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

[MortenCopenhagen]

Introduction: How to Get In and Out of Trouble as a Local Guide

Hi, Fellow Local Guides,

In this miniseries, I will share some important lessons I have learned personally and came to understand better through helping Local Guides who got in trouble for not following the guidelines for Google Maps contributions.

In the summer of 2020, I got suspended from the Local Guides Program for two and a half weeks, it was not a pleasant experience. I will also explain two new sanctions Google recently started using. Please remember I’m presenting my personal and unofficial interpretation and I welcome your comments to improve this miniseries.

The main purpose of this miniseries is to help Local Guides not to get in trouble, but I will also share some tips on how to identify and fix issues should you find yourself in trouble.

In this main post**,** I will share the following overview of this miniseries and mention some of the questions you can expect to find answers to:

Sanctions Explained

How do you find out if you have been suspended?

What are the consequences of being suspended?

How do you check if your photos were made private?

How do you find out if some or all of your reviews were made private?

Typical Violations

Here I will explain some of the most common guideline violations Local Guides get suspended for. Not knowing the guidelines is not a valid excuse and Google, unfortunately, did not make it easy to find and read all the guidelines. So you can read my posts on Review violations, Photo violations, and Other violations as a shortcut to reducing your risk of getting in trouble.

How to AVOID Getting in Trouble

In this post, you will find an overview of steps to follow if you want to protect your Local Guides account from suspension and other sanctions.

How to Get OUT of Trouble

If you think your sanction is wrong, you should:

1. Carefully review your contributions so they all align with the guidelines. This includes studying and understanding the guidelines.
2. Clean up your profile on Google Maps by deleting photos and delete or edit any questionable reviews you have made.
3. Then after cleaning your profile you can fill out and submit the appeal form for wrongfully suspended Local Guides.

I hope you will find this miniseries interesting and useful.

Cheers

Morten

PS: I would like to thank some of my best LG friends for kindly commenting and reviewing the posts in this miniseries.

Miniseries overview

How to Get In and Out of Trouble: The Main post (= this post)

Sanctions Explained:

Count your hidden contributions on a Desktop

Count your hidden contributions on a Mobile

Typical Violations:

Review Violations

Photo Violations

Other Violations

How to AVOID Getting in Trouble

How to Get OUT of Trouble

[MortenCopenhagen]

Update from November 2022

Ask yourself these questions;

• Have you been liking your own reviews?
• Have you been copying or repeating any text between reviews?
• Have you been publishing the same reviews elsewhere?
• Are you in any way associated with a business on Google Maps?

According to my experience from helping Local Guides with hidden reviews a Yes to any of these four questions might explain why reviews get hidden.

News from March 2022

Saturday, March 19th, 2022 I co-hosted a jeopardy style quiz on the topic of Suspensions.

See the quiz invite here.

If you would like to see the questions and maybe try the quiz yourself, you have two options:

You can play the quiz online here: https://v2.playfactile.com/ic/suspensionsawarenesschallenge_l0nzxr34

Or you can download a PDF file with all the questions from here.

The questions are a really fast short-cut to learn some of the most central aspects of how to prevent and deal with suspensions.

Cheers

Morten

PS: If you need the correct answers look here.

[JanVanHaver]

Great initiative @MortenCopenhagen , this is one of those posts worth bookmarking as it contains the info needed to explain LGs who have been suspended what the heck has happened.

[doc_dells]

This is great @MortenCopenhagen thanks for sharing! Very useful

[yangki_skyyangki]

Sir, you are great , in your previous guidance educate to all with a single sentence, “In your phone you see a picture and save it But you have to own it”. Thank you for valuable guidance.

[bigyansedai12345]

Hw sir I am from NEPAL I am new in local guides plz guide me . My places are not pinned

[BhanuPratapSah]

यह लेख बहुत काम का है ।

[Kuttukreatif]

Terimakasih informasinya

[TharinDSilva]

@MortenCopenhagen Thanks a lot for sharing this post!

[Abdo]

That was helpful … thanks alot

[Giu_DiB]

Hi @Abdo ,

I just wanted to let you know that you can tag a member when you comment so to send a notification to the person you reply to. This way they know that you are talking to them.

To do so, you just need to digit the symbol @ and the username without space between them, like I just did now with you.

[SHRAZA1]

04:20 AM @MortenCopenhagen Thanks a lot for sharing this post!

[DanielKRausch]

Hello @MortenCopenhagen ,

I thank you for your hard work and diligent support of us Google Local Guides, and to the GLG program. Your miniseries is outstanding work. I appreciate this helpful information, and your dedication.

[MortenCopenhagen]

The correct quiz answers are:

Suspension soup $100:C $200:C $300:B $400:B $500:C

Hidden contributions $100:C $200:C $300:A $400:B $500:D

Photo violations $100:D $200:A $300:B $400:B $500:B

Reviews violations $100:D $200:A $300:A $400:B $500:A

Stolen contributions $100:A $200:C $300:B $400:B $500:B

Unsuspension $100:C $200:A $300:C $400:C $500:D

Jackpot question $XXXX:D

But don’t tell anyone

Cheers

Morten

[Kellie0girl]

Your mini series detailing What types of reviews and pictures could get you in trouble was fantastic.

The way you outlined each subject and the way you explained each one was very helpful to me.

Thank you so much

[Nguthijosephk]

Thanks @MortenCopenhagen the article is so enlightening.

[Nguthijosephk]

Sure @JanVanHaver , @MortenCopenhagen has done a commendable jobs. Thumbs up!

[HassanZaib]

@MortenCopenhagen very useful information. Thanks for sharing with us.

[ogosset]

@MortenCopenhagenGreat work. Hint for Google : get ride of your suspicious algorithme and hire Morten for the job

[MortenCopenhagen]

@ogosset

Cheers

Morten

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