Tony, I also look at the Home or Categories page more often than in the past for new topics. For interesting topics, we can set the notification level for a single topic to Watching or Tracking:
@tony_b , @TerryPG
@WilfriedB , @StevenBerlin
Featured Photos
I have always considered “Featured Photos” to refer to the top 10 photos in a POI’s gallery.
I have always used “Cover Photo” or “#1 Photo” for the first photo (or video) in the gallery.
Nowadays I try to use “Image” instead of “Photo” because so many are now videos.
I believe this thread has had some discussion about the difference between pre and post February 6, 2024 image counts. Before the “Glitch or the New Normal” I had always felt that the number of views was much higher than made sense. Sure it felt great to have all these supposed views, but it always felt a little unrealistic to me. I once posted a photo of a coffee cart in Brattleboro, VT. late in the evening. The next morning it had over 2,000 views. Brattleboro only has 12,000 people so did 16% of them look for a coffee because they couldn’t sleep?
Regarding the post February image counts, here are my stats
| Item | 01/31/2024 | 2024-10-30 | Delta | Delta % | views per day Jan-Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Photo views | 43,884,055 | 52,913,510 | 9,029,455 | 20.58% | 33,075 |
| Star photo views | 3,017,444 | 3,017,748 | 304 | 0.01% | 1 |
| Video views | 5,014,056 | 11,184,759 | 6,170,703 | 123.07% | 22,603 |
| Star video views | 968,809 | 1,152,979 | 184,170 | 19.01% | 675 |
I feel fine about these numbers. I feel that the effort I put into adding images to Maps is worth it.
In writing this up I realize I’ve lost my zeal to do all kinds of number crunching related to my images performance.
Thank you. Now I’ve sorted out the Maps Profile link. Had a difficult time finding the spot based on your screenshot. Perhaps its a mobile only function. Then my menu was horizontal instead of vertical like yours.
Good, you finally found it, Tony! Sorry, I should have mentioned, you need to scroll down on the desktop. I didn’t want to “publish” the contents of my entire profile 
Alfred, did you check whether your photo appeared under the pin of the city, county or state? My “star photo” never even appeared at the pin where I posted it, but I did find it under the pin for the city.
Besides that, I had the same impression that the numbers were too unrealistic.
Unlike you, I only started in May to track all movements and feel happy seeing some hundreds or thousands of views a little restaurant for which I even added the pin shortly before they opened a couple of months ago.
Just a matter of terminology, but your definition makes more sense to me and for us, not native English speaking users, the noitications look differently anyway. But as a fact, I receive notifications not only for the first, but among those on top and it says in German “… erscheint an exponierter Stelle” which can be translated to “… appears at a prominent position …”.
That’s right @WilfriedB. I started doing that, and others then followed same, to overcome the character limitation on any one post on Connect. It also adds a useful structure to long posts which of course the Leaderboard posts are. In such cases it’s also useful to add an index with links to the relevant “content” posts. A couple of examples of this can be seen this here and here. Of course, for this to work on the new and improved Connect, links have to work well and when selected, that is land on the right post.
Nice to see you here @Rednewt74. I’m going straight to your last statement first - [quote=“Rednewt74, post:63, topic:411887”]
I’ve lost my zeal to do all kinds of number crunching related to my images performance.
[/quote]
I also found that the two week shutdown of Connect has changed the atmosphere, and the absence of conversaation about our activities has made a difference to my commitment to Maps activity. Furthermore, we’ve reached the middle of November without any hint of the usual publication of the October Leaderboards by @AdamGT, and that’s certainly a disincentive to putting in the effort to maintain my performance.
Just like you, [quote=“Rednewt74, post:63, topic:411887”]
I had always felt that the number of views was much higher than made sense
[/quote] The big difference between pre- and post- February 7th is such that some of my chart tracking looks senseless now. I haven’t given up, but I don’t feel bad anymore when something gets missed.
Anyway, let’s stay positive and hope to get back on track eventually.
Agreeing with what you all are saying @tony_b @WilfriedB @Rednewt74 . Definitely lost some of my “Zest” but in the meantime I have come to terms with the new numbers. They are what they are. (We will get used to them)
If I can ever figure out this new Connect as well things will become easier.
Terry and @tony_b,
My heart goes out to Adam. I am afraid that he is having to completely rebuild the formatting of the Leaderboards.
Even some of his September’s posts are messed up.
I have some more thoughts on the difference in views now, but I need to do some analysis first.
Off topic @tony_b :
When you quote somebody, don’t delete the blank line after [/quote] 
You hit the nail on the head, @TerryPG.
We just need to “play” with it and won’t take long. For us, the alternatives are get used to it or leave the party. But it is worse for Adam as Alfred said:
Thanks @WilfriedB. The quote feature was new to me, so I was experimenting a bit.
You’re welcome Tony. I guess we all need to experiment and share the experiences.
To me too, but I always liked to quote the phrase, I am responding to. So I quickly discovered this feature of the new Connect and rarely click “Reply”, but rather mark the words I plan to respond to and either select “Quote”, if it is the first or only quote or “Copy Quote”, if there are multiple or I want to add it to an existing response:
The other thing I learned: Always use the “Show Preview” button.
Yes, we’re all learning together. Eaely this morning was the first time I used the Preview feature, and it saved me some grief.
As for me, whatever you want to call it i try to get my photo as tge main/first photo. That is at least my goal. If its in the first 10, i dont care as much. To me whenever i got a notice that said your photo was featured it was always in the number 1 slot. @WilfriedB @MortenCopenhagen @TerryPG
I posted a photo on Saturday and I immediately got notified of “featured photo”. Later that day I checked and found that it’s already displaying a view count on Day 1. The POI has 20 photos, of which mine is now the cover photo.
@WilfriedB @MortenCopenhagen
So over the past month, i have noticed that a few of my photos landed in the number 1 spot, or top 4 photos of the poi. I have not received any notification that tgey were featured. Perhaps, these notifications are no longer working in the US? Perhaps there is some new setting regarding this. I figured i would make this final post as to my observations regarding featured photos not showing up in notifications. Any thoughts are welcome
Good morning Steven!
The only thought I have, is the impression that the notifications in Android are not very reliable. I noticed also in other apps they sometimes don’t arrive and even though I did receive some “your photo is featured”, I don’t think, I always saw it, when a photo showed up at the top of the list.
I believe “no longer working in the US” is the least likely explanation, more likely some silently changed setting, a new version not working correctly or similar.
@StevenBerlin @MortenCopenhagen
@StevenBerlin
What are your settings at https://www.google.com/localguides/settings
@MortenCopenhagen @WilfriedB
Everything is checked judt like yours.
