Google has forgotten the plot. A quick tangent story follows: I attempted to add a Tesla Supercharger as it went live to Google Maps. I was the very first to pay to recharge at the new location. The process went something like this:

1st time: Uploaded 4 photos, local business info, current charger prices, and GPS coordinates. Google replied this would be sent to human review. It was rejected within 6 minutes.

2nd attempt: Uploaded 6 more photos, including shots of local business hours and info, and current prices. Rejected in 6 minutes.

3rd time: One photo of a new charger, no description. Rejected in 6 minutes.

4th time: Appended all above details to local business info. It went live within a minute.

5 days later: Supercharger location was added by ??? and included no info at all and the pinpoint was off by 100m.

And it's still 100x easier than trying to add your own business or set up a Google Business Profile. Shoot a video from outside showing the buildings around you, show the address and permanent signage on the building (they don't always accept door signs), unlock the door to show that you own the space, then show the interior of the space with things like signage, letterhead, business cards, etc. Then hope that the video was 'good enough' to get a listing.

And heaven help you if you choose to get an office on an upper floor where an elevator ride is required, or you get a space in a building that also has/had a co-working space in it.

FWIW, editing OpenStreetMap is very straightforward*, and with that, you're actually contributing to an open data set that everyone is allowed to use, rather than just propping up Google.

(To be fair, on a laptop - I'm sure Google Maps is more straightforward on a phone. But for someone already prepared to invest this much effort, editing OSM should be well within range. And if you just enjoy contributing to maps, for a phone I can highly recommend https://streetcomplete.app.)

Another thing they apparently do is let business owners (e.g. hotels) remove negative reviews because they're "defamatory".

I had a very factual 3-star review on a hotel that was supposedly very quiet, but was super noisy and the AC was not working. And there was literally nobody at the reception at the time of check-out and nobody picked up the phone either. All in all, nothing serious, but worth a review. Purely factual stuff, nothing bad-mouthed, just my experience and three stars.

A few months later the review was removed because it was "defamatory". I was able to get it reinstated by sending them proof of payment to the hotel and proof that I was there. A few months later, it was removed again! That same dance was repeated six times..... What a weird system.

I've found that if you attach any pictures at all: rejected.

So what I've taken to doing is adding the business without photos (almost always accepted), and then trying to attach the photos later after that goes live (mostly works). But I agree, their process is completely broken, and I doubt they have any incentive to fix it.

Had similar experience trying to add a restaurant to Google Maps, our own even. First time, rejected because didn't exist, it did. Second time, they say they sent a letter, and they see that someone received it, no one did. We wait a month, they say they sent another letter, we wait another month. Nothing, and now they stopped replying too. Wait another month, suddenly the restauarant magically exists on Google Maps, with the wrong images, wrong address, wrong open times, but the pin is the right place at least, so I guess that's cool. Took another month or two to force through all the corrections too.

This was made 2-3 years ago, probably worse today. Absolutely horrific experience, and they have zero motivation to fix it, because people like us still want to be on Google Maps, especially if you're not in a super good location, so people can actually find you.

I've stopped believing in the accuracy of Google maps after my experience at my last apartment. The ground floor of my building was a deli with an address like 123 4th Ave, and the entrance to the deli was basically facing the corner itself rather than either side of the cross street, and my apartment's address (using the placeholder above as a reference) was 123 4th Ave Apt. 2R. All of the apartments had a separate entrance than the deli that was further down the block past the deli on 4th Ave. The problem was that the cross street (let's call it 5th Street) also had an building with the same number two doors down, and for whatever reason, Google Maps put the address marker for the entirety of 123 4th Ave on 5th Street, and even more annoyingly, they showed the way of getting to my apartment as going into the deli's entrance first, which made no sense because there is absolutely no way to get to the apartments from inside the deli without either going outside or I guess teleporting through the ceiling. When trying to get something delivered to my apartment, the delivery people would often look at Google Maps, see the marker on 5th Street, look for the 123 marker, and then go and ring the bell for 123 5th Street instead of actually going onto 4th Ave and ringing our bell. I tried to contact Google Maps to get this addressed (pun intended), but I was told that they did not have a way to have separate entrances for different parts of the same address, and they told me to get a new separate address from the city. I responded that the city of New York would probably not issue a new address for a building I didn't own and that they could solve the problem by just moving the pin over to the 4th Ave side of the corner instead of the 5th Street side since the entrance pointed out diagonally and no one would have trouble finding it still if they did that. I never got a response, and all of my attempts to submit a correction directly got ignored.

Friend owns a construction company. Been at same address for seven years. Suddenly their Google Business Page not working right. Google says to delete it and reverify, only solution to try.

Four times my friend had to take a video: you have to start by standing on the street on the nearest intersection, film all the street signs around you to prove your location, then he had to walk down the street, show the gate with the business name on it, the vehicles with the business name on them, open the front door with the business name on it, give them a tour of the working office and show them invoices and bank statements laid out on the desk with their logo etc on it. Three times they came back and said it wasn't enough to verify.

At the same time you can go on swapd and buy GBP verification for $500 and have it verified in an hour by someone who fakes the entire thing.

If we're sharing problems contributing to google maps: I tried submitting a correction to google maps for the first time a few months back. A cafe was listed in the wrong location by about 100m. Very confusingly putting it on the other side of the station it's in front of in a different building.

I submitted the correct location and it said the change required manual review. Then a few days later I got an email that the change has been accepted. But opening google maps it was still in the same wrong location, and it's still wrong now.

I'm surprised you tried so many times to do Google's job for them.

I tried to remove a not-anoymore-existing company I had a business profile before from Google Maps. I was close to giving up, it's such a complicated process that is fully intransparent.

Kudos for you for trying 4 times.

Did you add a website like https://www.tesla.com/findus?location=daegususeongsupercharg...? It's hard to reject an edit if you have confirmation from the owner.