To prepare my answer to the “what do you share and why?” question, I spent some time looking through my top 100 viewed photos shared with Google Maps. The chart above summarizes my activity, at least as the rest of the world sees it. Over 80% of the views my photos have drawn are credited to restaurant and food images. In fact, that giant “restaurant - interior” wedge is mostly credited to only two photos: one that I’m fairly proud of, and one that isn’t really a good photo at all! I have had a great opportunity for the past three years, travelling around the US and Europe for Google as we build more data centers. I have eaten great food along the way, documenting it as I go. It started as a way to show my wife that I was eating good food while I travel, and has evolved into a way to help my fellow vegans decide where to eat in a city they may be unfamiliar with.
While travelling to all these fantastic places (Vienna, Budapest, Barcelona, London…) I always take some time, at least a day or two, for tourist activities. I take huge numbers of photos for myself while touring museums and cultural sites but I share only a few of these. Maps doesn’t really need yet another photo of St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna or the Rosetta Stone at The British Museum, when so many of you have already shared photos that are better than mine. However when I get a good picture of a less commonly shared location, I will add that. My most-viewed image outside the food category serves as a good example of what I mean.
Another category I have been sharing sporadically and without noticing (until today) that people viewed them is hotels, with several of my hotel room photos drawing views in the thousands or tens of thousands. This makes sense to me: the most important thing about a hotel is the room you’ll be in, and a traveller checking out a property is likely to skip over the lobby or gym photos. I need to make a habit of including these photos in the future.