Hello everybody, my name is Islam. I’m originally from Egypt, lived in Amsterdam for 1 year, and currently I have been living in Edinburgh for 2 years.
Most of my contributions to Google Maps are photos! I believe in the saying “A photo is worth a thousand words”. When you search for a place on Google Maps, you can see ratings and read reviews, but you won’t really feel like you get this place until you see enough pictures of it.
My criteria for posting photos to Google Maps is when I feel like that photo was missing when I searched for the first time. For example, I’d decide that I want to eat at a restaurant, I’d browse the related photos to see what kind of food is served in this restaurant. Sometimes I visit and I see food that I like and it wasn’t there when I looked up the place, so I decide that it’d be useful to add photos about it. These are two examples for the famous Dutch “Kapsalon” and a dessert in Edinburgh.
Another instance was when I was invited to a wedding in Egypt. I looked up the place and I felt like that there weren’t enough photos to see how it looks like. I wasn’t able to determine whether it was a good place or not to hold a wedding ceremony. When I arrived I took many photos of the place showing different positions. The photos gained lots of views, showing that people indeed needed that bit of info!
The second thing I like sharing on Google Maps is making edits!
Localization is a problem in Egypt! You can search for a place either in Arabic or English. An Arabic name can be written in multiple ways in English, a place can be named in English in one way, but a user would write it in a different way, a place can be searchable in English but doesn’t have a corresponding Arabic name, and vice versa. Many of these situations make it confusing to find the place you’re looking for easily. I usually try to add all the corresponding titles that people can use to search for a place and associate them to that place.
It makes it extra challenging that using addresses is not that common in Egypt. It heavily depends on tribal knowledge. For example, if you want to describe how to reach a place to someone, it’s not really useful to mention the address, you’ll describe it like “Go to the end of that street, take the right turn, you’ll find KFC on your left, continue until you find a hotel named XYZ, then you’ll find the place on your left”. Google Maps is a lifesaver in this case since it shows you the directions to reach there with minimal hassle. Hence, I feel it’s important to add more and more places in Egypt to Google Maps to avoid such hassle.
Google Maps is indeed one of my most important and used applications out there! I can’t really imagine living in the past without it! Thanks, Google Maps!