This post is all about Local Guide photo contributions on Google Maps, and more specifically, about the views these photos rack up. It’s an update on the Photo Views post of 8 January, 2023 and consists of a series of leaderboards showcasing the view counts of Local Guides at different levels. There’s a leaderboard for each level and in this way you don’t have to be a “top gun” Level 10 Local Guide with a mega million views to participate! So, whether you’re an entry level Local Guide or from a small country, town or village, or a top level Local Guide from London, New York, Paris or New Delhi, you can join in and it’s simple to do! If you want to get on leaderboards, then use this link. If you want to know more then see this How-to post by @AZ_2021.
Why are photo views important?
While as Local Guides we don’t get points for the views that our photos generate, we all know that views are important as they give us an indication on how we are impacting on our communities at the Local Guide level. Our photo views give us a good indication on how many people we have helped make a decision such as about a place to visit or a meal to have. So while we don’t get points for views, we certainly get an awesome feeling when we see that our photos are being viewed by many people and being visible across Google services, like Search means that our photo counts can increase significantly and you will see here on the leaderboards how significant these photo counts can get.
Is this just a competition?
While there is an inherent competitive element within them, these leaderboard posts are more than just 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, all in a fun and enjoyable way! If this can be done then these leaderboards will have achieved their objective, their mission will be accomplished!
Briefly, this is what you need to know about the leaderboards in this post. For more details see the leaderboard documentation:
The leaderboards 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 lend themselves to better comparisons of your photo views achievement with your peers. There’s also a leaderboard, referred to as the Exclusive Billion Photo Views Club that highlights those heavy hitting, high views Local Guide achievers. Finally, there’s a leaderboard the shows the top 100 Local Guides ranked by the Average Views/Photo metric which gives a good indication of the overall quality of all photos taken by each Local Guide.
Where shown, around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this is the first time that the Local Guide has participated on the Top 100 leaderboards.
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.
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.
Selecting any of the Connect Usernames will take you to that Local Guide’s Connect Profile.
Local Guides included in the leaderboards must check their entries for any errors. If you should find any errors or omissions, please add the details in a comment on this post. Regarding omissions, please note point 5 above.
Top 100 Average Views/Photo Leaderboard - All participating Local Guides (February 2023)
In this leaderboard, the photo views achievement of participating Local Guides is shown in the order of average views per photo. The essential idea here is that the average views per photo gives a good overall single measure of the quality of all of a Local Guide’s photos contributed on Google Maps; the higher the average views per photo, the higher the overall quality of the contributed photos. While there can be problems with averages, the average views per photo is a nice simple way of looking at the overall quality of our Maps photo contributions.
While it’s easier to achieve higher average views per photo at lower Local Guide levels, it’s interesting from this leaderboard that some Local Guides show much better average views per photo than Local Guides at higher Local Guide levels! For example, I’m a Level 10 Local Guide yet there are many Local Guides at lower LG levels that are out performing me in terms of overall photo quality!
If we accept that the average views per photo gives a good overall measure of a Local Guide’s photo contributions on Google Maps, then one way to improve your overall photo performance is to have less but better quality photos: the more views you have for a smaller number of photos will result in a higher average views per photo and a good way to achieve this is to have less but better quality photos for each review.
And isn’t it fantastic to see another two level 10 Local Guides @MortenCopenhagen (Denmark) and @DshottDennis (New Zealand), joined by Level 9 Local Guide @TerryPG (Canada) fast approaching the entrance to that exclusive Billion Photo Views Cub!
And of course there’s @Mikeinthefalls (USA), a level 7 Local Guide already past the 0.5 BILLION photo views point and having a masterful 1 MILLION+ average views per photo.
Congratulations to everyone on the photo views leaderboards. We don’t get points for photo views but there is little doubt of the impact that each and everyone of us are having on our respective communities. Your contributions to local community are amazing and your achievements are very impressive!
You will also note that it’s full house on the Level 8 board so now it will get very interesting regarding getting onto this board from Level the 7 and falling off this board when a new Level 8 Local Guide joins or an existing Level 7 levels up. If you’d like to read more about this then see the Snakes & Ladders section of the documentation.
Please do remember to check the leaderboards for any errors or omissions. Should you find any then let me know in a comment here.
These Leaderboards get better and better, each month. Excellent work @AdamGT
You’ve truly raised the bar for all Local Guides.
Welcome to all the new participants
Wow! @MortenCopenhagen you’re almost there. Great to see that @DshottDennis and @TerryPG are also closing in on that magic 1 Billion Views! Great work & impressive numbers guys
I have FINALLY reached my long awaited goal of averaging 1 Million views per photo thanks for the kudos @AdamGT
If I can keep up my current pace, I might join that 1 Billion club around the end of the year
I would not have these statistics without these Leaderboards.
It’s great that you look forward to the leaderboards @MAHMOUDALWAN
Thanks for your appreciation @Mikeinthefalls . I raise the bar trying to keep up with the amazing contributions and outcomes of you Local Guides but it’s not so easy!
Talking about bars Mike, once again well done on your amazing average views per photo and I do wish that you achieve your end of year goal.
Thanks @Mo_TravelleerX for your continued support and appreciation.