Hi all, just curious if anyone is experiencing this. I have not had a featured photo in months, and usually I get 1 out of 20 or so to be featured for years. I wonder if the delays in posted photos or the zero counts have caused this. Has anyone gotten a photo featured recently. Figured I would ask and see if this was a new problem. Thx
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I found this one under my bell:
Often my app is set to Danish and there the used wording is “is being shown”. It is probably a new translation. But these pics are not just shown they are first or between the first 10 images or so.
But it also been a while since I went in a photo walk.
So I’m unable to draw a conclusion based on my current data.
But I often do a manual check to see if my new photos became the cover or listed among the first. This metric has not gone down last time I did a photo walk.
The notification always only came for the first image getting featured of the day.
Hopefully, others will reply also.
Cheers
Morten
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An interesting topic @StevenBerlin I made a similar observation as @MortenCopenhagen :
I still do get a notification in the app (but no email) once in a while, but checking other photos manually, I found them featured anyway.
But this brings up another topic: What exactly means “featured”? I know, this term is is used, if a photo appears as a cover, the main photo users see after finding the pin or you see it among the first ten in the list of all thumbnails after clicking the cover photo.
But there is more to it:
Watching the daily view deltas of all my photos, I saw sudden increases of a certain photo, which was not under the upper ten. Instead, it appeared high under one of the other tabs, such as Food, Menu list, Environment or other. But unfortunately, this is very hard, if not impossible, to track.
Another thing, I noticed, is the movements within the list:
A photo being on top of the list this week, may drop down to position 50+ next week, while another of mine jumps up to the top.
And don’t forget, media can also be shown and featured on a geographical pin without our knowledge or doing something to it.
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Hi @StevenBerlin Interesting question. Yes I still get some of my photos as the “featured photo” but yes less than before.( I’m also contributing less)
I am actually having some luck getting videos as the feature, Half a dozen or so, but it’s a start.
What dismays me the most is the lousy photos Google is selecting as the feature photos. I see so many instances of what I think are original photos or bad lighting or just plain crap photos of the POI being selected from years ago i.e… 2017 for example.
I will be back with some examples
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@TerryPG when you say " I still get some of my photos as the "featured photo " you mean getting the message “being featured” or you found out yourself that they are featured? I found several in high position without being notified.
Reg “… lousy photos Google is selecting as the feature photos”: What are good or bad candidates for getting featured? is another good question. Regarding getting zero or many views, it seems to be key for the photo for being featured. Some photos never show up under Recent or not even under By Me.
If I have enough photos, I purposely post ten to each place. In many cases 3 or 4 never get any views and cannot be found under Recent or All.
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I get them every week I guess but that’s not my concern my concern is I upload 20 photos hardly 10 are reflected in Gmaps I don’t know where other 10 go. It’s been terrible. I have to visit my profile every year now and weed out those missing ones. Views count has been stagnant for top moving media. Some of the POI not accepting media doesn’t matter how you approach them. An LG like me can make photo appear there if I want but it’s just wasting of time.
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@TerryPG @Trail_blazer @WilfriedB
I guess for me the featured photo is the very first one on the site. You usually get a notification in maps that your photo was featured. I have not had one in over 4 months, and I use to get one all the time. This is why I was asking.
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I have to agree with @StevenBerlin for years we always considered the first photo associated with the POI when you searched it ,as the Featured photo.
@WilfriedB and Steven, I don’t receive notifications any more but I do thoroughly check my contributions weekly, monthly and have always been very very aggressive with deleting under productive photos and now the same for videos. I do give more time for a contributions to prove itself since the Counter crash.
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@StevenBerlin @TerryPG @Trail_blazer @MortenCopenhagen
Just yesterday, I received the notification of a new cover photo at recently opened place. It was not one of the food pictures, but an interior view - which makes sense to me, to use as banner. More about that place at the end of my comment.
I don’t know what was the terminology in the past, but I think it make sense to differentiate between the one and only on top which also appears after a search (“Cover photo” or banner) and those which appear on top of the list (featured).
In the past, I did receive messages “Dein Foto erscheint an exponierter Stelle”, which I would translate briefly to “Is featured”, even though it was listed somewhere among the first 5 (but not 10) of the list.
I would even make the difference between
- The cover media as explained above
- Featured within the first ten of the list, but it depends on how many photos are already on the listing. Eg. position 15 of 2,000 might also be candidate to gather many views.
- Photos pushed down far to the end of the list.
- Shortly after posting, not appearing under “Recent”
- Not appearing under “All”, even after scrolling to the very end
- Not appearing under “By Me”.
- Not connected to any place (Unknown place). Although being uploaded to pin, the place might be removed later.
- Hidden, i.e. not public, after it was public for some time - may be years.
- Hidden immediately after uploading.
Note, the positions of media in the list can and will change over time and can move up or down!
Looking at my latest cover picture again, we can conclude some interesting facts:
- Before I uploaded my 6 photos, the listing had only 16 media before*. Therefore, a high chance to get featured. But not only that, scrolling through the existing photos, I found several food pictures, 2 photos showing the entrance and 2 others showing the lobby and outside view of the hotel, but nothing referring to the restaurant inside the hotel. As of today - 36 hours after posting, it now shows 33 views in My Contributions and 103 according today’s takeout.
- Besides the cover photo, only one of my six photos appear as “featured”, i.e. in position 2 of the list. It was not necessarily the best, but possible the most unusual looking food. The photo gained 14 views, as of today.
- Recently I noticed several times, if for example, I post 10 photos at least 3 or 4 of them never get any views and further analysis would place them in one of the categories 4 - 6, mentioned above. The remaining 4 pictures, I posted two days ago fall into category 3.
- Another observation, I made at several places recently (probably a bug?):
When you hover over the cover photo of a place listing, you see the total number of photos for that. Recently, I found many places showing the number 5, but in reality they have more. The same is true for the place mentioned above.
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Just got one shot featured , I have got almost 4 shots featured from my 50 photos slot however all that being said strange thing is it was uploaded 5 days ago and the place still doesn’t show it so lots of going with photos anyways still mapping 
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Hi @TerryPG a bit off topic, but is the benefit for “deleting under productive photos”?
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Hello @WilfriedB I am a firm believer of quality over quantity. I normally post 1 photo,1 video of POI, Sometimes 2/3 more but generally 1 photo.
One of the most important Numbers to me is average views per photo. I am proud to say even though I have almost 8,000 photos published, the average photo views is approx. 220,000 per photo.
So I go Thru my photos and videos(treated the same way) and purge under productive contributions. Before the photo view count slowdown, I was much more stricter, but now I wait 6 months before purging. It looks something like this
Stripped down version.
Time Frame Views needed
3 months 1k
6 months 2k
1 year 3k
2 years 2k
3 years and older 10k
I also remove any contributions of closed POI’s , I recently removed 14 photos of closed POI’s that had over 1 million views each. Yes I lose photo views and points but to me that’s inconsequential. I would rather be UpToDate.
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Hello @TerryPG thank you for your explanation.
I am more interested to find out, which of my photos are good for Maps and which are not and rarely restrict myself to single one. But so far, I don’t delete any because they were not featured and rather watch, changes over time.
Just different approaches.
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I still have yet to get featured photo. Probably been 5 months and i yse to get like one each week. Not sure if this topic is still going or not. I cannot figure this new system at all 
I uploaded a few images just 23 hours ago. One of them became the cover photo and I was informed by a notification in maps about this. The wording was “is being shown”.
So no change on my end.
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Sorry to hear @StevenBerlin . I think, this is coincidence or depends what kind of pins, you post your photos …?
Just last week, I added a pin, than posted my photo and it was featured right away, i.e. the one and only photo of that place and I got a notification for that.
If a place already has several photos, I don’t expect mine to reach one of the first positions, but it does happen once in a while. But I cannot quantify how many times it does.
Good to hear from you @StevenBerlin No I don’t seem to have any issues getting some featured photos, Not as many as before( It’s a hard thing to quantify)
Recently I have had success in having some of my videos become the featured media. These videos have all been posted within the last 2 months.
I am somewhat bewildered by what in some circumstances Google is choosing as the featured photo, I see what looks like the original photo of the POI, Or poorly lit night photos or just plain lousy shots. This seems like a good time to post quality photos.
@MortenCopenhagen I used to get that notification but it has been a year or so since I received one.
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What do you mean, Terry? Email or notification through the smartphone App? I only saw it in the App a couple of days ago.
And even worse, photos which are not even taken at that location.
FYI @StevenBerlin
@StevenBerlin @MortenCopenhagen @TerryPG
Just another interesting observation regarding “featured” in the sense of among the first ten:
On Oct 10, I posted a photo. It was shown right away on position 4 out of 2.535 in that listing. Until November, 7 it gained 10,970 views, but nothing anymore during the last three days.
So, I just looked to see where it is now and first couldn’t find it anymore. Becoming more curious, I scrolled down in the thumbnail bar all the way until I found it,then paging back at counting.
Guess on which position, I found it now? 329 out of 2,549! So within a couple of days, it dropped down for more than 300 places.
The photo is not very good (a bit out of focus) and I have several better others at the same venu, which now appear at higher positions.
Those of mine with most views appear at position 10 and 11, while the first 9 were all posted by the owner of the venue.
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I have noticed that new good photos sometimes start as the last at very at bottom of the photos list under the place. And only after some days a better position is found. Maybe the AI is on strike, vacation or only runs sometimes.
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