I did not apply neither, but there was an invitation and I believe, we needed to agree to. Much later the same for the Connect forum. Just searching my old mails and found on December 22, 2016:
“Welcome to Local Guides
Local Guides is a Google program that rewards you for sharing your world on Google Maps. Help others find the best places in town and unlock exclusive benefits along the way. …
You received this email to confirm your registration for the Local Guides program.”
My understanding, you don’t have to be a local Guide to post photos or to write reviews and just verified with the account of my wife.
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Tony, this photo was posted on Oct, 7 and I saw 70 views the same day. On Oct 8, I noticed it was on position out of 2,535 and continued to increase daily in average by 354. Exactly one month later, Nov 7, I saw the last increase until today. On Nov 10 it was on position 329 of 2,549.
The first case with views within 24 hours was this uploaded on July 13. It still increases every 3 or 4 days, due to the 1% rule with 7,944 views as of this morning.
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Like you @tony_b I and I would say most simply started off adding a review here and there ad then adding photos. Subsequently, and as you mention, no doubt after some recognizable activity as a Maps user, I received an invitation to become a Local Guide. By the way, @WilfriedB is absolutely correct. You don’t have to be a Local Guide to add reviews and or photos to Maps.
You are most likely right about the tourist activity in your country but as I have mentioned before this may be an opportunity that you can exploit.
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Thanks for your responses @WilfriedB and @AdamGT. Yes I use a bit of strategy at times to exploit the local situation. I often check what has been previously posted before deciding how much effort to expend on a POI.
Below is an interesting situation I encountered recently following an upload I did a year ago.
- A POI had only 3 old photos which I didn’t think accurately reflected the place.
- After a few visits, I finally got the opportunity a year ago to add a “better” photo of the location. It is currently at 122,000 views.
- Two months ago I was going there again and randomly decided to open Google Maps during my journey. I was surprised to see three new photos uploaded by a foreign-sounding name.
- I examined the person’s profile and found it appeared to be someone on a world tour. I could see evidence of the hotel they stayed at in my country and the other places they visited, and every few days photos were posted from different countries as they continued their international journey.
- The POI now has 14 photos in 5 years. I hadn’t seen the single 5-year-old photo previously, so perhaps it had been hidden, but the others were three years old. Only two other persons (one confirmed as local) have uploaded photos since that tourist.
Good morning Tony,
did you see that on the desktop? If so, the desktop does not show the date of the upload, but when the photo was actually taken according to its EXIF data, which btw. may or may not be correct. So, it could be posted recently, even though it shows an older date.
@tony_b @AdamGT
No, Wilfried. The desktop is not useful for this type of analysis. I usually make these observations on my phone while driving (or preferably while the vehicle is parked). This is at the bottom of the photo where that specific one now says “5 years ago”. The original photos I was familiar with now say “3 years ago”, while the one I posted at that time now says “1 year ago”. The additional photos from the tourist now say “3 months ago”.
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OK, possibly hidden for a long time and restored, but five years sounds odd …
BTW, off topic:
I just received a notification in the message area (the bell) of the browser, and a little later via email, because of the reply to my post without being @ tagged.
FYI @TerryPG @AdamGT
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Very good. Just curious, are you getting notified via the bell or somewhere else in your browser?
I meant the bell, Tony … and meanwhile also via email
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@AdamGT @WilfriedB Further to the above discussion, I recently received an email celebrating my 9 years as a Local Guide. I always thought I started in 2019 which is the date of my oldest uploaded photo. On investigating, I discovered the first email I received was in November 2015 titled “There’s a new Local Guide in town: You”. A few months later in March 2016, there was another email prodding me to do a little more to reach Level 2, but the congratulatory email came in December 2018, almost three years later. From there, Level 2 to Level 6 happened within a few weeks to early 2019, and as they say, the rest is history.
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Congratulations on your 9 years @tony_b if November 2015 is your actual start date then we should update this on the T100 
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Okay. I will do that, Adam. But for a person like me who watches statistics, this means that I’m adding approximately 1200 no-photo days to my history and drastically reducing my Average Views per Day. Filling the info on my Excel tracking sheet immediately showed a drop from 10,000 to just under 7,000 Average Views per Day.
The date I’d been using is from the oldest photo on my profile. Prior to that, it seems like I was focused on Edits, adding Places, and doing a few Reviews.
PS: My spreadsheet tracks views per media as seen on Google Maps, rather than the separate views per photo and views per video.
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Do it and test the outcome @tony_b you can always revert.
Congrats on 9 years Tony… WOW
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Just saw this. Congratulations!
Thank you @TerryPG and @Rednewt74. It was a surprise to me too, as I only ever counted from the date of the oldest photo on my profile. Discovering that I was an almost dormant “member” in Google’s eyes for a few years before was quite unexpected.
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@tony_b I am agreeing with you on Average photo views going down, Part of the reason old photos are not increasing and new photos are not increasing like they used to, Brings me to this point.
Going thru my spreadsheets I came across an exercise I started in Nov./23 and ended the week of Feb7th when the crash happens. I was looking for some info and came across a list of my star performers for the week. I cut and paste the #s below.
| 12/18/23 | 12/24/23 | 1/1/24 | 1/8/24 | 1/15/24 | 1/22/24 | 1/29/24 | 2/5/24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tavola 63K | Real Can 61K | A. Tavola 87K | A. Tavola 65K | A Tavola 61K | A Tavola 46K | A Tavola 62K | A Tavola 70K |
I am beginning to think these numbers were exaggerated, they were taken from POIs that were located in towns of just under 100,000. I got to thinking did 70k people really look at the this Poi in a week. I don’t know.
Point 2… has anyone’s Star photo had any increases since Feb 7th mine has had 2 increases since then both the 1% rule. Tony @Rednewt74 @WilfriedB and @MortenCopenhagen ( I know you had a very productive star photo)
And of course anyone else that wants to join in?
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Terry,
Thank you for tagging me. @tony_b, I know you are following this as well.
On Points One & Two:
Regarding my star photo:
- When I joined connect in April 2023 my star photo had 2,270,998 views
- On about 2023-06-23 it was replaced by another photo as the 1st photo in the Maps gallery and you have to go way down into the gallery to find it
Here is a table showing showing my star views from 2023-04-20 to 2024-03-16
| Date | Star photo | Delta | delta/day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-04-20 | 2,270,998 | n/a | |
| 2024-01-31 | 3,017,444 | 746,446 | 2,610 |
| 2024-03-02 | 2,971,422 | -46,022 | -1,485 |
| 2024-03-16 | 3,017,748 | 46,326 | 3,309 |
I have had no increase in star photo views since March 16.
Regarding exaggerated counting pre-Glitch
I have believed that the views were overstated for a long time. Recently I said
Up until today I have been fine with the new counting system. I have some thoughts about the issue that old counting vs new counting creates, but I am waiting until the October movers and shakers board is posted before commenting on that.
I just did my monthly update and I found this:
| Category | 2024-10-30 | 2024-11-30 | Delta views | Delta % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Star video views | 1,152,979 | 1,072,126 | -80,853 | -7.01% |
Despite this decrease in my star video views, my video impact is up 628,301 views (5.62%).
My photo impact is only up 1.32%, which probably is a reflection of me posting more videos recently than photos.
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Good morning 
everybody 
@TerryPG @tony_b @Rednewt74
No movement since Feb 7! Due to the history of that photo, I don’t expect to see any change soon: It is, what we recently called “semi hidden”, i.e. not visible at the place pin, literally got thousands of views daily during summer, suddenly less than ten daily, on Feb 7 reduced to a value, it already had by the end of December 2023 and since has the same 1,982,879. Last month’s takeout shows 2,002,847 i.e. less than 1 % increase.
The second an third do see an increase every 3 or 4 weeks.
Since I get the daily deltas for all photos since May, I recently decided to make screenshot of the thumbnails for the upper 32 and don’t see much movements comparing visually.
This is the one from today:
The same only for the photos posted after February 2024:
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Didn’t realize there had been new posts to this thread.
I hadn’t gotten any notifications since the update.
Just wondering, has anybody noticed the total views updates are now only happening if you increase your total views by 1%.
Not positive that’s the case, but the total views are now not updating quite as regularly.
Also wondering, can you reply to thread without replying to specific person?
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