This advice comes from experience.
When it comes to giving reviews and taking pictures for Google Maps, it is best not to make it easy to identify you.
Here are some reasons why:
1. If you have negative reviews, you do not these to reflect on your character with others. In other words, people might judge you based on these reviews. Some people have complained that it hurt their chances at employment since people searched on their names. The advice is to use names that do not link back to your real name. I have not done this but it does make sense for some people.
2. If a business does not like a picture you have taken, having a profile picture of yourself makes it too easy to identify you the next time you come around. In general, it does not help you to have a picture of yourself with relation to Google Maps. It is better to use a picture you like. Even if it is never true that someone uses your picture, it just feels a bit better to be a bit private about who you are.
3. Not sure how this works, but Google has two different layers of pictures that it uses. The true profile can have your picture. The Google Maps picture can have whatever else you want. Good advice to make these different.
4. It is a tangent, but the picture representing you is actually a part of your brand. It makes sense that a picture of yourself is not really a brand. Might as well pick something else cool.
This topic has been mentioned before. What do you think? Do you think it is better to keep a portrait?
2022
