Every time I nominate a pokestop I always check to see if there’s a DOT or anything there on the map indicating that there’s something there but here lately I have been getting a lot of duplicates and when I appeal them because I don’t see anything niantic says they can confirm that there is already a pokestop. What’s up with this?
Welcome to the forum!
Since you called it a dot on the map, I assume you are using iitc to check for Wayspots. While it is still the best tool we have, it only shows Ingress portals live where they were before May 23, not all Wayspots, and is not adding any new ones. Pokemon Go and Wayfarer are now part of Scopely, while Ingress is not.
The best way to check for duplicates is in the nomination map screen. This must be done while you are right at the location. It does not work remotely, and really not very far from the point of interest at all. It will show any Wayspots that are not Pokestops or gyms as exclamation points, as in this screen:
You can tap on the exclamation point for information about the Wayspot.