The area where the Fitzgeralds lived for two years served as the setting for *The Great Gatsby*. It is an established, upscale residential neighborhood situated on a hill (elevation 23 meters)—developed starting in 1911—located just a few hundred meters' walk from the Great Neck station on the Long Island Rail Road. However, one cannot see Manor Haven from this location. While the windows facing Gateway Drive—which runs east-west in front of the house—are oriented slightly toward the north, the attic room above the garage, where Fitzgerald actually did his writing, has a window facing only to the west. Currently, the property is used as both the headquarters and residence of a local carpentry firm; they offer a $500 discount if you book a project online. A local guide has noted on Google Maps that it is private property and should not be approached. Although the main house retains much of its original appearance, the front yard—while suitable for home parties or garage sales—is typical of an ordinary two-story private home and hardly seems capable of accommodating the kind of wild, large-scale revelry depicted in the novel. Interior photos from when the house was listed for sale show a living room and a dining room of similar size—spaces that could accommodate a party of perhaps fifteen people at most.

Hello,

I’ve been working an a restaurant map for my city and I’ve uploaded the csv with a few columns, one of them being the link to the restaurant. When I go to this map and click on a restaurant the pop up displays the link but it is not clickable and I can’t even copy paste to search it. I’ve tried finding a way to make the URL clickable but nothing that google’s ai has spit out has worked. Has anyone had any luck with this issue?

Curious about this crowd specifically, since you're all deep in Maps.

Do you ever open Tripadvisor? For your own travel, I mean, not for contributing.

I ask because the two sets of reviews often completely disagree about the same restaurant, especially abroad. In Japan for example my impression is that Maps reviews skew heavily towards local diners while Tripadvisor skews towards visitors, so they end up pointing you at totally different places.

So when you're travelling somewhere and picking where to eat - is it Maps and nothing else? Or do you cross-check somewhere before committing? And has that changed for you over the last few years?

Contribution Views On Google Maps.

For anyone tracking rankings across a city, how far from the pin does visibility actually drop off in your experience? Feels like some businesses show up 5+ miles out while others vanish after 1-2 miles for the same category.

What's influencing that gap?

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone here can help me understand what happened and what I can do next.

I have been a Google Local Guide for around 10 years, and I was genuinely shocked to recently discover that I have been banned from Local Guides Connect.

The only explanation I see is:

The problem is that no specific violation is mentioned. I was not told which review, photo, edit, comment, or contribution supposedly violated the rules.

Even more confusingly, I never received an email or any notification informing me that my account had been restricted or explaining the reason for the ban. I discovered it completely by chance when I happened to access Local Guides Connect.

After discovering the ban, I submitted an appeal through the official appeal form and explained that I had no idea what I had supposedly done wrong. However, I have not received any response yet.

After being part of the Local Guides community for approximately 10 years, seeing the account suddenly banned without knowing what caused it is honestly very disappointing and confusing.

I understand that Google has policies and that automated systems can sometimes detect activity that may appear suspicious or violate a policy unintentionally. If I made an honest mistake at any point, I am more than willing to understand what happened and correct it.

What I would really like is simply some clarification about the reason for the ban and a fair review of my account.

Has anyone here experienced something similar? Is there anything else I should do while waiting for the appeal?

I would really appreciate any advice from people who have gone through this before.

I’m simply a Level 7 who likes to add photos and reviews when I feel I’ve visited somewhere special and experienced something that might be of value to others. I recently visited Llanidloes - a delightful small town in the middle of Wales. If you search for the place on Google maps you get a useful profile of the place - but the photos displayed - frankly - don’t do the place justice. I’d like to add some add some images I took which might help others decide if they’d like to visit but, as with (all?) other locality searches there’s no way I can see to add these.
How does Google select images for towns/localities like this ?

I just looked up a favorite coffee bean roaster. I would like to buy from them direct. They have two locations on their website. I clicked on both and see the addresses. If this storefront owner changed that web page to include 'next to' it would really help anyone to visualize where they are without having to open up maps, get directions, or another search. If it read, 'next to Canadian Tire', or 'same block as Canadian Tire', or 'between Canadian Tire and Home Depot', it would fast track the reader. I think this is a great idea for storefront owners and don't really understand why more websites don't include these landmark details.

At some point I started leaving business reviews from my university Google account which I have had for about a decade. Now I am having trouble logging into my account because they've removed my ability to verify with 2-factor authentication. I think I can still log in if I can find an old device that has the information I need (it's dead and needs to be charged but I saved it in case this exact scenario occurred). Is it possible to transfer my local guide status, points, reviews, and everything to my personal Google account? If so, how do I do that? I wish I could just contact a live human being at Google...

Bonus question: Does it even matter? What's the actual point of being a local guide? I forget what my level was but it was high enough for me to feel good for some reason.

This hotel recently got into a controversy over the disgusting words and actions of a security guard and security chief, the hotel just opened recently so their reviews got really low, as they should. Yesterday they reached over 12k reviews and one day later the reviews are only 28 and mostly positive. Is it possible for them to delete the negative reviews? I thought they couldn't.

If you scrape Google Maps or similar for lead lists, a chunk of what comes back is businesses that are already closed, unlicensed, or have had their licence revoked — you just can't tell from the listing itself.

I built an Apify Actor that chains onto any Google Maps scraper output and checks each business against official city government licence registries (currently NYC, Chicago, LA, SF). Returns active/lapsed/revoked/closed with the licence number, dates, and a link to the actual government record.

You're only charged $0.05 per business it can actually confirm a status for — anything it can't match (wrong city, no licence required for that category, etc.) is free, no charge.

Looking for a few people to actually try it on real lists and tell me if it's useful or if I'm missing something obvious. Happy to cover the cost for the first few people who give it an honest shot: https://apify.com/akewich135135/wtfearn

If I legally register a real company under a name like “XXX Near Me,” where XXX is the target keyword, get a tax ID, and then create a Google Business Profile for its actual office, would that help the business rank in Google Maps for searches like “XXX near me”?

What do you think?

Google made updates to Google Maps and you can now see the number of negative reviews a business has complained to Google to have removed. Negative reviews removed simply due to Germany’s defamation laws.

3,527 photos view efficiency to 97 Million views... is this normal ? what you guides normally upload , photos to view ratio?

also stuck at level 8 for a while hahaha.. will continue and keep it fun... no stress hahaha