Iām not completely sure I understand your question. I think Google is asking these questions to help decide which photos to feature (show on the frontpage) for each place. I believe they also use some AI to evaluate the quality of each picture so it is not only feed back from local guides that decide which pictures to feature.
There is another post about what featured pictures mean. You might want to read that as well:
@SebaasC Maps shows us two photos to vote us which is better. I think they take decision based on the votes along with their AI as mentioned by @MortenCopenhagen .
Lol @MortenCopenhagen Iāve never seen my photos in that kind of question! You must be super lucky!
But yeah, I would guess that thereās some sort of reasoning behind the two choices. I canāt imagine it to be purely random. I would say that the AI has some ambiguity in the quality of the two options and needs some human guidance as to which is the better choice.
And like everyone else commenting here, I also abstain when both choices are pretty bad.
Sometimes I find my pics too, as @MortenCopenhagen specially in the small business and I choose them, but if the other option is better, I discard mine and choose the other.
But I find many selfies or pics of another places that are not related too in this kind of questions. I donāt know if the IA is working properly or it is just like this.
As I said in a previous comment I think that we have there an improvement opportunity.
@SebaasC perhaps you should submit an Idea to Idea Exchange that they should add a button āBoth pics are unfitā or something of that nature. I would definitely vote for that, as I have also faced occasions where that was needed.
Just skipping without making a choice could be interpreted (by AI or Googlers) as āboth are equally good at representing the POIā
I have to add that sometimes, because of the small size of the photos, it makes them useless and makes a selection extremely difficult. It would be good if we could click or select any of the two photos and enlarge it to full screen to better view it and then make a more informed decision about which is best!
Yes @JanVanHaver maybe it is a very good idea to submit this issue in the board Idea Exchange. As I see many other Local Guides are facing the same doubt.