I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but when I take a look at my most seen pictures( more then a hundred thousand views), they are all random tiny shop of my neighborhood and all the other places that I post ( usually known places or tourist sites) get barely hundreds of views. Is it the same for everyone?

Crossed 7.8M photo views and 8.7M contribution views! I'm at level 7 13555 points.

Hi people,

3 months ago, I posted here about my website, which got a lot of positive feedback. It featured a map of businesses that had removed user reviews from Google Maps in Germany by using the new defamation law.

I received a lot of feedback, and I noticed that many people shared the same thought: ratings on Google Maps are becoming less and less useful because businesses buy reviews, run promotions offering discounts in exchange for a review, and so on.

Based on map project, I decided to build TrustScope. It’s a web app and browser extension that shows you not just a business’s rating, but how much you can actually trust that rating and what’s behind it.

On the website, you can find all the businesses analyzed so far, across different categories, from restaurants to clinics and doctors.

The easiest way to use the app is through the browser extension. It displays the rating and analysis of reviews directly on Google Maps.

The analysis includes several sections:

• Trust Score
• What People Talk About
• Rating Distribution
• Reviews Over Time

You don't need to trust just trust it, you can verify the reviews behind each value, just click on it and see the reviews:

The interactive demo and full description of how it works https://trustscope.app/en/extension

You don't need to open analysis every time, you can just check the color of the star:
Green - The reviews look authentic and consistent.
Light green - The reviews are mostly credible, with some inconsistencies.
Orange - weaker signals - inconsistent feedback, thin content, or unusual timing. The rating may not tell the whole story.
Red - Something looks off. A high share of reviews shows unusual patterns, or the rating is not clearly supported by the underlying feedback

If you see this button:

Don't worry, the venue is not yet analyzed - click on it and it will be done in a few seconds. The venue analysis will also be available on the website in a few minutes. So, more users - more venues analyzed.

Currently, 45k+ venues in Berlin are analysed. The analysis recalculates automatically if it is older than 21 days. To learn more about how the analysis is calculated, follow this page https://trustscope.app/en/how-trustscope-analyzes

Thanks to everyone for your feedback in May. Your support gave me the motivation to build it!

I hope all the effort I’ve put into this project will be worth it and that it will be useful to someone.

If you are a business owner and you wouldd be interested in using a tool to analyze your own rating or compare it with your competitors, or if there’s a feature you’d like to see, for example an assistant for responding to reviews, or you are interested in any kind of collaboration, please feel free to reach out to me at the email address provided or use the form via the Partnership button https://trustscope.app/en/partnerships

Free, no ads, no accounts trustscope.app

The area where the Fitzgeralds lived for two years served as the setting for *The Great Gatsby*. It is an established, upscale residential neighborhood situated on a hill (elevation 23 meters)—developed starting in 1911—located just a few hundred meters' walk from the Great Neck station on the Long Island Rail Road. However, one cannot see Manor Haven from this location. While the windows facing Gateway Drive—which runs east-west in front of the house—are oriented slightly toward the north, the attic room above the garage, where Fitzgerald actually did his writing, has a window facing only to the west. Currently, the property is used as both the headquarters and residence of a local carpentry firm; they offer a $500 discount if you book a project online. A local guide has noted on Google Maps that it is private property and should not be approached. Although the main house retains much of its original appearance, the front yard—while suitable for home parties or garage sales—is typical of an ordinary two-story private home and hardly seems capable of accommodating the kind of wild, large-scale revelry depicted in the novel. Interior photos from when the house was listed for sale show a living room and a dining room of similar size—spaces that could accommodate a party of perhaps fifteen people at most.

just tried Lonely Planet’s new app and, at least for Boquete, Panama, it feels shockingly incomplete.

Boquete has well over 100 restaurants, yet the app lists only four It misses notable, long-established businesses such as Sugar & Spice, along with many artisan producers and popular destinations. There is barely any meaningful coverage of the region’s coffee and cacao production, indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé community, history, agriculture or emergence as a major tourism destination.

I say this as a local business owner whose restaurant appeared in multiple Lonely Planet print editions. I met several of their researchers over the years, and they genuinely explored the area, spoke with people and understood what made Boquete distinctive. This isn’t just frustration that my own business was omitted—the app also overlooks plenty of worthy competitors and important parts of the community.

Six recommendations could make sense in an article called “Six places we love.” They do not constitute a useful destination guide.

Lonely Planet says the app’s recommendations are curated by local experts, but Boquete looks more like an unfinished destination shell released as a finished product. It is currently of little value to tourists trying to understand the area, or to the local businesses and communities that actually define it.

Lonely Planet used to help travelers discover a place. This app barely acknowledges that the place exists.

Hello,

I’ve been working an a restaurant map for my city and I’ve uploaded the csv with a few columns, one of them being the link to the restaurant. When I go to this map and click on a restaurant the pop up displays the link but it is not clickable and I can’t even copy paste to search it. I’ve tried finding a way to make the URL clickable but nothing that google’s ai has spit out has worked. Has anyone had any luck with this issue?

Curious about this crowd specifically, since you're all deep in Maps.

Do you ever open Tripadvisor? For your own travel, I mean, not for contributing.

I ask because the two sets of reviews often completely disagree about the same restaurant, especially abroad. In Japan for example my impression is that Maps reviews skew heavily towards local diners while Tripadvisor skews towards visitors, so they end up pointing you at totally different places.

So when you're travelling somewhere and picking where to eat - is it Maps and nothing else? Or do you cross-check somewhere before committing? And has that changed for you over the last few years?

Contribution Views On Google Maps.

For anyone tracking rankings across a city, how far from the pin does visibility actually drop off in your experience? Feels like some businesses show up 5+ miles out while others vanish after 1-2 miles for the same category.

What's influencing that gap?

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone here can help me understand what happened and what I can do next.

I have been a Google Local Guide for around 10 years, and I was genuinely shocked to recently discover that I have been banned from Local Guides Connect.

The only explanation I see is:

The problem is that no specific violation is mentioned. I was not told which review, photo, edit, comment, or contribution supposedly violated the rules.

Even more confusingly, I never received an email or any notification informing me that my account had been restricted or explaining the reason for the ban. I discovered it completely by chance when I happened to access Local Guides Connect.

After discovering the ban, I submitted an appeal through the official appeal form and explained that I had no idea what I had supposedly done wrong. However, I have not received any response yet.

After being part of the Local Guides community for approximately 10 years, seeing the account suddenly banned without knowing what caused it is honestly very disappointing and confusing.

I understand that Google has policies and that automated systems can sometimes detect activity that may appear suspicious or violate a policy unintentionally. If I made an honest mistake at any point, I am more than willing to understand what happened and correct it.

What I would really like is simply some clarification about the reason for the ban and a fair review of my account.

Has anyone here experienced something similar? Is there anything else I should do while waiting for the appeal?

I would really appreciate any advice from people who have gone through this before.

I’m simply a Level 7 who likes to add photos and reviews when I feel I’ve visited somewhere special and experienced something that might be of value to others. I recently visited Llanidloes - a delightful small town in the middle of Wales. If you search for the place on Google maps you get a useful profile of the place - but the photos displayed - frankly - don’t do the place justice. I’d like to add some add some images I took which might help others decide if they’d like to visit but, as with (all?) other locality searches there’s no way I can see to add these.
How does Google select images for towns/localities like this ?

I just looked up a favorite coffee bean roaster. I would like to buy from them direct. They have two locations on their website. I clicked on both and see the addresses. If this storefront owner changed that web page to include 'next to' it would really help anyone to visualize where they are without having to open up maps, get directions, or another search. If it read, 'next to Canadian Tire', or 'same block as Canadian Tire', or 'between Canadian Tire and Home Depot', it would fast track the reader. I think this is a great idea for storefront owners and don't really understand why more websites don't include these landmark details.

At some point I started leaving business reviews from my university Google account which I have had for about a decade. Now I am having trouble logging into my account because they've removed my ability to verify with 2-factor authentication. I think I can still log in if I can find an old device that has the information I need (it's dead and needs to be charged but I saved it in case this exact scenario occurred). Is it possible to transfer my local guide status, points, reviews, and everything to my personal Google account? If so, how do I do that? I wish I could just contact a live human being at Google...

Bonus question: Does it even matter? What's the actual point of being a local guide? I forget what my level was but it was high enough for me to feel good for some reason.