Local Guide Best Practice: The best order for suggesting edits

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[This is one of a series of articles originally published on Local Guides Connect]

Sometimes you come across a point of interest (POI) where more than one data point is either incorrect or missing: no telephone number, incorrectly spelled company name, no website, pin located incorrectly, etc. As I already explained in a previous post, you should not submit all changes all at once, as this will certainly increase the chance of running into a ‘not applied’: if one of the edits is not accepted, your entire contribution will be marked as the notorious ‘not applied’ (look around a bit on this forum to find out how much frustration this is causing).

But then another question can be raised: does it matter in which order to suggest the edits? My experience (as mentioned in the disclaimer at the bottom: pure speculation, I have no hard evidence for any of this) suggests: yes, it does. Two different factors might be at play here. The first is Continue reading →

Song of the day: Jon Cutler Feat E-Man – It’s Yours

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Jon Cutler must be the proud owner of what might possibly be the shortest Wikipedia page about any musician – apparently there is not much to tell about him. But nevertheless this It’s Yours (2001) in my view is enough to grant him eternal fame.

These days (read; at my age) I can usually resist turning the volume up to the maximum when a song kicks in, but not in this case. Damn good music!

Local Guide Best Practice: Improve your reputation

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[This is one of a series of articles originally published on Local Guides Connect]

By submitting suggestions for edits, you build up a reputation in terms of certain types of edits and/or certain regions or countries. This is very important for the way the algorithms evaluating the suggested edits are taking your reputation into account: if your ‘trust level’ is high for specific factors, your suggestions will more easily be approved.

Let me illustrate this with some specific examples. When I came across a chain of discount supermarkets that is operational is several countries, and noticed that quite a few of them had an incorrect category (either ‘grocery store’ or ‘supermarket’ in general) I obviously had the unstoppable urge to Continue reading →

Song of the day: Allez Allez – Allez Allez

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In the early 1980’s there was a spectacular wave of interesting Belgian bands. This was not obvious to me at the time, as I (born on the mid 60’s) was just discovering music, so I figured this abundance was the default situation. Only in retrospect did I realize how exceptional the era was.

Such a bold statement of course begs for some proof to back it up, so here’s a very nice example: Allez Allez (which happens to be both the name of the band and the song).

Local Guide Best Practice: Create on mobile / Complete on desktop

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[This is one of a series of articles originally published on Local Guides Connect]

There are basically two different ways of adding/editing information on Google Maps: in the mobile app on your phone or in the browser on your computer (a.k.a the desktop version – although it’s frequently used on laptops too). Both have their pros and cons, but in one particular case I find it most convenient to use a combination of the two.

Picture by Skitterphoto on Pixabay – so: not my gear

Adding a new place is typically done in the mobile app, when you are walking around in a city or area and come across a point of interest (POI) that is not yet showing up on the map. And although technically you can perfectly Continue reading →