Looks like what started as a one off looking at my maps data is becoming a series of blogs with as many insights that I can pull on how Maps is processing our LGs media contributions.
Following my previous data blasts:
AM I Still Popular? What My Million-View Places Look Like in 2026 and
What My Million-View Photos Say About the 2024 View Change
We managed to establish the impact of the views calculation change (2024) and Maps push for more video contributions and gallery freshness.
Several LGs responded with their data observations based on own tracking of recent uploads and how these are reflected in featured media and views.
These were however based on relatively small samplers and varied based on their LGs contribution habbits:
Some are more into detailed coverage of few locations, others cover large areas and share fronts details.
Some are totally moving into video, others are still mainly photo based…
So larger dig was required for improved insights - and now with AI it is much simpler (for some of us).
I decided to check every contribution I made in recent weeks (and I upload almost daily media to maps) and the goal I set was getting more than 1000 locations in statistics - as this would be a “proper” sample set.
I uploaded 2,210 photos and videos in four weeks which covered more than 1000 locations!
I checked each gallery at every single place to which I uploaded and reviewed:
How popular was the place (based on review number), Was my contribution featured (and in which position), what else is on that gallery.. so a DEEP dive.
Some results confirmed my (our) hunches. Others did not.
Here comes the data blast:
The list ended at 1,106 places across Tokyo, London, Amsterdam, Dublin, Bangkok, Margate and a long run of small towns in Dorset, Wiltshire and Hertfordshire (Yes, I travel quite a bit). Where I had uploaded to the same place on two different days, I merged them into one row.
6 out of 10 places featured me!
At 667 of the 1,106 places, at least one of my items sits in the first 20 of the gallery. Photos made it in 36% of the time and videos in 43%.
Most of that gap comes from where I upload them. At quiet places videos still had a small edge, but at busy places photos and videos did equally well. The other 439 places still show my uploads once you scroll past the top 20, or once views arrive, but they are not up front.
When an item is featured, it tends to be near the very top. Of those 667 places, 301 gave me first position and 488 put me in the top three. That is 73% of all featured places (I am surprised it is as high).
The busier the place, the harder it gets
This was the strongest pattern in the data. At places with fewer than 50 reviews, I was featured 82% of the time (wow). At places with more than 5,000 reviews it dropped to 9%. Every step up in popularity lowered my chances, which makes sense. A famous shopping street or a big attraction gets hundreds of new photos a week, and my one upload has to compete with all of them.
The same thing shows up on the map. Small-town places in Swindon, Devizes, Marlborough, Calne and Dorset featured me 80% to 93% of the time, while Tokyo, Dublin and Bangkok were the hardest. London sat between the two, since my list mixes quiet side streets with the busiest shopping areas in the country.
What the top 20 actually shows
I also sorted the 19,668 items in those galleries by what they show: the outside of the building, the inside, food and drink, a product or display, or something else such as people and street scenes. Food and drink is the biggest group at 27%, followed by exteriors at 24%, products and displays at 22% and interiors at 21%. I did this by eye from thumbnails, so a single place can be off by a couple of items. The totals and regional shares are more reliable than any one row.
The mix changes a lot with the place. London galleries are led by food at 44%, which fits a city of restaurant and cafe photos. Tokyo skews to products and displays because so many of my Tokyo places are stores. Dublin has almost no exteriors, only 11%, while small Wiltshire and Dorset towns lean towards shopfronts and streets.
There is one more fact that was interesting. In location’s media galleries where exteriors were the biggest category, I was featured at 73% of places.
Where interiors led it was 48%, and where food and drink led it was 54%.
This is logical as much of my activity is store front coverage and maybe also exterior-led galleries also tend to be at quieter places.
It is still a useful hint that a clear shot of the front of the building is rarely wasted.
Still, if you see the overall breakdown - Maps is trying to strike a good balance
between exterior, interior, products/food, others (menu/signs etc.) etc.
My habbits of capturing everything in my path means I frequently capture more small locations (Exterior-led)
Views generation are asymmetrical - not always where you expect
My contibutions in the period collected about 3.56 million views in total (high but not pre-2024 levels), but a small number of places did most of the work.
One place, Mitsukoshi Ginza in Tokyo, produced about 259,000 views on its own, which is 7% of everything. My top 10 places add up to 23% and the top 100 places, fewer than one in ten, give 64%.
The typical place tells a quieter story.
The median place has about 500 views, and 215 places (19%) show none yet, which is the “new” normal for uploads from the last few days.
Where an item is featured, the median place has 973 views.
Where nothing is in the top 20, the median is 34. T
he averages point the other way, at roughly 2,700 views for featured places against 4,000 for the rest, because a handful of enormous places with more than 5,000 reviews sit outside the top 20 and still collect views. So the two groups differ in two ways: the featured places are far more likely to have a solid, steady number, and the unfeatured group includes both my slowest places and (surprisingly) some of my biggest.
Does position matter, or only the place?
A fair question after all these numbers: is a first slot worth much more than a third, and could one item in third place at a very busy place beat first place at a quiet one? To check, I used the 689 places where I uploaded exactly one item. That lets me tie each view count to one item and one position without guessing. Together they hold about 1.59 million views.
The result surprised me. Items in first place hold 23% of the views, second place only 3.6%, third place 5.5% and positions 4 to 20 together 13%. The biggest slice, 54%, belongs to items that are not in the top 20 at all. Those items are only 40% of the total. But the slice is misleading.
Six unfeatured items, such as a Goyard photo with 110,000 views, hold 20% of all views between them. The typical unfeatured item has a median of 8 views, and 133 of 276 show nothing. So some outliers get seen through routes I am not measuring, perhaps a category tab, search or a wider carousel, but the normal case is silence.
My hunch is that few of these were featured for short time and replaced. So quick blast of views and unless picked again by chance, nothing in their future.
That would be very much in line with @MortenCopenhagen assumption that very quick feature order change is happening these days.
Position looks less important than being in the top 20 at all. The median item in first place has 856 views, in second 328, in third 663, and in positions 4 to 20 it is still 481. That is not a steep ladder. Views also do not rise with the size of the place the way I expected. First place at a quiet place (under 200 reviews) has a median of 856 views, while first place at a place with 1,000 or more reviews has 382. Third place at those busy places reaches a median of 850, but that is nine items, so I would not trust it. Read it as roughly the same as first place at a quiet spot, and nowhere near a hundred times more.
Two reasons could explain the flat picture:
Views on the profile counter keep building over weeks, and my items are only days or weeks old.
As suggested above, a busy gallery may rotate its top slots often, so an item that was first when I checked may already have moved.
A repeat check next week would tell me which it is - I will do my best to check it.
What I take from this (and what I do not)
If you want to help your uploads to show up in Gallery, pick the places that get fewer visitors, take a clear shot of the outside, and add a short video, and you stand a very good chance.
Still, I would not skip the busy places!
Those are where the big view numbers live, even if only a few of your items reach the front.
I read only the first 20 gallery items (using browser but considering the mobile version which I assume is where most of the views come from), so “not featured” means position 21 or lower, not missing.
Views were read at one process, and recent uploads show blank instead of zero.
I am not sure but I suspect gallery order may differ by account and device.
The content categories are my own reading of small thumbnails.
Popular places and small towns also differ in many ways besides size, so the review-count pattern shows correlation, not proof of cause.
The next step is to check the same places again in about a week (or slightly more). If the popular places push my items down further and the quiet ones hold, that will tell me how long a feature lasts.
Just remember: Data analysis is interesting but Contributing is what really makes a difference.
Sam
Tagging data hungry LGs that likely would love this post
@tony_b @TerryPG @MortenCopenhagen @Annaelisa @StevenBerlin @Kurt2day @PrasadVR @WilfriedB
