2022
Today, I received an email that I had reached 500,000,000 views of my photos on Google Maps. That's half a billion views achieved and seen by people all over the world.
On April 25th 2018, I posted that I had reached 200 million views. A ridiculous amount, but now I steadily climb onward to get the other half of a billion now. Even though I'm not as dedicated to mapping and taking photos as I used to be back in the days, I still contribute every now and then, but this time with focus and naturally as possible. I'm keen to update you all once I reach a billion, maybe that'll happen at the end of this year, who knows?
I promised as a reply on @Svein's post that I would write about my own workflow and how I plan which listings to take photos of, and how I conduct research to find the ones that could amass a large amount of views over time. So I would like to provide some tips on how to take photos or select listings that would get a great amount of views in a short amount of time.
Note that I will use Australian examples, so please find a substitute based on where you are.
What sort of camera/image quality do I need?
The majority of photos that I've taken were with the Google Pixel, eventually moving to the Huawei Mate 20 Pro so you'll want to figure out if your image quality is suitable enough to compare with other users' photos on Google Maps.
The quality of the image is important, and should look as natural as possible. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is to use Google Photos, select the photo you took, and tap Edit. The Auto Photo Filter allows the AI to make adjustments to the photo, but if the result doesn't have a natural colour balance or it looks way too overexposed, feel free to dial down the filters manually.
What type of photo should I take?
Your objective is to continue taking photos and experiment until you find your sweet spot: find the angle, perspective and object that works for you and stick with it. Find the photos that will be chosen by Google's AI and become the listing's cover photo. Category-wise, this will vary greatly but there shouldn't be any major differences around the world. To give an indication of what my popular uploads are, here are some of the categories and what I took a photo of:
Bar: The service area, or the counter where they serve and display drinks.
Corporate office: The building in its entirety with blue sky as the background, or the entrance to the lobby.
Cinema: Usually the reception area, also where you can see the name of the cinema.
Department store: Show as many shelves or product variety as possible.
Fast food restaurant: Often a close-up of the food or meal gets chosen. The counter also works.
Pub: Large dining areas or tables and chairs along with the service area.
Restaurant: An atmosphere showing the tables and chairs usually suffice, and the counter can also help.
Shop: A slight aerial view, showing as much of the shop's contents in a diagonal view.
Supermarket: Diagonal views of different shelves and displays, especially in fruits or bread section are popular.
Takeaway: The counter is often picked as the cover photo that shows the menu above.
Your photo should avoid identifiable faces, abnormal glares of light in the mirror (or an unexpected reflection), car license plates and people in general. Be careful not to over-saturate or edit the photo to make it look unnatural, and ensure you use an editing app that retains the original image's metadata (such as location and device). Also, landscape photos are often picked to be the cover photo for listings.
What listings to find?
How can we discover and choose the listings that will be popular? There are a few ways to figure out and research the best possible trends and outcomes, but this is all dependent on you as a guide. While you're looking out for listings, bookmark or add them to your list as you go so you'll know what to take photos of during your next field trip. Here's how to find the right listings that could get you the most views:
Identify trends for listings. Ever realise that Subways and Pizza Huts get plenty of traction and are relatively easy to find? Look at other similar businesses and find what sort of photo features the most so you can adjust the way you take photos. But don't just stick to the same angle over and over again, unless it actually works!
Search for listings with no user contributed photos. Whether they have no photo at all or just a generic Google Street View photo, no one is claiming the potential views that it could have been making. You would be surprised at what might be searched for that's popular but has no picture, even a bus stop could be viable! Like how I had contributed a picture of a local organisation, I was surprised that it would accrue thousands of views a day!
People also search for. Even a search on Google Maps will show the user's photo, but what is also shows are other similar listings that people will also search for and navigate through, generating leads. Search for New Wan Wah, a Chinese takeaway in Blacktown and take a look at the other similar businesses it shows too (shown above). The ones that are shown first are your priority target, but not all listings will be treated the same.
Explore other Local Guides' photos and learn from them. Take a look at other Local Guides' contributions and get inspiration from them. What do their most viewed photos look like, and what listings are they attached to? Do they follow the same trends as you, or do they take a different approach? Could you use a better technique/perspective and see if you can replace their cover photo? Local Guides are a community, ask each other for advice on how to take better photos and you won't be disappointed.
What listings to avoid?
Sticky cover photos by Google MyBusiness owners. Some business owners have the power to determine or upload a photo that would best represent their business, despite other photos existing that would do better for the business. An example would be Noodle Paradise (which has the owner using a screenshot of a photo of another user), Pacific Chinese restaurant or the entire Domino's franchise.
Listings with too many photos. Unless you can appease the AI's sweet spot and improve on the listing's cover photo to have your photo be displayed as the cover photo, it would be too difficult to replace or even be accepted onto the listing. In my personal experience, I found that listings with over 200 photos often cycle between several cover photos, so don't fret if your photo doesn't become the cover photo immediately.
Listings where photos are often removed. It doesn't matter what sort of photo it is, some Google listings may have any contributed uploads deleted, and these reasons are unknown; they could be for security, privacy or have just disabled photos in general to ensure the listing isn't attributed to the user who uploaded the photo.
That kind of ends some of the tips and guidelines that I follow when it comes to making contributions. I often concentrate on popular listings that could rather be represented better, than just contributing to everything that already has some sort of representation. It might seem selective and encourage favouritism, but this is mainly the way that I contribute to listings.
This has taken years of trial and error, experimenting with interesting angles and subjects of the listing to come to a comfortable place where the AI will usually accept my photo to be the cover for the listing. But if we're to focus more on my workflow instead, you'd be intrigued to know that it's all completed on my phone. Because of all the public transport that I take, I'm often editing photos on the go, and uploading them when I have a good amount of time between destinations.
So this is the entire process that I undertake on a regular day out, my complete workflow:
- I research, compare and plan for the listings that I can naturally pass through. I search for listings that could get a high potential of views, listings without any photo as well as those that could be improved with a better cover photo with little effort.
- I ensure that the space on my phone is clear. On a normal day, I'd only use about 800mb of storage.
- I arrive at the listing(s) and start taking photos. This process varies according to customer traffic, position of the sun and whether they're open or not. If the listing was bookmarked, I will remove them from the list.
- During a long transport ride, I start editing all the photos using Google Photos just to optimise them for Google Maps to use and the AI to improve, using the Auto Photo Filter and adjusting as required.
- After all the photos are edited and safely backed up, I upload each and every one of them to their respective listing. Since the path was fresh in my head that day, I can recall what listings I took pictures of, and navigate from there.
- Once all the uploads are completed, I check them all on each of the listings on Google Maps to ensure they have attached to the listing. If they have not, I wait for a week to see if the AI has them maps approved. If it hasn't, I re-upload the photo and repeat the process. If it fails a third time, I simply delete the photo.
- At the end of it, the photos are removed from the phone using the 'Free up space' feature and the process begins again the next time I research and venture outwards.
You would think that I would spend a lot of time looking into this, but I don't really notice as I find opportunities while walking and it all comes naturally. I would like to share samples of some of the popular photos (500,000+ views) I've contributed, you can see them below.
EDIT: Thank you so much for the warm regards and congratulations. I've been asked to share a few of my statistics, as well as some strong sample photos that get plenty of views. I will share them further below.
Statistics (as at Mar 6, 2019)
- Total Photos: 10,750
- Total Views: 504,230,817
- Views Per Photo: 46,905
- Most Viewed Photo: The Sydney Morning Herald with 7,067,795 views
- Local Guide since: Dec 11, 2016
Examples of Recently Uploaded High-Performing Photos
The Old Canberra Inn: Uploaded Feb 13, 2019 with 276,511 views (12,022 views per day)
Bureau of Meteorology: Uploaded Jun 26, 2018 with 2,281,570 views (8,982 views per day)
Commercial Hotel: Uploaded Mar 3, 2019 with 23,349 views (5,837 views per day)
Hillside Hotel: Uploaded Feb 24, 2019 with 45,190 views (3,765 views per day)
Red Rooster: Uploaded Feb 16, 2019 with 60,411 views (3,020 views per day)
Finally, I just wanted to leave you with a few personal tips below in my own experience:
- Don't be discouraged if your photo doesn't immediately make it to the cover photo when you first upload it. The AI shifts over time depending on how much traffic the listing gets and it may end up featuring your photo for a while.
- Even if you don't get the cover photo, your photos can still get a considerable amount of views, so don't hesitate to contribute wherever you want.
- Getting 100 views each on 100 different photos is better than getting 6,000 views on just one photo. Keep on contributing naturally and you might be surprised at what you discover.
- Keep on top of your craft for continuous self-improvement, because there are many Local Guides around you . But remember that it isn't a competition, your role is to make your local area a better place.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post and hope you can join me on my quest to reaching 1 billion views soon!
Thank you.
@Briggs congratulations on reaching half a billion views!! It's amazing.
Thank you for sharing this post, the tips are great and very detailed. I will try my best to follow them, and hopefully get to my first 100 million soon. I'm sure many others will find these tips very helpful too.
You'll reach a billion views in no time 🙂
