What perks and benefits are available to
Google Local Guides?
Each type of contribution you make via the
Google Local Guides program (such as leaving a review, uploading a photo,
answering a question, making edits, or adding missing places), will earn you a
certain number of points. If you review a local business, for example, you’ll
earn 10 points. If your review is more in-depth and exceeds 200 characters,
you’ll get 10 bonus points. Add a photo and earn another five points, and so
on.
Google Local Guides write reviews, share photos, add or edit business information, and check facts on Google Maps. Joining the Local Guides program is quick and simple, so you can be earning points and benefits from your Google contributions in just minutes. Find out how to become a Local Guide and help make Google Maps a better place for business information.
It’s difficult to dispute that local search
is more important than ever right now. Countless stats underpin this assertion,
such as the fact that 46% of all Google searches are made with the intent of
finding local information.
It’s also impossible to deny that
user-generated content (UGC) is quickly growing in importance against this
backdrop, with an expanding body of data suggesting that it is a critical tool in
the decision-making process.
In this online landscape, Google Local Guideshave taken on new relevance.
Let’s quickly go back a step-through before
diving into Google Local Guides, as the role of user-generated content in the
customer journey and online user’s psyche is extremely relevant to the Local
Guides concept as a whole.
According to research performed by
Salesforce, user-generated content was already showing signs of its importance
in 2016. It reported that pages with user-generated content enjoyed a range of
performance benefits, including a 90% uplift in time spent on site, a 50%
increase in engagement rates, a 73% improvement in email click-throughs, and a
10% boost to conversions.
Fast-forward four years and the BazaarVoice
2020 Shopper Experience Index definitively concludes that more and more brands
are empowering their customers to “advocate and sell on their behalf”.
Significantly, the Experience Index says that consumers now control product
pages, with user-generated content replacing traditional image carousels.
Consumer product ratings, reviews, images uploaded by consumers, and questions
and answers all play a pivotal role in purchase decisions.
It’s also important to remember that people
trust people. Many consumers, especially the Millennial generation onwards,
distrust advertising and brand-generated content. 84% of Millennials classify
themselves as distrustful of traditional marketing. That leaves peers as the
most trusted form of recommendation when it comes to everything from finding a
restaurant and booking a hotel to finding a contractor or choosing a vet.
The Experience Index backs this up, with its
findings revealing that there is a 159% increase in revenue from visitors who
engage with reviews. Scientific research also cites empirical evidence that
reviews have a significant impact on online sales; in the travel industry, for
example, just a 10% increase in user reviews led to a more than 5% increase in
bookings.
Our research has tracked this trend over the
last decade. Year after year we find that the vast majority (over 8 in 10
people last year) read online reviews for a local business, while 89% of
35-54-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
So, what does this have to do with Google
Local Guides? The relevance and impact of UGC directly underpin the function of
Google Local Guides.
Google says that Guides are people who “write
reviews, share photos, answer questions, add or edit places and check facts on
Google Maps”. These are all examples of user-generated content. The search
engine claims that millions of people around the world rely on the information
shared by Guides to decide where to go and what to do.
This makes Google Local Guides important
local influencers, able to help shape which local businesses are popular,
thanks to the trust consumers naturally place in information shared by peers,
rather than brands.
The Local Guides program is most closely
linked with Google Maps, with points and rewards for Guides all geared around the
contributions made to Maps.
Google describes its Local Guides as a
community. Members of the community are local consumers who go out and rate
local businesses, take photos, share their experiences, leave reviews, answer
questions based on their direct knowledge of those businesses, add places not listed
on Maps, and check facts.
Participation is rewarded with points,
badges, and perks. The rewards system tells us this work is meaningful to
Google, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Guides act as an army of
fact-checkers and researchers with boots on the ground around the world. Guides
hit the streets specifically searching for, noting down, and uploading local
business information in real-time. They are a hive mind for the search engine,
helping it to ensure its Maps product is more accurate, more up-to-date, and
superior to rival offerings. It’s not a stretch to say that the work Guides do
in their towns and cities around the world powers the whole Maps ecosystem.
It should be noted here that the actions that
Guides carry out aren’t restricted to those who register for the program. Even
without signing up to be a Google Local Guide, you can perform many of the same
functions. You can, for example, leave an unbiased review of a business on a local
search via Google Reviews. You can upload your images of a local business,
which will then show in local search and on that company’s Google My Business
profile. You can also ask a question, suggest an edit on a local business
listing, and answer Google questions, such as whether a location is wheelchair
accessible by clicking on the ‘share the latest info link’ in the local search.
The difference is that as a Google Local
Guide, your contributions will be linked to gamification, meaning the more you
share, the greater the points and rewards you’ll receive.
