@tony_b,
I tried doing a takeout once but found the whole process confusing. Also I don’t see the point in comparing the numbers for the takeout to the public numbers.
Like you I don’t have a ton of photos and videos so finding my star and keeping track of them hasn’t been a problem. I don’t ever expect my star photo to get any additional views given its place in the gallery at the poi.
The next 1% jump of my star video will move to the #5 position in my media. Just have to wait patiently. 
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Thanks for tagging me @tony_b. Yes I’m interested in this topic and even discussed it off Connect with a group of T100 Leaderboard System participants including @WilfriedB. It’s a complex process but I was thinking of automating it and making it easier. I have other priorities at the moment so for now it sits as a menu item on the Leaderboard System’s Pro features list.
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Good morning @tony_b 
I don’t know, what Google’s intention was @tony_b, but my approach was, by writing a little Python script to collect the information in all those JSON files and combine it into a single spreadsheet for a better overview. If you have Python installed on your PC, I can try to create a version of that script, which doesn’t need my database.
CC @AdamGT @Rednewt74 @JustJake
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Thanks @WilfriedB. We discussed this some time ago and given the interest by others let’s continue that discussion and see if we can progress this a little further. However, given that the Leaderboard System stores user data, my preference is to do this without needing a user to use a Python script. Chat soon.
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I absolutely agree with that @AdamGT
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I agree @Rednewt74, but not only that. It demands a very stable Internet connection and sufficient storage space to hold twice all the photos you ever uploaded (I don’t know, if it includes videos too). There is no way to select only a part and you always need to download all image files, even if you are only interested in the much smaller JSON files.
However, requesting the takeout at least once, was very essential for me to
- Keep track and understand which photos I did post in the past and when
- Identify duplicate and redundant photos, I was not aware of before.
Doing so once, was very interesting, I learned:
- Even though, I don’t see any change for the number of views under My Contributions,
- apparently, Google uses multiples different to count the views. Only one third of the photos show higher numbers under My Contributions (and the stay higher during months!), while the rest has consistently more views according to the takeouts.
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Thanks for your response @WilfriedB. I note your occassional reference to Python. So, are we saying this is no use to me without additional software?
I don’t know @tony_b. This is my solution, but I there might be simpler way besides looking into each file manually, as you already did.
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Hello @AtifGulzar, we all believe it was a change purposely implemented by Google. And yes, 27 % of my own photos did not increase the views since 18 months or are still showing zero. This is also what I heard from others here on Connect. Simply said, the number of views increase later and slower than before 2024 - just a different way to count and publish the views.
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@AtifGulzar I can confirm what @WilfriedB said. There’s a new way of doing things, rather than an issue waiting to be fixed. But Google has never made a detailed announcement.
Some of us believe that there’s a 1% rule which now dictates that the displayed view count will not change until your new views in the background have increased by at least 1% of the previous number. There also appears to be a 5-view rule, so if 1% of your previous number is only 4 or 3, it doesn’t qualify.
But what has not been explained is how photos uploaded 10 or 18 months ago can still be at zero. It cannot take that long to earn the first 5 views to qualify for a display number. For a while, I monitored all my zero-view photos on a spreadsheet, but I no longer attempt to keep that up to date.
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Yes it can @tony_b. Either if it doesn’t appear at all on the listing, even though it is public or it was placed below hundreds of other photos. Just two days ago, I found several showing the first views after more than a year, as I explained here (comment #13).
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Thanks for the link to your comment @WilfriedB. Somehow I saw that thread and never read it. Busy now, so will follow up later.
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Before the crash in February 2024, I had about 7 million photo views per week. Since then, it’s been just under 3 million per week, even though I’ve uploaded at least 8,000 new photos since then. The sh*t is still broken, and it will never be like it used to be.
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Look at it this way @flight2021: It was always broken before Feb 2024, now we see only reasonable numbers fo views.
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I live in a small place with a small population @flight2021, so my numbers don’t compare to yours. But it is interesting to note that according to my personal spreadsheets that I’ve maintained since July 2022, the month just completed (August 2025) has been my best month ever. At 1,015,055 it was my largest monthly increase recorded in 3 years. March 2024 was the only other month with a change greater than a million, but that was the reinstatement of the views lost in the February crash.
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@tony_b did you take into account how many more photos and videos you did post since Feb 2024?
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Very good question @WilfriedB, but the evidence is inconclusive.
From my notes I see that on 14th February 2024 I had 623 photos totalling 17,293,614 views, and by 1st September 2025 that had reached 1249 photos totalling 28,908,597 views. Unfortunately, the newer photos do not get as many views as the older ones before February 2024.
Strange enough, the monthly views have not increased in direct proportion to the increase in number of photos posted. The delta figure fluctuates from month to month. Some high and some low, but April to June this year have been steady, with an average just under 800,000 new views per month. July dropped to just 251,313 before this high August one of over a million.
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Hi @tony_b,
I haven’t been keeping a close eye on the figures that I’ve been updating on the top 100 website. What I have been doing casually is looking at the profile graph which shows the additions to your viewing figures for the previous seven days.
Since February 2024 this was frequently topping at an additional 800 views. At the beginning of 2025 I noticed that more frequently this was topping at 1.3 million.
This is not a scientific approach. But my impression is that the viewing figures have picked up in the last 10 months.
In one of my previous posts, I discussed deleting uploads that were not performing. Since then I have noticed an uptick in the number reactions I have received. Of course, this may be a normal change that everyone is experiencing.
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Many things about Maps remain a mystery. I’ve seen some of my photos get reactions while still showing no views. Realistically that should be impossible.
Meanwhile, I had a few surprises when I filled out my top performers spreadsheet for end of October. A few photos and videos made sudden increases in view counts and moved up the charts a bit. Four Photos between 21% and 29% increase in views, where most on my list were between 1% and 4% with a few at 0% as well. Only one video was stuck at 0% and very few were low numbers. One extremely high one was 76% after showing a number of consecutive good months.
Hoping these improvements continue.
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