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What are Google Local Guides?
Your love for food pics, 30-second videos, and city secrets can earn you bragging rights in the world of maps
A simple Google search of any location, such as a coffee shop, restaurant, supermarket, mall, or library, displays a map of the place to help you navigate. However, if you want an idea of the quality of service you'll get, you need a review from someone who's been there. That's where Google Local Guides comes in.
You can now follow people on Google Maps, the company's newest social network
Messaging ✔️ Photos ✔️ Followers ✔️
Google Maps is pretty much the go-to app for navigation these days, but it packs a lot of additional features as well, like offering business info and personalized recommendations. Google experimented with allowing users to follow select Local Guides last year, and now the company is expanding the program to include all users — that's right, Google Maps is now a social network.
Maps has gradually evolved from being a simple navigation app to a Yelp competitor. Thanks to the ability for users to share photos and ratings, Google's service has turned into a social platform. These are used to identify popular places and surface them to people through the Explore feature. The company has recently put a stronger emphasis on the latter by making it easier to use and more visible. It's now testing a new functionality, allowing users to follow Local Guides for even more personalized recommendations.
If you're an avid Google Maps Local Guide, or even a beginner, you've probably noticed that the app helps you figure out what to review and which photos to upload. The Your contributions section has plenty of suggestions, but the interface is a little confusing. Pending ratings and reviews are on the main page, but suggested photo uploads are accessible from a separate banner, and there's no easy way to go back and add more info to what you've already submitted. Maps is working on improving all of this.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal got a hands-on with Google Maps' upcoming artificial reality-based walking navigation feature. Local Guides were said to be getting access to this as well, though very few had actually gotten the feature. AR navigation has now rolled out to Local Guides level 5 and up, and it looks pretty cool.
Welcome a fresh update of Google Maps to the world. Version 9.78 began rolling out to the beta channel last night, and with it come a few visual tweaks and a cool new feature for custom lists that shows the places you've visited. Turning to the teardown, it looks like Google will be giving contributors a little more visibility and control over their public profiles. Drivers in São Paulo, Brazil will also be getting a useful tool for navigating through or around the rodízio.
There's been a renewed push of late from the Google Maps team to get more people signing up as Local Guides and submitting reviews of restaurants and bars and so on. Earlier this month points given out for user reviews were doubled. Google clearly wants existing guides to be more active too and is offering a new movie ticket perk to sweeten the deal.
Late last night, the latest version of Google Maps began rolling out through the beta channel. For many people, this will likely bring new notifications with convenient shortcuts to local area transit maps. There are also signs that Google is adding integration with bicycle sharing services, a vague hint of new activity around speed limits, and possibly some new perks for Local Guides.
The number of points awarded to Google Maps Local Guides for submitting reviews is doubling from five to 10, Google announced in a blog post today. Google says the change is rolling out "over a few weeks."
Google Maps has gotten a lot more social this year. Earlier in 2017, location sharing was enabled for the masses. Google also launched a feature allowing users to create and share lists of places. However, only Android and iOS users were able to set up these lists, and web-based Google Maps users were limited to just seeing them. That's changing now, as Google begins a phased rollout of the list creation and sharing feature for desktop-bound Maps users.
Those of you who contribute as Local Guides on Google Maps (a club I recently joined) will know that as well as the satisfying feeling of helping other people out; you also gain points for your hard work. Those points help you rise through the ranks, getting a new badge every time you level up and eventually leading to certain perks, such as early access to new features.
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A new update to Google Maps began rolling out late last night to members of the beta channel. This one is arguably light on notable changes, except that there is one feature that may go live in the next few days: Commuting. It was at least briefly live before being disabled remotely. There are also several new topics for a teardown, including more points for longer reviews, new badges, and more.
The ever-impressive Google Earth saw a sizeable update earlier this year that included new features like guided tours, knowledge cards, and 3D views. Allowing us to see the world from the comfort of our own home is the goal of the Google Earth team, and to that end, it's added another viewpoint with beautiful images crowdsourced from users around the globe.
A teardown of Google Maps v.9.58 turned up some signs that video contributions would become a feature in the very near future. If you're registered as a Local Guide, that time has come. Or at least it's coming, this seems to have only just started rolling out to members of the program today. It doesn't seem as though the videos are actually visible from the detail views yet, but that will probably come soon enough.
Google's Local Guides program for Google Maps has proven to be quite successful, with tons of people offering additional feedback and providing photos about various destinations. Part of this is due to the rewards that Google gives to Local Guides; for instance, Google is currently offering me three months of free Play Music and 75% off a movie rental. The latest reward is kind of a double whammy for Google - an opportunity to preview new Google Maps features before the public does.
Google Maps has a lot of data, some of it contributed by users. Google is keenly aware that you can get people to contribute to a service rather easily as long as you give them points. The points don't even have to be good for anything, although Local Guides points do come with some rewards. Today, Google is adding new levels to the Local Guides program and offering new ways to earn points so you can reach these higher levels.
Local Guides is a program by Google Maps in which you "help others explore the world and get great benefits in return" (Google's words, not mine). Well, it looks like those great benefits are about to become merely average benefits, as Google is completely ditching free Drive storage for new Level 4 Local Guides, who currently get 100GB for one year.
Panoramio shutdown scheduled for November 4, 2016; Google details image export options for its users
Before Street View and PhotoSpheres and Local Guides programs with millions of user-submitted photos, there was Panoramio. The site launched in 2005 as a way for users to share geotagged photos around the world and was later acquired by Google in 2007. Its Google Earth and Maps layers boast nearly 100 million user-contributed images, with many locations around the globe offering more pictures than what's available from Maps user submissions.