With all the change our world saw over the past year, people are relying more than ever on high-quality, updated information about the places around them.
People in your communities remain informed largely in part to Local Guides like you who contribute their local knowledge about more than 200 million places on Google Maps. In fact, since we launched the program, Local Guides have contributed more than 70% of the reviews, photos, and other types of user-generated content you see on Google Maps.
In 2020 alone, you have added more than 8 million places, from local businesses and services to parks and plazas, and updated business attributes on more than 17 million places, like if a restaurant offers takeout or is open for dine-in.
We’re also excited to share that the Local Guides community has reached a new milestone: 150 million Local Guides around the world.
In addition to these amazing achievements, we also wanted to share information about new features you’ll see soon on Google Maps. Read on to learn more about the latest updates.
Introducing an innovative way to add missing roads on Maps
As some Local Guides might already know, we’ve made it even easier for you to report road changes with a new, immersive desktop road editing tool. We’re happy to continue rolling this out to the greater community so everyone can try it.
When you see a road missing on maps.google.com, simply click on the side menu button, go to “Edit the map,” and select “Missing Road.” You can add missing roads by drawing lines, quickly rename roads, change road directionality, and realign (or delete) incorrect roads. You can even let us know if a road is closed with details like dates, reasons and directions. To make sure the suggestions and edits are accurate, our team will confirm these contributed road updates before publishing them.
Check out the video below to see how it works:
This feature is rolling out over the coming months in over 80 countries where people can already report road updates on Google Maps.
Share your latest experiences with photo updates on Maps
We know that all of you in the Local Guides community are always seeking new ways to help others around the globe. Today, we’re introducing a new way for you to help people stay up-to-date on the world around them.
We’ve started rolling out a new contribution content type in Google Maps called photo updates. With photo updates, people can quickly share changes or new information about a place by simply adding a few photos to Google Maps with a short text description. It’s the newest way to share and find information about the places around us, bringing an entirely new dimension, freshness, to Google Maps. Simply tap the “upload a photo update” button, select photos, share your thoughts, and post.
The difference from your standard Google Maps photo and a Photo Update is that photo updates don’t have ratings attached or a detailed review. It’s more of a quick update so you can quickly and easily contribute the most helpful information. You can post as many photos as you want and find photo updates that others have left in the Updates tab.
You can learn more about these new features on The Keyword. We’d love to hear what you think in the comments!
I’m really happy of being part of this!
