How I became a Google Maps Local Guide- A Brief History

Google Maps contribution stories
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After submitting my data for the different leaderboards I began thinking about when and how I first became a Google local guide.

The first edit I ever submitted was on October 2nd, 2016 for my home address. Our town, Brattleboro, VT and Guilford, VT share the 05301 zip code. Whenever you searched for a Brattleboro address it came up as Guilford, VT. The email acknowledgement mentioned the idea of becoming a Local Guide and I I joined the next day. By the end of the year I had added a whopping 14 photos, had over 4,220 views and made Guide level 3…

My first “star photo” was 50 views of my son playing bass at a local venue. My first photo to hit 1,000 views was of a “Lettuce” concert at Stratton ski resort (it is currently at 15,658 views). I still remember being so surprised and thinking, “How cool is this!”, when I got that notification.

I became a local guide by chance, but began adding lots of photos for completely selfish reasons. In 2017 Google was changing the amount of free storage that was available in Google Drive and was offering ways to extend your current amount of storage. One of them was by reaching a certain level as a local guide. So I looked on Maps for places in my town that needed photos and went at it. Looking back at my early photos I find the quality sadly lacking, but it was the best that my camera/ phone could do at the time.

Over the years I have kept an eye on my “star” photos (before I even knew that was a real thing), and I have often been puzzled about the popularity of certain photos. My “Lettuce” photo hit 5,000 views in a month. I get that- a rock show at a major ski area, sure. But over the course of 2017 I had photos of an RV Dealer that just took off. I think they are really boring (I’m not into RV’s); I just had gotten in the habit of taking photos of almost every place I went. One of them is now at 462,663 views.

A couple of months ago I started wondering how my Map photo views compared to other local guides. I found the leaderboards and was blown away to find that I may be able to get into some of them.

I am going to do another post on what I have already learned from being involved with this project.

Thanks to @AdamGT and everyone else for the effort you put into this.

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Celebrating 2 Years of being active in the Connect Forum and the Top100 Leaderboards
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Very interesting history @Rednewt74

I suspect a lot of us started slowly and became Local Guides quite by accident.

The Google offer of extra storage based on your Local Guide level was unknown to me, but I guess I’ve never been dangerously near my storage limit.

The puzzle over the popularity of various photos has been referred to by @AdamGT . I’ve been to great effort to get certain photos and then they received low view count. Other casual photos which I didn’t feel good about, somehow garnered thousands of views in a very short period of time. We just never know what the algorithm might select as a featured photo or a cover photo, or what the viewing public might find appealing.

You might also like to take a look at this Photography Series of 19 helpful posts by @MortenCopenhagen

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@MortenCopenhagen ,

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I have seen several mentions of your photo series and intend to go completely through it. I too agree that what makes a photo take off is a mystery. As I go through looking at other’s star photos, clearly a good storefront or welcoming wide interior shot do the best. I also keep thinking about the effect of location. As I said, I live in a small town. I don’t actually travel that much, so when I do I take lots of photos to add to Maps.

My favorite “meteor” is an interior photo I took 4/24/2018 of Amavida Coffee Roasters, a tiny shop in Seaside, Fl (officially Santa Rosa Beach). Only 100 days later it hit 200,000 views. I was stunned. It is still my 8th most viewed photo. with over 550,000 views.

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@Rednewt74 - Very interesting and exhaustive story. Keep up the tempo.

Cheers.

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I like your descriptions @Rednewt74

I remember in the beginning when I told to my friends that I had 500,000 views with my photos, they were really surprised, but now the numbers are increasing every day nonstop and it seems all normal :smile:
Thanks for sharing the post.

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@DENIT33 ,

Thank you for sharing some of your background. Most of the time when I try to explain to someone what I do as a local guide they look mystified and their eyes glaze over. It’s so nice that here on the Forum everyone gets it. :grin:

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Love this story @Rednewt74 !

It was so fun to hear how you started and grew as a Guide. :blue_heart: :green_heart:

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