I suggest you continue here: Typical Violations where I will explain some of the most common violations that get Local Guides in trouble.

Cheers

Morten

Miniseries overview

How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main post

Sanctions Explained:

Count your hidden contributions on a Desktop

Count your hidden contributions on a Mobile (= this post)

Typical Violations:

Review Violations

Photo Violations

Other Violations

How to AVOID Getting in Trouble

How to Get OUT of Trouble

22 Likes
2

This comment is left empty for now. Future updates will appear here!

3

Thanks @MortenCopenhagen you have alot of patience to post this. I tested on my smartphone. My photos was 28,877 and 28,391 ,486 hidden and reviews 2384 and 2181, 203 hidden.

In terms of postulating to explain the differences. Firstly, with photos I assume if I’ve posted a photo of people at an event perhaps they have been hidden, although I do attend alot of show cooking or similar themed events at venues where all of the Bloggers present are happy you take photos of them so I have their permission and of course the owner of the venue. On the reviews I assume some of my reviews maybe of places that have closed down so that helps to explain the discrepancy, hopefully the differences are not that alarming to you ! Otherwise I can’t really explain the the hidden reviews.

2 Likes
4

Hi @MarkAuchincloss

I took a look at the first few reviews of yours. And they are perfect. When I see profiles with more than 2000 reviews I usually see lots of short (1 word) reviews and other useless reviews. But yours are really outstanding. Often you mention exactly what you experienced and prove that you have actually been there.

As mentioned in another reply earlier today it is really up to you if you want to do the work to remove or edit hidden reviews. With your review quality and the very low level of help provided by Google to identify which of your reviews are made private, I can easily understand that you hesitate to fix them.

All the best and thanks for your high-quality and very helpful contributions.

Cheers

Morten

PS: If you have not seen my latest post on this you can find it here.

1 Like
5

@MortenCopenhagen thanks for your kind comments… I try my hardest to give good quality comments and I agree with you that too many reviews are one word dribble! Yes there’s only one eay to go onwards and upwards! Thanks for sharing the link.

1 Like
6

Hi @MortenCopenhagen !

As per your instructions above, I only have one private photo on my profile. I roughly know which one became private. I think it’s a photograph of a building plan document.

But I have some private photos that cannot be identified by the above method. You can see that the number of views does not exceed 10. But there are no violations in them. I guessed that the photos taken in the same place in several but different rooms were not posted by Google due to suspected duplicates. But each of these pictures is important. At the moment I have a few questions?

  1. Am I legal to discover multiple LG profiles?
    Actually, I don’t like it, but with system flaws like the one above, there’s no other way.

Is it possible to remove photos from a profile that are hidden for no reason, as mentioned above, and immediately post them to another profile?

  1. I have two Google accounts. One personal, the other account for the program of LG. My personal account syncs with Google Photos, but as a LG, I use the same photos. Tell me, does Google not consider these pictures posted from the profile of a local expert as plagiarism?
1 Like
7

@Feruz_1

On the account you use here on Connect you have 114 pics and all of them are public.

According to the rules you can only sign up one account to the Local Guides Program. Including signing up on Connect.

Are you refering to the other account? If so you need to share the link if you want me to check.

The notion to just use another account to post photos that are rejected is not very logical to me. Posting photos is about being helpful to Maps users. The filter might act differently depending on which account you use, but over time I doubt this will be a sustainable strategy to post rejected photos.

I think it is better to accept the spam filters evaluation after a second try (a second upload attempt eliminated tech issues associated to the uploading process.).

When the system checks your photos and find them to be re-posted it might start blocking all your contributions over time.

Using 2 accounts on Google Maps is against the principle of being honts and genuine. Imagine if a lot of local guides started liking their contributions from alternate accounts. What a mess that would be. So I would not recommend using two different accounts on Google Maps.

If you try to repost a photo any way, please make sure to delete the first copy first.

And yes, hidden photos are not hidden in your list of photo contributions. Hence you can find and delete them.

Cheers

Morten

2 Likes
8

I deleted some questionable photos of myself. Now I have 113 photos left. But if you go to my profile and manually count them one by one, you will see 92 of them.

9

@MortenCopenhagen !

Since I wrote the previous email by clicking the reply to your email button, I didn’t tag you in it. What didn’t get to you?

1 Like
10

Even if I delete and re-post unpublished pictures, there will be no positive result.

11

@Feruz_1

Reply does not create a notification.

Interesting that you count your photos. I have always had way too many to count them. I just compare the public and private numbers.

Currently your stats says you have uploaded 112 pics and 113 are public. This is just just because the servers have not been synchronized yet.

I believe the display of photos might skip sone if you have uploaded a lot of pics to one location. I recommend checking the numbers rather than counting.

I don’t think you need to worry much about small discrepancies.

Cheers

Morten

12

**translated by google.

@MortenCopenhagen , Of course I appreciate your answers, but I need a solution.
Your article above is only part of the solution.
I don’t actually list the photos one by one.
Just tried this:
I have uploaded 113 images and 112 of them are listed as published. everything is correct here. There are no problems with system synchronization.

I think only one of my photos doesn’t qualify. But I did not find what kind of photo it is. If you remember, in the previous answer I wrote that the total number of uploaded photos was 115, and 114 were published. At that time, I deleted 2 suspicious photos. But it turned out that the problematic photo is different. Because then both indicators decreased by two.

For this I used the following method:

  1. I manually counted the profile photo. There are 113 of them.
  2. I went to my profile through incognito mode and counted my photos again. According to your instructions, they should have 112 output. And there are 92 of them. So, for some reason, 20 more photos were not published.
    So your instructions are not yet perfect.

What drives me crazy is that I uploaded 3 photos of the pool:

The pool itself, dressing room and shower room. But although this is a photo of different rooms, only a photo of the pool is uploaded. What, it is not important for people to first familiarize themselves with the conditions of the locker room and the shower?

Everyone was fixated on one phrase: “If you can’t, throw it away”.

But who needs such a disorderly and unfinished system.

Please, if you don’t know, help me tag someone who does.

Sincerely, Feruz!

13

Sorry, @MortenCopenhagen , I wrote a little harshly in the last answer.
I have a guess.
I posted 2 days ago 20 unpublished photos that I link to. Maybe it’s worth waiting for their publication?
But why will some photos be published immediately, and some will remain so?

1 Like
14

Hi @Feruz_1

It is perfectly okay to be upset.

But, as I mentioned before I don’t have experience with manually counting my photos. And it could easily be that not all photos are shown in your contribution list.

Please give the system time to synchronize.

Remember it is an automated system and there is no one who can (or will) help you find which photo is hidden and explain why.

With so few photos you should be able to check the lists side by side (use 2 devices or two tabs on a Desktop computer).

And try to let go instead of getting so upset/focused on a single photo.

Sorry I can not help you any better.

Cheers

Morten

1 Like
15

@MortenCopenhagen If some of my pictures are hidden, what should I do? Will I delete this?

I found that this hidden picture has some view count.

2 Likes
16

Hi @rashedul-alam

If the photos violate any of the guidelines, then it is certain ly best to delete them.

Photos can get views before they get hidden, and each time you look at your photo contributions they may get a few more views.

Cheers

Morten

1 Like
17

@MortenCopenhagen Thank you for the informative post.

I have uploaded 72 photos and 9 videos(according to my profile on app). When I check on browser in incognito mode, it shows 72 photos, (which, according to your article should be 72+9=81, if none of my photos are hidden). And the list of photos on incognito browser shows all the 72 photos, but none of the videos.

Does it mean that none of my videos are visible publicly? But all the videos have views when I check on app. So are any of my photos/videos actually hidden?

1 Like
18

@Chandni

I see you have 81 pics+videos. So I doubt you have hidden pics and videos.

Screenshot 2023-03-26 11.07.58.png
Screenshot 2023-03-26 11.07.58.png1378Ă—752 145 KB

cheers

Morten

1 Like
19

Followed all steps
Both photo’s and reviews are matching in ignite mode also.
Kindly guide