When It Comes to Google MapMaker, Don’t Take No for an Answer

Do you find your edits in Google MapMaker often get denied?

Ever since Maptivists shed some light on the exploits that were possible using MapMaker, it has been harder and harder to get legitimate changes made. Most of the time I see MapMaker edits get rejected, regardless of their validity. A good example was when I deleted the category “Brewpub” for Noble Ale Works (which you should visit if you are ever in Orange County). It seemed like a pretty non-controversial change, I have been to Noble several times and know for a fact that they don’t serve food. Anyway, a couple of days later I was greeted with this notification:

Well Listing Editor Sirish Y, that is really helpful (not). I understand that to a non-native English speaker “brewpub” probably seems like a logical choice for a place that serves beer. However, as a proper beer snob I can tell you that the difference is pretty distinct. Brewpubs serve food, breweries do not. Anyway, since I know that it’s the correct information I appealed the rejection:

And lo and behold, a couple of weeks later my appeal was victorious.

Now this isn’t a story about an isolated case of getting a MapMaker edit rejected and overcoming that with an appeal. An entirely made up statistic about MapMaker, based on my own personal observations over several years, is that 78.3% of MapMaker edits get rejected. We see this all the time, if it’s not in Google’s databanks then the front line of defense (e.g. MapMaker editors, GMB Support etc) doesn’t have the expertise or the data to make an informed decision.

So back to MapMaker, we have over a 90% success rate of overcoming MapMaker denials. The trick to this isn’t really a trick, it’s something everyone in this space should strive to do everyday. Be the expert, explain why a certain view is incorrect, and provide data backing up your assertions. Doing this puts you on the path to success with more then just Google MapMaker.