As a Google Local Guide, my favorite contribution to Google Maps is adding photos of locations. While all details such as business hours of local businesses, ratings and reviews matter and are helpful, photos are often the extra special information that people need while trying to get to a place.
Look at this picture of our home in Ashburn, VA. If you were to walk down this street on a dark night, you couldn’t tell our house apart from our neighbors’. All the houses on our street look the same and you can’t read the house numbers past sunset. If you’re thinking well it isn’t a big deal, I’ll show you why it is.
A great example of other places where pictures make Google Maps the differentiating factor is when you’re trying to get to a doctor, medical professionals or even a masseuse in Northern Virginia. They’re often located in the same buildings, in rooms adjacent to each other and are hard to get to. I experienced this first hand when I was trying to get to a new dentist Dr. Gholam Ali Miamee in Reston, VA. It was a rainy Thursday night and I needed an emergency wisdom tooth removal surgery. My husband was multi-tasking while driving and trying to keep my mind occupied. He was using Google Maps to avoid traffic (avoid prolonging my pain) and as we pulled up closer to the office, all the buildings looked alike. I thanked my lucky stars as some local Google Guide contributor had added a picture so my husband was able to identify it quickly and get me in. Human brains are often visual learners and no matter how many times the GPS tells us we are there, we do need to look around to identify the correct place. Google Maps also makes it easier to tag pictures if you have your location services turned on.
After that day, I make it a point to regularly contribute pictures to Google Maps of places that I visit - whether it be the local Dairy Queen or the boutique thrift store down the road.
