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 3 February, 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 that 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.
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.
Top 100 Average Views/Photo Leaderboard - All participating Local Guides (March 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.
On the fun and friendly competitive side of the photo views leaderboards, there’s some excitement at the entrance door of the Exclusive Billion Photo Views Club with @MortenCopenhagen, @TerryPG and @DshottDennis inching closer and closer to get in. When I first looked at the data here I wondered what was going on and who was going to get in first. Why do I say this? Well of these three Local Guides Terry has made the biggest jump in views in the past month, jumping from 860+ photo views in February to 961+ in March; a staggering jump of 101+ million views compared to Morten’s increase of 32 million and Dennis’ increase of 18 million over the same period. I guess we’ll have to wait another month or two to find the answer to who gets into the Exclusive Billion Photo Views Club!
Thanks for letting me know @TiffanyStockstill …it’s a warning to everyone to check the data before selecting submit and then check it again immediately after submitting and correct and errors if any!.
Thanks for your appreciation @Raggafreak and once again welcome. You’ll find the answer to your question in the System’s online context sensitive help information. Look in the system features and benefits area.
Unless the rules for participating have changed, all profiles are to remain public. How can we see and learn from your profiles if they are not shared with us?
@Mikeinthefalls I hope that @TerryPG joins the Billion Views Club and even more so, as a level 9 Local Guide.
I had hoped to get this month’s gif puzzle happening a couple of days ago but errors in the leaderboards have been seriously stealing my time.
Thank you for alerting @MajidMadadi , @ZeZe and @ttomu2 regarding the visibility of their profiles. They and all participating Local Guides must be aware of the Terms & Conditions of participating which clearly states that for full transparency, participants agree to ensure that their Maps profile is at all times publicly visible.
