Category Archives: Local Guide

Local Guide Best Practice: Adding places without house number

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

A short tip, this time, but a useful one, as it will prevent you from unintentionally adding incorrect data.

Sometimes you might want to add a point of interest (POI) which does not have a house number, e.g. a tourist attraction or viewing point, a statue or a glass recycling container. In those cases, the main thing you should know is that you should not enter the ZIP code when entering the address. If you do enter it, the algorithm will interpret the number you entered as the house number and then add that same number once more as ZIP code. You then end up with something like ‘Main Street 1234, 1234 Anytown’. If you enter only street name and town, it will get created correctly as ‘Main Street, 1234 Anytown’.

The original article can be found here

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don’t claim any level of official endorsement.

Local Guide Best Practice: Reporting duplicates

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Image by Bru-nO on Pixabay

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

When you come across two (or sometimes even more, but for the sake of simplicity I will refer to 2 in the rest of this post) mentions of the same point of interest (POI), you should report one of them as duplicate. You do this by going to Suggest an edit, click Remove this place and then select Duplicate of another place from the drop-down menu containing the possible reasons for removal. (Don’t worry about the Add a photo-option on that page, as that is not relevant in reporting duplicates – it can be useful for some of the other options in the list, like Not open yet or Private place or home).

Usually, you will then be presented with another pop up screen that lists one or a few other POIs which Google suspects could be the ‘correct’ one, asking you to indicate which of those you consider to be the correct one. At the bottom of that list there is also the option to indicate None of the above in case the one you meant is not listed. So far, so good: the process is pretty straightforward. But what can be much trickier Continue reading →

Local Guide Best Practice: Find the right zoom level

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

This is one I struggled with myself quite a bit when I started out as local guide. When you’re walking around in a neighborhood, or explore one on the desktop version of Google Maps, the number of existing points of interest (POI) you get to see heavily depends on the zoom level you are at. Especially in urban areas, where there are obviously much more POIs than in rural areas, it can be quite important to zoom in an out at the appropriate locations.

I have no idea exactly how many different zoom levels there are, but I Continue reading →

Local Guide Best Practice: Submit changes one by one

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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 where several pieces of information are missing or wrong. Then you click ‘Suggest an edit’, make all the changes and click ‘Submit’, right? Well, my advice is not to do this, but instead submit the changes one by one. Admittedly, it’s a few extra clicks, but I have experienced that if you submit several changes at the same time and for some or other reason one of the suggested changes is not applied, none of the changes get applied.

And for those who are eager to score as much local guide points as possible there is another reason as well: the counter that shows you how many points you have earned always only counts to 5 when clicking submit, no matter how many suggested changes you submitted – just one single or 2, 3 or 4. Compare this to what happens when you post a review for a point of interest: the counter then does produce a different result if you submit a review that is over 200 characters long, as it takes into account the 10 extra points for a long review. So, my interpretation is that ‘Suggest an edit’ brings 5 point per time you run the module, not always 5 points per changed piece of information – unless you submit them one by one.

The original article can be found here

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don’t claim any level of official endorsement.

Local Guide Best Practice: Choosing a more specific category

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

Selecting the correct category for a point of interest (POI) can be challenging. Sometimes there simply is no category label available that perfectly describes the main characteristics of the POI. An example from my own experience is a particular type of vending machine that you find all over the place in Belgium: one where you can buy bread. Some types of vending machines have their own category (such as coffee vending machine and beauty products vending machine), but not this one (probably also because you don’t really find these in any other country) – and neither is there a category label for vending machine in general.

In other cases the difficulty is that different category labels are available for what basically is the same type of POI. So far, no one has been able to explain to me the difference between a DIY-store and a home improvement store. Feel free to leave a comment if you can shed light into the darkness on this one!

Image by stratman² (2 many pix!) on flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The issue I want to point in this post, however, is that quite a few points of interest have a category which is not incorrect as such, but also not the best possible one. In almost all cases, the POI then has a general category, where a more specific one is available. Let me give you 2 examples:
* car dealerships: those often have the general car dealer or even garage, but for most popular brands there is a specific category: Ford-dealer, Volkswagen-dealer, Toyota-dealer, etc. (Google doesn’t seem to like French cars, though: Peugeot-dealer and Citroën-dealer are not available)
* sports clubs: these often have the general label sports club, but several popular sports have their own label: football club, tennis club, karate club, etc.

Adding a missing category or replacing the existing one with a more relevant one will bring you 5 points, so you should definitely take this into account when collecting local guides points.

The original article can be found here

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don’t claim any level of official endorsement.

Local Guide Best Practice: Correcting pin location

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

Photo by Joey Csunyo on Unsplash

On Google maps, the placement of most pins, that indicate where exactly a point of interest (POI) is located, is correct. But there is also a considerable amount of pins which are not placed at best possible location. This can be:
* just a little off (in the middle of the road instead of on the building)
* somewhere more or less near to the POI (a bit further down the street, or at an intersection nearby – this is often the case when no house number was entered, or when the house numbers are quite different on either side of the road, e.g. when house number 100 is across house number 77, with 101 being further down the road)
* completely wrong (can be because a business has moved and the pin location was not adapted, or because a common street name, say Main Street, was used with a wrong ZIP code)

As you might imagine correcting the first type is quite easy, the last one quite hard – the ‘worst case’ I’ve seen myself was over 100 km off.

The best approach (when working in the mobile version) is to open Google maps in satellite view and zoom in until pins start popping up. If you Continue reading →

Local Guide ‎Best Practice: ALL CAPS / all lowercase

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

There are multiple ways in which names of businesses or other points of interests can be written incorrectly. Sometimes you come across downright typing errors where you can suggest a name correction (‘Architcet’ instead of ‘Architect’ is one I have come across myself a couple of days ago), although you should always carefully check that the ‘awkward’ spelling is not intentional (business owners are sometimes very creative and playful with language).

Another problem frequently popping up is the incorrect use of either ALL CAPS (‘CAFE RIO’ instead of ‘Café Rio’) or all lowercase (‘ann’s fashion’ instead of ‘Ann’s Fashion’). Sometimes this is intended, but often it is not (especially in the case of smaller, local businesses). So the real problem is Continue reading →

Local Guide Best Practice: Entering Opening hours

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

Entering opening hours correctly can be quite challenging the first time you do it, especially if the shop has different opening hours on different days or is closed for lunch on some days and not on others. The main thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to go through an ‘Add hours’ routine for each unique period of uninterrupted hours that the business is open – which can be just for 1 day of the week or for multiple days of the week. A specific example will no doubt make this complex sounding concept more clear. Let’s say a shop is opened on Monday and Tuesday from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 14:00 to 18:00, then on Wednesday from 9:00 to 13:30 and finally on Saturday from 9:00 to 18:00. To enter these opening hours, you will need to Continue reading →

Google Local Guide

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[GENERAL NOTICE]
In the last few months, quite a bit of my time has gone into being a Google Local Guide. In a previous post I already elaborated on this, but off late I have also started posting articles on topics specifically relating to that on Local Guides Connect, the dedicated forum where Local Guides can exchange information and raise questions.

Those articles will now also be published as blog posts here, and for easy access to them, I have even created a dedicated menu item.

Take a look, and who knows… perhaps you will want to become a Local Guide yourself (warning: can get pretty addictive).