This post is all about 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 6 May, 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 know more then see this How-to post by @AZ_2021. However, if you’re keen to jump on board, then use this link to register.
Why are photo views important?
We all know that as Local Guides we don’t get points for the views that our photos generate, however, 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! So if you haven’t as yet, join in!
Briefly, this is what you need to know about the leaderboards in this post. For more details see the leaderboard documentation:
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 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 that shows the top 100 Local Guides ranked by the Average Views/Photo which gives a good indication of the overall “quality” of all photos taken by each Local Guide. This is simply calculated by dividing the Local Guide’s total photo views value by the number of publicly visible contributed 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 Photo Views 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.
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.
If you’re a participating Local Guide you must check their the leaderboards for any errors or omissions and if you find any, then please add the details in a comment on this post. Regarding omissions, please note point 5 above.
Secondly, a BIG hearty congratulations to @abermans who took a seat in that very exclusive Billion Photo Views Club! Well done Sam and now we want to see you rattle some feathers in there while we all wait for @DshottDennis to join you. I have to tell you, it is really exciting watching you “guns” in that club and your amazing numbers!!! It certainly does show us the potential on our guiding paths ahead!
As you will have seen, the Movers & Shakers photo views leaderboard introduced in May has been moved out onto a new Leaderboard stream so that it will be together with the other points and photo views metrics based Movers & Shakers boards. Some more interesting enhancements of these boards are in the pipeline, so stay tuned.
As usual, please do check the leaderboards for any errors and omissions. Collectively, the now 5 different streams was a big update and as I’m only human, I do make mistakes.
It is a high honour to join your exclusive list of high photo view achievement this month.
It has taken 20 months of non stop effort to get here and likely would have taken years had I not learned from each and everyone here how to contribute to maps efficiently.
Well done @abermans on your very impressive contributions to Maps and your glowing achievement in just 20 months. Now that your in that pack see if you can catch up and overtake @Herve_Andrieu
ps: Sam, I was going to mention your fantastic achievement in my comment here but just ran out of time after posting all the leaderboards. If I only had time!!! However, I will do so after I catch up with myself.
Your top 100 site and monthly posts is clearly a key motivator to the mental effort some of us are putting to maps, as gamification and ranking are fun and healthy competition that contributes to everyone are a win-win situation (the only price is your late hours ).
While I definitely am game at playing the race to 2b, I think that you should consider a special monthly post on the local guide power house @Herve_Andrieu and his stats. He is in a league of his own and should be the gold standard to what local guide can dream to be.
@AdamGT I just made a curious observation that 20 of the Level 7 guides have higher Photo Views than I do at Level 8. This brings out the diversity of activity, where some persons with the best or most viewed photos are not doing the other types of activity to gain the points to move up another level.
Congratulations @abermans While it is nice to point up a standard bearer, I’m glad @AdamGT doesn’t measure us all against @Herve_Andrieu
Thanks to the Country Leaderboards, people like myself who operate in tiny countries can still excel in our limited environments without feeling like failures. But yes I still enjoy watching the big guys perform.
I’m always pleased hearing that the Top 100 leaderboard posts are having a motivational impact @abermans . My hope is that as well as the fun and friendly competitive side of the leaderboards, they also help Local Guides improve on the quality of their contributions in terms of the outcomes that they achieve and the impact that they have on their community. If this can be achieved then “mission accomplished” - it will be a great return on my late hours investment!
There can be little doubt that our @Herve_Andrieu is in a league of his own. He certainly shows us how far we can go. Just imagine the numbers we will see from him once he finally gets his new van on the road! My fear is that my leaderboards and all the tables that I use will not be capable of storing such large numbers, not to mention mind you the stress that this will cause on character limitations on the associated Connect posts
Yes this is an interesting fact of a number of the different leaderboards @tony_b and it just goes to show, and we so often see on the leaderboards, that for various metrics, any Local Guide can achieve better results than others at higher Local Guide levels. It just makes all this so much more interesting.
I’m with you all the way on this @tony_b . If I myself were to spend less time producing the leaderboards, I would have a much better chance to catch up to and even pass some of the leaders in the pack and even perhaps @Herve_Andrieu haha just kidding. But yes you are right, it’s all relative and this is precisely what the Country Leaderboards are about. They highlight the local heroes out there pounding the pavement and through their contributions, are achieving outstanding outcomes and impacting on their community no matter how big or small!
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