Following on from the recent expansion of Google’s Local Guides Explorer program earlier this week Google has announced another incremental feature in their suite of services intended to get people sharing photos, reviews and locations to Google Maps, direct sharing of your images from within the Google Photos app to Google Maps.
The implementation is simple enough, find an image you want to share to maps, click share, click maps and from there you’re taken to the Maps app to finish the transaction.
One issue I did notice with the new feature is if you are sharing a photo that is not Geo-tagged and you’re not in the vicinity of the location of where the photo was taken you can’t search for the location to add the photo to it. In that instance you need to open the Maps app find the location and choose to add a photo from there.
Google has been chasing improved user generated reviews and recommendation since acquiring, and almost completely shuttering, Zagat in 2011. Local Guides is their latest strategy to engage with everyday users and try to get them to share photos, reviews and business details to enhance Google Maps as a one-stop shop for both digital maps and location recommendations. Time will tell if Google is able to take on the incumbents in this area such as Yelp, Fortran or locally, Zomato – previously Urbanspoon – BeanHunter and Tripadvisor.
Google is most definitely the place many people go to search for information, and they would also like to be a source for the same – so that they can sell ads against the content one would assume – however in this game they need to win over those who frequently post reviews not those who search for it. With the improved ‘rewards’ they announced for Local Guide Explorers time will tell if Google will be successful in recruiting more reviews to their service.
Do you contribute to the Local Guides program? If not what would make you start to post your photos and experiences? Let us know in the comments below.
