It’s World Gratitude Day, and we’re grateful for everyone who adds roads on Google Maps, helping millions of people worldwide navigate to their destination.
This year, Connect Moderator and Guiding Star @SholaIB started the unique TRAC campaign. His goal was to map 3,000 roads in six months with the help of the community. But the initiative quickly gained momentum; now, six months later, the 50 passionate TRAC contributors have added over 50,000 new roads in 118 countries on Google Maps. What an amazing achievement!
We recently caught up with Shola to learn more about his campaign, its best moments and most important lessons. Here’s what he shared.
How did you come up with the idea of TRAC?
There is so much said among Local Guides (on Connect and Google Maps) about contributions such as reviews, photos, edits, accessibility features, and so on. But very little is said about roads.
Many Local Guides have the number 0 next to ‘Roads added’ on their profiles. @JanVanHaver wrote a post about that, and it sparked my interest. I checked Maps and realized the need for adding roads. No wonder I haven’t been able to travel easily; the north of Nigeria needed mapping. Countries in South America and other places also needed to have lots of roads drawn.
As soon as I realized that, I started adding roads. I started in April 2021 and my first approved addition happened on April 25th. By December 2022, I had added 1000 roads, and by the end of January 2023 — 2000 roads.
I was searching on Maps for places to add more roads when the inspiration came to me: as a Community Builder, why not motivate other Local Guides to help in this mission? That’s how TRAC (Thousand Roads Added Campaign) was born on March 23rd, 2023.
What were the proudest moments for TRAC?
Our proudest moments were setting bigger targets and hitting them. We started with a goal of 3,000 roads, then 10,000, and finally 50,000.
What do you think is the biggest value of this campaign for you, the participants, and the community?
The biggest value isn’t the 50,000 roads, although they’re part and parcel of it. The biggest value is teamwork and creating awareness of roads. TRAC made lots of Local Guides think about and even add roads. Giving people a means of navigation to their homes or a route to the hospital in times of emergency is a great value.
Did you as the creator face any challenges in carrying out your initiative?
Yes! The main challenge I faced was motivating others.
In the beginning, the response was slow, and the people who did sign up didn’t add any roads. Out of the 85 registrations, 50 actively contributed, but even a few of them got demotivated as this is a volunteer campaign with no promise of swag, a badge, or recognition.
However, the interactions and fun in our group helped to overcome that. As the host, I also reached out privately to participants to motivate them and make sure we kept moving towards our goal.
What are some of the most important things you learned through TRAC?
I learned that:
- With community effort, one can achieve even the most difficult task in a good time frame.
- Communication and motivation are two very important factors for a community when it comes to achieving goals.
- As the host, I had to delegate some roles and involve other participants. We had a co-host, someone who took care of the statistics, and so on.
I also learned a few things about adding roads on Maps:
- Short roads connected to existing roads get approved faster than long new roads.
- The approval rate fluctuates: it could be high today and low tomorrow; just keep adding.
- There is a limit to the number of roads you can add in 24 hours, especially on a computer.
- A road edit may stay pending for 90 days, after which it’s rejected. I hope the Google Maps team can improve this.
- We discovered new countries that were open to adding roads in the last few months, such as Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea-Bissau. Legitimate edits in such regions are faster.
Are you planning any future initiatives?
I have plans to make TRAC an annual event. We have other ideas, too, which we hopefully can share on Connect when we are ready. We are already a team and we will stay together as a team to improve Maps.
Anything else you’d like to share?
We have a Top 10 of TRAC contributors. @Lukas_1 has the highest number of roads added — over 14,000! A real record.
We also have contributors who started from zero and have added hundreds and even thousands of roads in about six months.
Thank you, Shola and everyone who has been a part of TRAC for the valuable contributions on Google Maps and to local communities around the world! To learn more about some of the participants and their success stories, read Shola’s posts here, here, and here.
Local Guides, have you added a road on Google Maps before? Let us know below.
thank you so much for a wonderful inspirational post. And many congratulations to 
