This is what I said several times before: Our photos are not only shown at the listing, where we posted them, but also at the city, county, … region and in your case @tony_b, the entire island. If reaching a prominent position at one of those pins, then they might been seen by many people who never found the place where you initially posted them.
Did you ever have a look at the pin for your home town or even “Barbados” just the country, without mentioning and specific listing, click on photos and then the “By Me” tab? You might be surprised how many of your photos, you’ll find at that level, Antony.
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I’ve done this numerous times @WilfriedB and love clicking on small towns and surprised to see many of my photos including some businesses’ photos included.
Not sure how many people look at these categories but I enjoy it and I assume we get views counted from these areas.
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Tony I think we some times forget that the majority of people who look at our reviews and photos are just regular folks(Tourists in your area) and not Google guides, and who are looking at POI’s to gather directions, recommendations, ideas, ratings, store hours, parking, pricing etc etc.
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Again, if the Google AI was picking the most informative photo, it would be B.
BUT HERE IS WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE.
Skipped the Aldi ( I love them when in Europe ) and taken a photo of a Chinese or Mexican Restaurant nearby. Places that sell cooked food do much better than anything else on average. And then in the cooked food category, Mexican or Chinese does better.
My top photo, a Mexican restaurant shows 1.6 million views in the photo, but doing a “takeout” reading, it has 5 million views. ( the photo was uploaded in Aug. 2023 and got about 1.5 million views in the 6 months before the change )
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2 things. First trying the copy quote thingy. Lol. Hopefully worked. I believe i figured out an answer!
My last guess and thought @WilfriedB @AdamGT
Is. There are actually two clear signs with the word aldi on one of the photos. Therefore that one is the featured photo. The other aldi sign is cut off by the poll. I think this is the answer. Guess we will till next week to find out. Hope my copy/paste worked as well.
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No, I’ve never done this before, and indeed it was a big surprise. There are so many I couldn’t count them, and indeed the photo I was speaking of is around #50 position under the country listing. So a large chunk of the 100,000+ views could’ve been from persons thousands of miles or kilometres away, just doing Google searches of our country.
But what is a Guide anyway? I didn’t know I was one until Google started congratulating me on little things I’d done, and then continued to prod and poke me to do more little things until I became addicted.
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I’ve mentioned it a few times now, my plan is to spill the beans later this week. Not long now 
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Thanks for clarifying @tony_b. I mentioned the living in a small place factor as some years ago I was involved in an Australia-wide project and for the sake of explanation, we used the activity in “a small place”, to model what would happen in other much bigger cities throughout Australia. It was much easier to do that modelling and in-depth analysis in the smaller place, almost like a controlled experiment.
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That is certainly true @WilfriedB and along similar lines, is mentioned in the cover post of each of the star media albums - star photos, star video and 360 spheres!
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I believe that we do @TerryPG
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Oh I most definitely agree with you on this @TerryPG
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You might well be right @Yaryman and it will be interesting to see in just a few days time how many others agree with you on this.
Congratulations on your star photo however I do not agree with your outlined strategy. We mustn’t forget what being a Local Guide is really all about and it certainly isn’t just about points and views. It’s more about sharing our knowledge and experiences about the places in our community so that we help others make better informed decisions about where to go, what to do and how to get there. Yes of course as I have always said, the views give us some indication on the impact that our media has and we can learn from each other what works best, but adding photos and videos of even the smallest of businesses such as local cafes, grocery and hardware stores is important in our role as a Local Guide.
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Yes I can see that your copy and paste worked @StevenBerlin. Just try to select the relevant part of the message that you wish to specifically reply to. You will see many good examples in this post.
Well I can work out which photo you are talking about Steven but for the benefit of this that might be casually reading through this discussion, please make your comment clearer by specifically mentioning “Photo A” and “Photo B”
Anyway, we will all know the answer very, very soon and oh so many will be surprised 
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Exactly @tony_b so it could well have been me from the land down under!
Well as I wrote only minutes ago, In my view it’s quite simple! A Local Guide is certainly not just about points and views. It’s more about sharing our knowledge and experiences about the places in our community so that we help others make better informed decisions about where to go, what to do and how to get there and when it comes to tourists, this includes being ambassadors for your country and promoting the cities in which we live in.
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I agree with you, and that’s why sometimes I deliberately attempt to get photos of places with zero or few photos displayed. But it is easy to forget and go after the points and views, as we can see that even the focus of this thread is “Which photo has the most views?”.
Nice discussion anyway, and we look forward to being delighted or disappointed when you make the big reveal this week.
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Google isn’t paying me enough to do all that.
They were paying me with millions of views before Feb 7th, 2024. ( millions of views worth nothing, that cost nothing )
After Feb. 7th they cut my view pay by 95%.
I cut my uploads by 95% to match the pay cut.
Everybody has their own personal reasons for the uploads, for me it was more of a game that I had mastered.
Before Feb. 2024, I uploaded quality pictures for views and to fill in map locations.
Now 99% of my uploads are to fill in map locations.
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Lucky you! So far, I found many of mine at geographic pins of all levels, but whenever I scrolled down under All, I never found any of those.
Considering the fact that your country is a very famous tourist attraction, I would say “large chunk of the 100,000+ view” is a huge understatement and rather “almost all of the 100,000+ …” would be more likely 
.
But again, this is all guessing …
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This is true. I usually see mine under the My Photos tab, but not under All, but staying on topic. I changed my vote to B since i believe and have my own reason why the two sign showing might be part of the algorithm. Therefore if a photo showed 3 different signs of said store, it would have a better chance to be featured.
Be interesting tho if Adam does a 180 and one of these photos had increased rez! Hehe. I joke. / waiting.
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Well done @StevenBerlin you’ve clearly mastered how to copy specific parts of a comment that you wish to reply to.
I see that you’ve changed your vote based on the importance that you feel that the AI places on the number of visible business naming signs. Interesting!
The votes are in and of course there are 3 possibilities. I’m now writing up the denouement. Not long now!
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I’m pleased to see that you agree with me @tony_b but of course I can understand that given the gamification in the Local Guides program, it can be easy to forget what the true purpose of being a Google Maps Local Guide is and go after the points and views. Yes the focus on this topic is “Which photo has the most views?” however its objectives are more about sharing and learning about which photos create the better impact and hence add more value to the places of interest and hence to Maps and Maps users. It’s about learning on how we can improve the quality of our photos to achieve these objectives.
I’ve too have enjoyed the discussion and am looking forward to presenting the denouement
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