Context: Originally I meant to post this in Oct 2022, when my Google Guides photo view count for a single photo Dr Mary Booth Lookout surpassed 60K. Life got in the way so that post never materialised, until today! Well, now almost one year later the total view count for my photos on Google has actually surpassed 3.3 million! (there’s only 800 photos/videos on there). The top left photo is taken in Osaka 7 months ago, and has nearly 350K views already.
Original Post Continues From Here: This is a shorter post on the Google Guides versus Yelp in terms of how it treats its audience.
Oct 4, 2022: Ok – So let’s keep it light; I joined Google Guides 10 months ago after being a long-term Yelp addict – spending a decade+ on the platform, a short time as an elite, before I figured out the marketing benefits of being on Yelp. I have another post drafted where I will go into the Yelp VS Google Guides debate, but for now let me say this – that the one key difference between the platforms is the views… Yelp was always difficult to be seen, whereas Google is flooded with views (whether they are bots or not, who cares right? you have 100K followers, and reality kicks in that 60K are bots, do you delete them??)
The shot above, is one of about 50 that I put in a special Harbour bridge montage and I did this for a specific reason; I knew that would be a high interest/high views landmark, and so once I attached the photos the data that I would get back, would be from people who have *chosen* to view my photos. I put nearly a decades worth of harbour bridge photos in that review… my best, my worst, and everything in-between, and from every vantage point… and it’s no surprise … it really is no surprise that the photo that wears the crown, and gets all the views is the shot from Dr Mary Booth Lookout. Firstly, almost no one knows the spot… seriously, 99.9% of sydneysiders have no idea that it exists so they cannot take you there. I only found the place on the walk back from a tryst many moons ago, and I just happened by accident upon this fantastic scene.
Now, juxtapose my Dr Mary Booth Lookout review on Yelp, made nearly a decade ago, which has gained almost no traction whatsoever – despite being the first review of this location on the platform; it’s almost as if it has never been seen. The engagement is incredibly low with only 4 interactions (typically on a well viewed photo on Yelp, with my review/follower count this would be 100-200). There is also only one other review.
Even with this clear disparity, with over 375 reviews invested into Yelp, it was very difficult to walk away from that platform. They created major stickiness with the community team which I will elaborate on in the Yelp VS Google Guides post. Suffice it to say that they discontinued the community managers outside of the US (and maybe Canada?) and so Australia and Singapore, the two areas I’d heavily utilised the platform, effectively went dark.
So to finish this post off – I am now a Google Guider; Currently Level 7, 6936 points from 1,833 contributions (82 reviews, 783 photos, 30 videos, 936 answers, 2 places added).
Dan
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[…] timing – literally days after my first post in a year, covering off where I am with Google Guides, this badboy popped into my inbox acknowledging the 2 year milestone of using the platform. […]
[…] me a trend-jacking algorithm-guru influencer. I just got completed talking about going over the 3-million on Google Guides, and we’ve already hit 3.5 milly now. I’ve cracked whatever virality mechanism in the […]