Points with Trailhead category not showing up in maps anymore. Is this an error or should I be changing my strategy?

[Jody Benedict]

I have spent a lot of time mapping trails and trailheads in a local wildlife refuge and in my area in general. There is a category for trailhead. They used to show up on maps if I searched for the trail, but now they don't. If I've mapped a trail as a line feature, you can see it but you can't search for it, it's like it doesn't exist. If I've put in a trailhead but didn't map the trail because I haven't had time to get a kml file for reference you can't see it, you can't search for it. It's not there. 

Is the trailhead category being phased out? Should I just use "Point of Interest" for all of these instead, adding trailhead and hiking area as secondary categories? 

You could use parking lot in some cases but there are actually quite a few trails around without parking areas right at the start of the trail. It would be really nice for hikers to be able to find trails in google places and for me to be able to reference them. I was trying to make a flyer for the wildlife refuge to hand out with short links and QR codes to the trailheads on maps when I realized they were gone. 

Sorry if I sound frustrated. I just feel like a whole lot of work that I've done has been pointless. 

I guess I'm asking of this is an error that will be fixed at some point or if I should begin changing the categories on all my trailheads to something else. Or maybe I just thought this was working all along and it never was. 

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions you might have. 

 

[Gela]

Thanks for all your hard work so far. Believe me, we all appreciate accurate maps, and your effort helps!

I'd be very interested in seeing some of these trailhead edits you speak of. Can you please post the links to a few of them here to see?

Thanks!

[Jody Benedict]

Here are a few. It's weird, they don't seem to be showing up when I search in Map Maker by their names, browsing for their category works ok. 

The trailheads don't seem to exist in google maps. 

Esker Brook Trail: http://goo.gl/R69Yq
South Spring Pool Trail: http://goo.gl/cSa1c

Seneca Trail: http://goo.gl/ThdI4

Malone's Creekside Trail: http://goo.gl/ZjNsg

Marten's Tract Trail: http://goo.gl/mk41W

Helmer's Marsh Trail: http://goo.gl/lxOdQ

Turtle Pond Trail: http://goo.gl/xCIhn

I was trying to make something for the Montezuma visitors center so people could quickly access the locations on their phones. I was hoping to point to the trailheads on places. I swear they were showing up there before but I might be crazy. 

Flyer >> http://goo.gl/M5zP2

They were definitely showing up on maps before. 

[Jody Benedict]

Ok. So now trailhead seems to have disappeared as a primary category but hiking area seems to be a primary category now. Would it be better to switch to hiking area or use a generic POI? 

[Dendros]

That's new... I use that to show where trailhead are for the trails locally here to.. not good.

[Moid]

Hi All,

@Jody - We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. I agree with you on the importance and relevance of trailheads as a category.

I request you to add this concern on this Issue Tracker link. 

Thanks,

Moid

[Dendros]

Hi Moid.

 The spreadsheet seems to be uneditable.  By design?

Cheers!
-Dendros

[rjhintz]

Yup.

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Rich

On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 4:42:58 AM UTC-7, blissfulight wrote:

The spreadsheet belongs to Rich.  People were unintentionally messing with it, and Google wasn't doing anything with it anyway, so Rich turned it back to read-only.  

[rjhintz]

You're joking, right?
--

Rich

On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 4:42:02 AM UTC-7, blissfulight wrote:

Why are we filing issues for specific categories?  Shouldn't this category either be reinstated or a deeper examination of the whole problem with categories undertaken?  It isn't just Trailhead, it's that important categories (Fire Station, Fire Department, etc.) come and go, seemingly without cause or reason.  There's no way to track them or know what happened to them until you go looking for them, and they've gone missing.  There's typos in individual categories, as well, which isn't something I would expect that Google would slouch on.