Nice work bro.
Got lots of insights from your blog.
Thanks
1 Like
Hi Everyone,
Need feedback on my contribution as I want to highest level and any further benefit is there? I mean as Carrier option can I plan in near future with Google.
Your reply and guidance will be much appreciated.
Rgds
Abhijeet Bhose
Hi Everyone,
Need feedback on my contribution as I want to highest level and any further benefit is there? I mean as Carrier option can I plan in near future with Google.
Your reply and guidance will be much appreciated.
Rgds
Abhijeet Bhose
1 Like
Rock on, you seem to be on the right track!
There must be a lot of things to see and places to visit in your area. In any case this is a perfect reference, that shows that you know your place and may help you in your professional life or any other aspect like tourism, professional photography etc. etc.
So have put so much work and energy into it and it is your creation, your work. The LG program has given you the opportunity to show what you can do, this is a perfect reference.
Maybe the streetview program is a good opportunity if you want to use the gathered experience for a professional purpose. Sit down and think what this foundation can be useful for in your area… A t-shirt or a badge for a new level won´t pay the rent.
Or if that is not what you are looking for, you can share your experience and knowledge on how to achieve so many points with new members. How did you get there? What tips and tricks have you learned. What is a good strategy?
Keep up the good work…
@Svein - Thanks for a useful report and great photos - and an amazing view count - I’m ‘only’ just over 3 million.
During my experience I have come to the conclusion that the algorithm for choosing how high up on the picture set an image is is based on a measure of ‘recent’ views. If this is true then your exceptionally high view count is a greater compliment to your work as it has been chosen by many viewers - chosen in the sense of being seen in a smaller format and it having enough of what people are looking for to click for the full picture.
There’s a strong ‘money comes to money’ element that once you reach the top position your picture will receive many more views, as you indicate - your image will be the one people see on a Google search and that counts as a view I think even if they do not click to see the full image - more views though if they do.
I’ve experimentally ‘cheated’ to verify this and it seems to work - uploading images and for some deliberately going and looking at them with 2 or 3 devices and the others not.
It’s not ‘total views’ as once you’re at the top for a while you’d never be dislodged - like you I’ve had the experience of being knocked off the top spot - most recently for the Gate restaurant in Islington, London, U.K. where my image of inside the restaurant with a nice blue-green sky reflection on some tables was on the top spot for months with a consistent 4k+ views per day had reached over a third of a million and is currently in second place, bumped by an image posted by the restaurant with a 25th anniversary theme that I can see is clickable.
However I wonder whether a company can buy the top spot as I think every branch of Pizza Express has the same top image of a pizza with rocket on. I have a few second slots here so perhaps that is just sour grapes!
So my view is that it’s a democratic process which takes account of picture quality but also whatever interests people - so crafting the right photo for a place is more of a marketing insight and set of skills along with photographic skills - if people are googling for a place to eat for example they want to get a feel of it to see if it is ‘for them’ - so a good picture capturing the inside of the restaurant works well. For other businesses who cares what their back office looks like so I can see how your shop front approach will do well.
Can anyone verify or throw out my theory that it’s done on views, and throw further light on this?
Thanks
Steve
@SteveBradbury wrote:
@Svein - Thanks for a useful report and great photos - and an amazing view count - I’m ‘only’ just over 3 million.
During my experience I have come to the conclusion that the algorithm for choosing how high up on the picture set an image is is based on a measure of ‘recent’ views. If this is true then your exceptionally high view count is a greater compliment to your work as it has been chosen by many viewers - chosen in the sense of being seen in a smaller format and it having enough of what people are looking for to click for the full picture.
There’s a strong ‘money comes to money’ element that once you reach the top position your picture will receive many more views, as you indicate - your image will be the one people see on a Google search and that counts as a view I think even if they do not click to see the full image - more views though if they do.
I’ve experimentally ‘cheated’ to verify this and it seems to work - uploading images and for some deliberately going and looking at them with 2 or 3 devices and the others not.
It’s not ‘total views’ as once you’re at the top for a while you’d never be dislodged - like you I’ve had the experience of being knocked off the top spot - most recently for the Gate restaurant in Islington, London, U.K. where my image of inside the restaurant with a nice blue-green sky reflection on some tables was on the top spot for months with a consistent 4k+ views per day had reached over a third of a million and is currently in second place, bumped by an image posted by the restaurant with a 25th anniversary theme that I can see is clickable.
However I wonder whether a company can buy the top spot as I think every branch of Pizza Express has the same top image of a pizza with rocket on. I have a few second slots here so perhaps that is just sour grapes!
So my view is that it’s a democratic process which takes account of picture quality but also whatever interests people - so crafting the right photo for a place is more of a marketing insight and set of skills along with photographic skills - if people are googling for a place to eat for example they want to get a feel of it to see if it is ‘for them’ - so a good picture capturing the inside of the restaurant works well. For other businesses who cares what their back office looks like so I can see how your shop front approach will do well.
Can anyone verify or throw out my theory that it’s done on views, and throw further light on this?
Thanks
Steve
Your theory certainly makes perfect sense - both how they choose and the potential sale of top spots. After all, most all top spots in their search engine are Ads also.
Google (alphabet) didn’t become a 3/4 Trillion dollar company for naught…it’s because they sell what they obtain for free. Well, to be truthful, I think they deserve every penny that they get because they “sell intelligence” to the masses.
It’s telling that they can get people into a competition to give them more free stuff - based on “levels” which do or pay nothing Then again, I ran very large forums for two decades and my users did the same. People just love to contribute and be heard and seen…yours truly as much as anyone.
I am a “landscape” contributor…never have placed a pic of a storefront or inside. In my case, I have definitely seen that “more views quickly” seems to move a pic up the scale. But we “civilians” can’t possibly make perfect sense of it for for multiple reasons including:
-
Goog constantly updates the way they do things - so by the time we figure things out, they may differ.
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Goog will adjust many parameters depending on your location, interests and other such things. So one experience will differ from another.
A couple years ago Google started heavily favoring “new” material. While I understand this favoritism, it also made many of the search results more shallow. For example, if one site ran a forum or blog which was much deeper with more expertise…but was not updated as often, this site would likely lose out to one that posted clickbait daily. This represents a very crude type of sorting…to assume that newer=better. It shows the weaknesses of computer algorithms as they have a difficult time weighing “depth” against time. Getting back to the pics, does google know that many pics (Landscapes, animals, etc) are relatively timeless…as opposed to storefronts and interiors that may be behind the times in a year or two? Open question - but my guess is that they do not and have decided, for now, to choose new over older.
1 Like
Thanks @craigiri - I presume it’s not necessarily new over old as an old picture if good enough will still be getting enough new views…
Yes, despite my general politics I blithely give free stuff to the Google-monster…
Hi @Svein !!!
Oh My God !!!
I never come across such an informative and we’ll thought post for the LG fraternity !!
Thank you being really so much engrossed in detailing your plan of photo shoot both before and after .
I hope you have already being protected by others as the best ever " novice" yet mind blowing photographer ; sorry ; photo artist .
I feel myself lucky tones go through your meticulously written the open to all post.
Hoping a strong bonding with you through your photographs.
Mondrito
@SteveBradbury I would love to know for sure. I have pictures that have made the top listing and just stay there. My opinion is the algorithm picks the photo and until a better picture is posted, based on the algorithm shows up for that listing it will stay there. Some places just have huge amounts of traffic. Resturant cash register photos get views. People search for places a lot. I often doubt the numbers are real because for some locations they are just nuts high. The photo linked to above as of today has 361,000 views since last year and was the cover photo for the listing. Now the current one is similar but different. I do not go back to monitor the photos enough to track what is being displayed and know the views vs click but certainly, Google does. I would say they do test it. In this example how would you know why they bumped mine? I do know this if you take pictures like this you will get views. If you take pictures like this in places that get a lot of traffic or in high population areas you will get views. I think the biggest view factor is if you get the cover photo you get views. If you get cover photos in high population or transient visitors you get more views. The key is to watch if your photo is the cover shot since that skews the number so much. Food gets views, we all eat. In this digital age, the hunter-gatherers are Googling it. This picture was the cover photo got view fast then identical store down the street 2 blocks the same photo set up got very low views. My point is It is hard to see the whole picture but these types of photos get high view count.
2 Likes
Hi
I think that there is no algorithm based on the content of the picture and no decisions on photo merit can be made by anyone at Google because they would have to employ a population to do it.
It’s I’m sure a crowd-sourced algorithm based on the things people want to see, based simply on them looking over I guess something like the last couple of days - in your example the first one is good but the second shows far more of the blackboard menu - that’s part of what people want. That would not work anywhere else than a place to eat so no advanced photo-analysis could pick what’s needed for a certain type of location.
Re
@davidcox wrote:
@SteveBradbury I would love to know for sure. I have pictures that have made the top listing and just stay there. My opinion is the algorithm picks the photo and until a better picture is posted, based on the algorithm shows up for that listing it will stay there. Some places just have huge amounts of traffic. Resturant cash register photos get views. People search for places a lot. I often doubt the numbers are real because for some locations they are just nuts high. The photo linked to above as of today has 361,000 views since last year and was the cover photo for the listing. Now the current one is similar but different. I do not go back to monitor the photos enough to track what is being displayed and know the views vs click but certainly, Google does. I would say they do test it. In this example how would you know why they bumped mine? I do know this if you take pictures like this you will get views. If you take pictures like this in places that get a lot of traffic or in high population areas you will get views. I think the biggest view factor is if you get the cover photo you get views. If you get cover photos in high population or transient visitors you get more views. The key is to watch if your photo is the cover shot since that skews the number so much. Food gets views, we all eat. In this digital age, the hunter-gatherers are Googling it. This picture was the cover photo got view fast then identical store down the street 2 blocks the same photo set up got very low views. My point is It is hard to see the whole picture but these types of photos get high view count.
gards
Steve
1 Like
Hi, Steve @SteveBradbury I respectfully disagree “I think that there is no algorithm based on the content of the picture and no decisions on photo merit can be made by anyone at Google because they would have to employ a population to do it”. There are videos describing how Google can read and use Streetview to find company names and map that to the location. A look at this photo API description shows some of the capability. I believe that it is all automated. The ranking may change over time based on user interaction but also based on what is added by other users so it is hard to know exactly what is happening unless you watch and document each picture on the particular listing.
I have read so much of this post and seeing all the AI capability, the concept of “pic wars” and the strong desire for headline photos by so many people make me happy and realise I don’t do these habits alone. I’ve reached a quarter of a billion views and I’m eager to share my entire workflow with the LG community.
I might format it in a similar way Svein has, but I’m really willing to share my journey of how I got to where I am now. Soon enough, I’ll receive the congratulatory Google email (most likely by Wednesday) and from there I’ll form the basis of my post.
The rankings of the photo change pretty regularly, I’ve usually seen my photo getting knocked off the top spot before I find out that another photo of mine has taken its place months later. So the AI is constantly changing and evolving to see what photos catch the eye of data consumers, what influences their decisions to click through links or go to the store, and so on.
I know for many clothing stores, train stations, restaurants, Subways and Pizza Huts (yes, these are quite a gold mine for views) I’ve found almost the magic recipe to hit the top spot each time I upload them, but these are secrets I want to share to everyone. I know a local guide has been closely looking at my contributions for a while (when I uploaded a photo that got 60,000 views a day, the LG decided to upload 30 photos of that listing to try and snipe the top spot, and did successfully), but utility and consumer data should be harnessed to the best of their ability, and we as Local Guides can be the catalyst of such.
I’ll be more than happy to share it, one year six months after Svein’s original post.
3 Likes
Thanks,
Going to apply everything what i have learnt from this article.
Incredible step-by-step guide to successfully posting photos!
Great job!
The insights if your observations of Google’s AI are very helpful. Your recommendations to the community as well as Google are week thought out.
THANKS & WELL DONE!!!
Thanks! This is very helpful.
Your mastery and dedication over Google map local guide program are worthy of praise. Congrats.
Awesome content. Thanks a lot for sharing your tips.
Thanks for sharing.