This post is all about the photos contributed to Google Maps by Local Guides from all over the world. More specifically, it’s about the views that these photos rack up. The post consists of a series of leaderboards showcasing the view counts of these photos. There’s a leaderboard for each Local Guide level and in this way you don’t have to be a “top gun” level 10 Local Guide with a mega million views to be featured!
Why are photo views important?
While as Local Guides we don’t get points for the views that our contributions generate, we all know that views are important as they give us a pretty good indication on how we are impacting on our communities at the Local Guide level. For example, they give us a good indication on how many people we have helped make a decision such as what place to visit or what meal to have.
So while we don’t get points for photo views, we certainly get an awesome feeling when we see that our photos are being viewed by lots of people and being visible across Google services, like Search, means that our photo view counts can increase significantly and you will see on the Leaderboards, how significant this can be.
Is this just a competition?
While there is an inherent competitive element within them, the Leaderboards are more than just about seeing who has the “best” photos or the most photo views. Far from it! They have been specifically designed to motivate us, help us to monitor our contributions and performance, and show us how to improve and make better contributions so that we achieve better results, and all in a fun and enjoyable way!
If you’re new here then you may not be aware that this post forms part of a series of Leaderboard posts each covering different aspects of the Maps contributions made by Local Guides. To see an index to these different leaderboard posts and all the posts associated with them, simply hit this link. Alternatively, you can scroll through The BIG List.
Readme - How to Read the Photo Views leaderboards (July, 2026)
Briefly, this is what you need to know about the leaderboards in this post. For more details see the leaderboard documentation and the Leaderboard System’s online context-sensitive help information.
The leaderboards in this post present details about the photo views of hundreds of participating Local Guides from all over the world. As well as an overall leaderboard ranking the top 100 Local Guides by photo views, you will see leaderboards for different Local Guide levels which provide you with direct comparisons of your photo views achievements with that of your peers.
There’s also Top 100 Leaderboards showcasing the top average views per media and average views per photo which give a good indication of the overall “quality” of all media and photos taken by each Local Guide. This is simply calculated by dividing the Local Guide’s total media (photo) views value by the number of publicly visible contributed media (photos). Of course the use of the term “quality” here refers to the attractiveness of the photos to the Google AI and the viewing public.
Where shown, [ ] around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this is the first time that the Local Guide has participated on the Top 100 Local Guides leaderboards.
Where shown, ( ) around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this Local Guide levelled up/down onto this leaderboard.
An asterisk (*) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Connect Moderator.
Double asterisks (**) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Googler.
Hovering over a Local Guide’s username will display the integration number that integrates that Local Guide’s details on the Leaderboards System and Connect; the umbilical chord if you will between the two disparate systems.
Selecting a Connect username will take you to either that Local Guide’s Connect Profile or to their HUB.
If a number is displayed in small gray circle following a username, that number indicate the number of times anyone has selected that username to visit the respective Local Guide’s Connect profile or HUB.
Local Guides suspended or who have left the Local Guides program are excluded from Leaderboards.
Local Guides who have hidden their Maps profile are excluded from the Photo Views Leaderboards and can use this link to update your profile visibility settings.
If you have changed (a) your Connect username, or (b) your Maps profile in some way (e.g. changed your username or profile picture), (c) your Maps profile status from public to hidden or vice versa then you may not appear on one or more of the leaderboards. If so then you must provide the details of the change in a comment on this post.
To provide a level playing field, Local Guides that should but don’t provide/update their video impact data might be excluded in photo views leaderboards and while they might make it onto the media views leaderboards, they will be shown with a [1] superscript following Connect username. To avoid being excluded from photo views leaderboards, Local Guides must use the Leaderboard System to update their video impact value found on mobile achievement badges.
A ? or the words “Not set” in a cell indicates that the respective value hasn’t been provided by or cannot be determined for the respective Local Guide.
Participating Local Guide must check the leaderboards for any errors or omissions and add the details in a comment on this post. Regarding omissions, please note point 13 above.
The data for the leaderboards in this post was read at 1055 on Tuesday, August 4, 2026 (UTC).
