What are your Hot spots?

Google Maps tips & tricks
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What are Hot spots?

Hot spots are categories and places that get a lot of views on Google Maps.

As part of @AdamGT very long post on Leaderboards, some of us shared interesting lists of what we see as Hot spots in our part of the world.

What we know so far

First I shared this:

Around here in Denmark the following categories will give you tons of views :

Cinemas, pharmacies, ladies and children’s clothing, hobby stores (fabric and yarn in particular), and pizza places.

What are the hotspots where you live? You can spot them on your list of most viewed photos. Taking the time to make shots that the AI will love of Hotspot is well worth it.

Then @Erik_van_den_Ham added another 10 categories to my list in this post:

  1. Police station
  2. Library
  3. A newly added POI (by you) with your picture first uploaded and a first review.
  4. Hotel
  5. Insurance company
  6. Train stations (in bigger cities)
  7. Clubs
  8. Chinese restaurants (perhaps this works better for the Netherlands as they are offering cheap food while you get a lot, if you take out)
  9. Concert hall
  10. Tax office (don’t shoot the messenger!)

Erik lives in The Netherlands, I believe.

Then @Herve_Andrieu showed us how to be more serious and dedicated to finding and listing Hot spots. In this post he shared this amazing list:

Here is my feedback based on my top 100 (sorted by the number of items in the category then alphabetically because I was tired):

Department store: 16

Restaurant/bar: 12

Car dealership: 11

Grocery store: 9

Clothing store: 6

College/University/Schools: 6

Hardware store: 6

Furniture store/appliance store: 5

Pet supply store/pet store: 5

Liquor store: 4

Sporting goods store: 3

Auto tag agency: 2

Gun store: 2

Airport: 1

Art studio: 1

Car repair shop: 1

Convenience store: 1

Courthouse: 1

Golf course: 1

Government building: 1

Movie theater: 1

Office supplies: 1

Shopping mall: 1

Urgent care: 1

Herve lives in Florida, I believe.

Then @TerryPG chimed in with the following:

Here are my top Hot Spots

Department stores 36%

Restaurants 32%

Home Building Centres 12%

Sporting Goods Store 8%

Garden Centre 4%

Grocery Store 4%

Family Clothing Store 4%

Terry lives in Canada, and you find his original post here.

New statistics

Based on all this inspiration I decided to put in the work and tally the categories of my 100 most viewed photos. And here are the results:

Restaurant 13
Fastfood/Takeaway 9
Women’s clothing store 8
Hobby 8
Supermarket 6
Thrift store 4
Sports equipment 4
Hardware store 4
Cinema 3
Cafe 3
Adult entertainment 3
Wine store 2
School 2
Pizza place 2
Car dealer 2
Candy store 2
Bridal store 2
Bicycle shop 2
Baby store 2
Yoga 1
Wine bar 1
Watches 1
Temp agency 1
Tea shop 1
Pharmacy 1
Perfume store 1
Night club 1
Music records 1
Kitchen Appliances 1
Kids clothing 1
Jewelry store 1
Hospital 1
HiFi 1
Hair salon 1
Flower shop 1
Fashion accessories store 1
Currency exchange 1
Computer shop 1
Grand Total 100

If you combine Restaurants, Fastfood/Takeaway, and Cafe this group accounts for 25% of my best-performing photos.

Share your Hot spots

I’m sharing this with the hope that more Local Guides will make similar statistics for the hot spots where you live. As you can see in my list I had to aggregate/more specific categories into broader categories (all restaurants are called restaurant rather than Italian/Nordic etc.). You would need to do the same. Also, I copy/pasted data from my list of most viewed photos on a desktop and used Google Sheets to type in the categories. And finally, I used the Pivot-table to do the counting. But you can do this easily manually with pen and paper if you like.

I’m hoping to see more examples so we can get a better understanding of what are Hot spots in more parts of the world.

Cheers

Morten

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Great work @MortenCopenhagen with temperatures reaching 34°C here I’m in no need for Hot Spots :wink: .
OK sorry back to serious stuff you’re right I’m from the Netherlands. I will do the math and check my top 100 hot spots. I think my top 100 might be quite different, we will see.

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I have not made any calculations (yet?) on this, but I am always baffled on how much views pics of funeral parlours / caretakers get.

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Great work @MortenCopenhagen now I understand what you were talking about in your comment about hotspots and I apologize for my late reply, I have just been under the pump.

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Interesting, I will try this and see how it goes, @MortenCopenhagen thank you for sharing this.

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Lovely post. @MortenCopenhagen

Hey!!! @JanVanHaver

You are forget to use @ for tagging to morten.

Here, are my Hot spots.

  • Temples
  • Hospitals
  • Gardens

So far, I didn’t clicked many photos, I have few amount of photos, still I missing some hot spots. :wink:

I think, just like trailblazer.

The first photo of the place is having high chances to be viewed.

I will also like if you are create a post on Hot spots regarding Reviews &videos.

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Hello @KishorMali I think the hot spots for reviews and video are quite the same as those for pictures. A review can contain a picture and a video of a place. The problem with statistics on videos is they are difficult to collect as there is now way to select your best viewed videos.
I think If your review is featured at a POI this will help getting more views a lot. There is however no way to achieve this on purpose other than just write a useful review.

Sadly the view count of reviews can only be seen in the Maps app and not on desktop.

Just to share some of my info on reviews I have been scrolling trough my list to find my most viewed ones. For now this seem to be Utrecht Central Station 29.221 views and Amsterdam Central 20.854 views. I don’t have many reviews (124) that have a total amount of views of 110.004 views.
What is/are your best viewed reviews and videos?

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Hello @MortenCopenhagen as suggested here are my statistics .

New statistics on Hot Spots

I copied your table and categories as a base for my list. With every entry I considered if it would fit into one of your existing categories and if not I created a new one.

Town or City these are pictures uploaded to POI’s near or in these places (so not to the city or town itself) they are displayed there as a choice of AI selecting them to be displayed there.
Here is a example of one in Kolding Denmark

The Unknown place category is a POI that no longer seem to be there. Somehow the picture remains but it wont be found anymore (perhaps I’m wrong on this assumption so correct me if needed).

Town or City 32
Castle or Estate 11
Unknown place 9
Concert hall 8
Museum 7
Airport 5
Tax office 4
Restaurant 3
Tourist attraction 3
School 2
Church 2
Insurance company 2
Bank 2
Theme park 2
Women’s clothing store 1
Hospital 1
Gas company 1
NGO 1
Employment agency 1
Golf club 1
Chamber of commerce 1
City Hall 1
Total 100
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Hi @Erik_van_den_Ham

Re. Unknown place

I also had one of those in my top 100. I just took it out. It was clearly a shop that went out of business.

I’m quite puzzled how all your 32 City and Town photos jumped from the places inside the Cities and Towns and “up” the City’s and Town’s listings. I have never seen that happen before.

But huge thanks for tallying and sharing your interesting data.

Cheers

Morten

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@Erik_van_den_Ham

Smartphone vs desktop both having different functionalities. So we understand that.

Regarding video,

Still video button is not available on google Maps, and the idea suggested by one local guide for adding video button has been closed. So it’s quite difficult to find our best viewed video.

I had some videos, but there is no good quality, so I delete that all and now I have zero videos.

Regarding reviews, I have only 27 reviews, more than 2,500 views.

So still I find I am unable to say my reviews hotspots. :wink:

I have only Android.

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Hello @MortenCopenhagen
I left the unknown places in as they are sometimes pretty high up in my top 100 of best viewed pictures. Many of mine were not shops or companies. Why these POI’s have been removed I don’t really know. Maybe some of them had duplicate POI’s so Google took one down.

I think there is a pretty good explanation why I have many of those at towns and cities. I have been an active member of Panoramio since 2006 or 2007. Many of my pictures on maps are from that account. As Google decided to kill Panoramio there was a option to move all your POI located pictures to maps. Most of my pictures back than were taken in (National) parks, beeches, nature in general, castles and other landmarks. Not something that supports businesses (or perhaps tourist). So many of my pictures have things that represent an area, village or a city. Outside my top 100 I have many more showing up at such POI’s.

To give you some more examples:
Vledder my hometown has these pictures assigned to them:
Johannes de Doper Church that I uploaded to the POI of the church.

Hotel Brinkzicht that I uploaded to the POI of the hotel.
Windmill Vledder which I recently uploaded to the POI of the windmill

At the POI of Vledder alone I have 29 of my pictures displayed. Many more show up at other villages or cities.

I already mentioned this as a explanation why some pictures do well (if you count views as a measurement for that) at the great post of @AdamGT Leaderboards of the Most Viewed Photos.
Hope this explains it better.

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When looking at the Hot spot-lists, please keep in mind that at least the following factors are at play here:

A. The popularity of the categories

This reflects how often these places are looked up by Google Maps users in your area. These are typical places that you will need help finding because you don’t go there every day. We don’t need to lookup places on Google Maps when we know by heart how to get there.

B. The interest of the photographer

I think most local guides have some preferences as to what places and kinds of photos they like to share. This preference can depend on interests, means of transportation, and even the desire to please the AI and get as many views as possible!

C. Geography and Cultural differences

@KishorMali just mentioned temples as one of his Hot spots. I believe Kishor lives in Ahmedabad in India. Finding temples in Europe is not really easy and would never reach Hot spot status in my culture.

But I think it is very interesting to study the differences across cultures. And I hope we will keep the 3 factors in mind when comparing the Hot spot lists. Before I thought A. The popularity of the categories was pretty much the primary factor.

What do you think? And can you think of more relevant factors? Small sample sizes are also an issue.

Cheers

Morten

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Yes sample size is an issue @MortenCopenhagen however, sample sizes of 30 or more are considered sufficient.

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Yes indeed they are different @KishorMali for each device. But at both smartphone and desktop you are able to upload video’s just choose photo upload and upload a video. It might seem a bit weird but both are accepted.
I believe the general view count shows the views of both photos and videos.

If a review is of a ‘hot spot’ depends on many variables. In my case these major train stations are visited by many people and certainly in the Netherlands as these POI’s also provide information on the times that trains/busses are departing and from which platform. Our national travel info is integrated into Google maps and makes travelling and planning a trip with public transportation very easy. This means many people will check these POI’s. So having a good quality review there might give you many views.

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All good, @Erik_van_den_Ham

That explains it perfectly. Thanks for removing all doubts I might have had about using the unaccepted workaround.

It makes a lot of sense that great photos posted to cities and towns attract a ton of views.

I did not connect the dots from your previous explanation. Sorry about that.

Cheers

Morten

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LOL @MortenCopenhagen in fact I didn’t even know about this ‘workaround’ until I was reading about this on connect recently. By chance I do know now as a well known person from this community (which name will be kept secret as he/she asked me to) send me a PM explaining how this can be done. It’s something Google doesn’t want to be ‘common’ knowledge he/she told me because this will lead to abuse.

This guy had his account full of stolen pictures and all uploaded to countries and cities. I mentioned this @JanVanHaver and both he and I reported his account with the new function. Google took immediate action as his account was reported yesterday and I just found out that none of his pictures are on display atm.

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Well done, @Erik_van_den_Ham

I also reported a profile with about 36.000 stolen photos a day or two ago. His profil now shows 0 photos but some are still visible on places. I hope it is just a delay caused by sync of servers.

All the best

Morten

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@MortenCopenhagen

Yes, the Popularity of categories are also varry with different locations, cultures and Environment.

Size is the can’t predictable, because it’s having another aspects. @AdamGT

Based on my city,

here are another hotspots,

Public places are always popular. But it’s having high garbage of unnecessary photos that uploaded by people.

Another hotspots.

  • Bus Stations/Railway Stations
  • Shopping Malls
  • Police stations.

BTW, when I took images of Different points of one station,

I make them in one combined photos. I think combined photos are really helpful and it’s saves time of people who watching our photos.

You can check in my google Maps profile. There are 2 combined photos are uploaded.

(Many people are uploading non useful photos on public points, so we need more time to reporting that &it’s also frustrating)

Have you ever tried to make and upload combined photo/image?

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@KishorMali

In the Android app I find it very easy and quick to flag photos.

I tried to find your two collage photos to no avail. Could it be that those are your two hidden photos?

If so Google has told you and us very clearly NOT to share such photos. I would also recommend against it since our photos often are auto-cropped to other formats. And hence they are likely to lose their meaning in this process.

Cheers

Morten

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Wow @Erik_van_den_Ham I didn’t expect so swift reaction to the abuse reporting, especially as it is weekend. But great to see that such blatant abuse is acted upon immediately!