Welcome to Local Guides Connect!
Connect is a forum for the global community of Local Guides on Google Maps. It’s a space to get to know other Local Guides, ask questions, exchange Google Maps tips and tricks, celebrate achievements, and organize meet-ups.
These guidelines will help you understand how to engage with the Connect community and what to expect. You will also find links to key topics that explain more about the forum. Your participation and content here are subject to these guidelines and the Local Guides program rules.
Engagement guidelines
Be friendly and respectful.
- We’re a diverse community with various backgrounds, languages, identities, and beliefs. Please be respectful and kind to each other. We won’t allow threats, harassment, rude and indecent remarks, hate speech, or any form of discrimination. Such behavior may lead to removal from Connect and the Local Guides program, sometimes without prior notification.
- You may disagree with others from time to time, and that’s fine! Just make sure to share your opinions in a friendly way, without being hostile. We won’t allow name-calling, bullying, or deliberate attempts to offend or provoke others.
- Keep feedback constructive and on topic. If you want to share your thoughts about Connect, the Local Guides program, or your experience as a Local Guide, please do! You can start a new topic or join an existing conversation. We can’t respond individually to every topic, but we make a note of feedback shared in the community. If you have suggestions about the Connect forum specifically, please submit them via the form here. For suggestions related to Google Maps, please follow these steps to send feedback directly in the app.
- Respect the rights of others. You are responsible for what you post in this community. Nothing you share should violate the rights of others or applicable laws.
Help us keep Connect helpful.
- Search first. Someone might have already asked the question or shared the feedback you want to post. Before creating a new topic, take a moment to search for existing threads you can potentially comment on. Here are some tips on how to search on Connect.
- Stay on topic. There are four categories on Connect where you can share your Local Guide stories. Make sure to follow the guidelines for each category as we will remove off-topic content. When joining an existing conversation, try to stay on topic and not take a thread in a completely new direction. Additionally, Google Moderators and Connect Moderators may merge posts with similar subject matter together or to existing threads to keep Connect organized and conversations in one place.
- Keep content original. Avoid posting text and images that are directly taken from the internet or another member without permission. Sharing your own thoughts and photos is way more valuable. We won’t allow copyright violations and may remove content that doesn’t authentically reflect your experience. We may also review, and potentially remove, content that seems to lack a distinct human voice and only provides overly generic information, without added value from the author’s perspective and experience. If you use tools to enhance your content and create imagery, please add a disclaimer to your post and make sure your post remains personalized before publishing it. Here are some tips on how to contribute your own great content that follows our original content guidelines.
- Mark helpful answers. If someone has answered your questions or helped you resolve an issue, mark their response as a solution. This is a great way to say ‘thank you’ and help others who might have the same question discover the answer easily.
- Don’t post spam. Spam includes promotional materials, excessive self-promotion, ads, and recurring off-topic content. If you see a post that looks like spam, please flag it. Our Google Moderators will review it and take appropriate action. If your content got marked as spam, find what might be the reason here.
Sensitive information
Connect is a public space, so please protect your own privacy and that of other Local Guides. Do not post sensitive information (including in screenshots), such as names, physical addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, links to other Local Guides’ Maps profiles, and more. If you require personal details for the purposes of organizing a meet-up, include a disclaimer in the meet-up description and handle such information with care.
Our Google Moderators will remove any personal information they find, but if you discover any such information while navigating the forum, please flag it.
Flagging content
We aim to keep Connect a safe space for everyone. If you come across inappropriate or abusive content, spam, sensitive information, or off-topic content, please flag it. Our Google Moderators will review it and take the necessary action.
Getting featured
We regularly feature Local Guides who are making a difference in the community. There are recurring series we publish on Connect regularly, such as Accessibility Champion, Meet-up Champion, and more. The best way to be featured is for you to tell us your stories right here on Connect. The Googler team is always looking for interesting Local Guides, and we typically find them through Connect.
Getting support
We rely on our experienced members and our amazing Connect Moderators to share their knowledge about Connect, the Local Guides program, and Maps and help with most community questions.
If a topic requires attention due to its sensitivity or severity, please tag a Google Moderator. Avoid tagging members with the title “Googler” or “Google Administrator” as they don’t monitor Connect and won’t be able to respond.
Please note that we cannot support technical questions about Google Maps. The best place for those is the Google Maps Help Community. Also please make sure you leverage the Feedback options directly in Google Maps to report any technical issue or bug you come across while contributing!
For even more information, be sure to check out the Community guidelines section which is where we share all Googler-created tutorials.
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