It’s my understanding that anytime one of your photos is “requested” from Google’s servers, your media gets a view. If it’s on a screen and can be seen, that’s a view.
This is why your video has been receiving more views than your #1 photo at Nik’s. It was being requested from the server 3x when a person would go to the photo landing page. Sidenote: I just noticed that Street View came along and added their photo, making it the Latest photo added - curious if this will effect your video views?
@MortenCopenhagen Yes, I agree… The move to push videos into the #2 spot will def increase video views when compared to what videos were receiving prior
My only real complaint with that move is they are “rushing” into it. Cart before the horse. Maps hardly supports 720p so even videos with very little motion are grainy after uploading. However, it seems that the AI is forcing videos into that spot, so the videos are random and usually of some family’s table and recorded for a social media site, rarely are they shot by a guide that is attempting to feature the business in a professional manner.
If Google wanted to do it right, they’d give Maps greater resolution and have a huge initiative to encourage Local Guides to create quality videos for POIs. If I were a business owner, I’d be irritated that some of these… Most of these videos, were being Featured as the second photo of my establishment.
I think perhaps you’re generally correct @Mikeinthefalls but I do have one 4-month-old video that is the #1 featured photo for a fast food restaurant store front.
@Rednewt74 Very interesting “note re points: If you upload a great video of food you get 7 points, but you can’t name the dish. With a photo and dish name you get 8 points”. I guess the reason I don’t find that annoying is that my contributions haven’t been so heavily focused on food, so the opportunity to get 5+3 points hasn’t been my everyday reality. I’ve seen it and benefitted sometimes, but I wasn’t depending on it for an advantage.
@abermans@Mikeinthefalls I’m beginning to see some of this now when I do investigations of older photos which haven’t performed well. Turns out that the owner has a long list of preferred photos uploaded, and mine either got pushed to the bottom or in some cases actually deleted as I can no longer find it.
@Rednewt74 I just updated my October spreadsheet to Day 14 (two weeks). My best performing video increased by 9,554 views or 4,777 per week, while the next best is less than a quarter of that number. My best performing photo increased by 23,702 views or 11,851 per week. There are four photos in that range. My #1 video is now #19 in my overall Contributions list.
For the last month or so I haven’t been keeping my spreadsheets up to date. Not sure what my next star photo will be. My top contender got knocked out of #1 spot at the POI. All my others have a really long way to go.
My star video is now #9 in my gallery and is approaching 590,000 views. My #2 video just hit 300,000 views. But of course those are the exceptions.
My av views per video is about 12,000 which I’m very happy with.
While featured photos can be replaced and “pushed” down in display order, I don’t think any of the photos were taken off (at least I never noticed such case).
I have no problem with owner replacing featured photo for own preference. It is his business and if he feels he can promote it better with other photos or videos, it is fine by me.
I will start to push more videos from now on if this is what the algorithm needs but must admit it is in many cases space and bandwidth waste.
