How to find interesting content on Connect

[MortenCopenhagen]

Some Local Guides complained the redesign made it more difficult to find relevant content of high quality.

This guide is part of the Transition Tutorials.

Summary

On old Connect, trending and featured content was prominently displayed on the front page for selected categories. Now interesting content quickly gets buried under the heading Latest topics. This requires us to take action to ensure we see new content that we find interesting. Learn how in this tutorial.

Introduction

At the top of the new front page (Home), there is now a carousel displaying 6 hand-picked discussions. These are currently all from Googlers, mostly focusing on the redesign. When these are no longer needed, we can expect the carousel to also display interesting topics posted by community members.

As the categories are still new, they too take up a lot of space on the front page. This leaves very little space for the Latest topics where quality contributions get pushed down and off the front page almost immediately.

I expect the LG Team will take steps to display hot topics more prominently, but in the mean time, here are 4 strategies (A. - D.) you can apply to discover more discussions you find interesting.

A. Customize your Bell feed

At the top right, you find this tiny Bell icon.

This is where all your notifications will show up. By default, you will get notified when someone mentions you or replies to you. But it can do so much more to help you see new content that interests you.

I realized that the Bell feed is where I find most of the new topics I want to read and maybe reply to.

Displayed over the Bell icon is a red number or symbol indicating how many or what kind of notifications are waiting for you. This is currently not working properly. It has been reported and will hopefully be fixed soon.

Bell Tip A1

When you reply to something you find interesting or spend a lot of time reading, Connect will automatically set the notification intensity level to Watching for this discussion. Then next time someone replies in that particular discussion, you will get notified. You can always adjust the notification intensity level to fit your interests. And you should really try doing so.

Next to and under all discussions there is another Bell icon where you can select Watching, Tracking, Normal, or Mute. Watching is the highest notification intensity level. So choose that for things you like, and Mute for discussions of little or no interest to you.

But there is more!

Bell Tip A2

You can also set the default notification intensity level for all categories and all tags used on new Connect. This is a very powerful feature to suppress content you find irrelevant and see more of what you like.

It can be daunting to grasp all the notification options. Hence, please refer to this Transition Tutorial as needed: Understand the new notifications system

Bell Tip A3

When setting up default notification intensity levels, you can also specify to only get notifications when a new discussion is started. This is very helpful to avoid getting notified about subsequent replies.

Bell Tip A4

Set up some saved searches.

Use these steps 1) Hit your Profile picture; 2) Hit Preferences; then 3) Hit Saved Searches. This is useful if the new categories and tags are insufficient to describe your interests precisely. Saved searches are explained further here.

If you specify your interests as suggested above and continuously adjust the notification intensity levels, your Bell feed will become a treasure trove of interesting discussions.

Displayed over the Bell icon is a red number or symbol indicating how many or what kind of notifications are waiting for you. This is currently not working properly. It has been reported and will hopefully be fixed soon.

B. Hit the tags to find more interesting discussions

When you find something interesting, you can always tap/click on the mentioned tags and categories to find related discussions.

C. Use normal search on Connect

At the top of all Connect pages, you will find the search bar with this search icon:

When you start typing, you can choose if your search should cover all topics and posts or be limited to the current topic.

Use search to find content relevant to your interests. Then specify the Notification Intetensity Level to Watching to further customize your Bell feed.

D. Use advanced filter search

You can refine your search even more by hitting this icon:

At the button of the detailed search page, you can also open Advanced filters:

This is useful if you are trying to find a specific discussion.

There are even more filters available. I used them to create this link:

https://www.localguidesconnect.com/search?q=max_posts%3A1

Which will take you to a list of discussions with no replies. This is useful if you want to find new discussions in need of some feedback.

Hopefully, we will soon see more initiatives to get high-quality contributions featured more prominently on Connect.

This is the end of this tutorial.

Credit: The oil painting shown at the top is Beach at Trouville by Eugène Boudin. Painted in 1864/5. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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Return to the Transition Tutorial Index

[ShailendraOjha]

Thanks @MortenCopenhagen sir for these summarise post.

[Rushikesh_joshi]

Thank you for share this topic @MortenCopenhagen

[SoniaK]

What a wonderful tutorial, @MortenCopenhagen . Funny that I just learned about the bell button a couple of days ago, while browsing the portal. After reading this post, I realized that my self-learning was so perfect.
Thank you for this, Morten.

[AdrianLunsong]

@MortenCopenhagen Nice post as always!

With regards to the Home page, the Latest Topics feed in the bottom right corner is not meant to contain a lot of posts. At the moment, that feed consists of:

• 2x posts from Connections & celebrations
• 2x posts from Google Maps contribution stories
• 2x posts from Google Maps tips & tricks
• 2x posts from Meet-ups (1x post from Upcoming, 1x post from Recap)

The Latest Topics feed on the Home Page is meant to show posts from all categories and does follow the latest post rule. So do expect posts to come and go really quickly there! Also, I treat the Home page as an overview page and I would advise users to jump to either the Topics feed or to one of the Categories feed when they want to explore community posts.

Regarding posts getting buried very easily in any of the feeds, that is a “problem” but I also think that it’s a matter of changing our perspectives or understanding the reasoning behind it.

My thoughts below are mine and mine alone and are not official. Just to be clear. And they are directed to the community at large

The current algorithm is more organic i.e. natural in how posts are discovered and engaged on. Users have to scroll and open posts to discover, read and engage with the posts. Comments and likes do not influence the position of the post within the feed. It will influence users to read the post if they see lots of comments/likes.

The old algorithm is similar but every new comment will move the post to the top of the feed. So, engagement plays a very large part in keeping the post alive (users are able to discover it more often) and active (prior engagement invites more engagement).

In some ways, the old algorithm can create a self-perpetuating hype around a post as every new comment keeps it at the top of the feed, giving it valuable “advertising” space to gain even more comments. Until interests wane and the community moves on to the next interesting post.

Which is better? Well, I’m leaning towards the new algorithm but with conditions/caveats. I’ll explain more and briefly below:

• the feed (new algorithm) is purely chronological so there are no external influences; data presented in its “purest” form.

• a post can’t rely on new comments to give it an extra advantage to get shifted to the top of the feed and, thus, gaining even more views/comments. For me, this is a plus because, from my experience, the majority of comments on a popular post tends to be congratulatory in nature (e.g. “This is such a great post, thanks for sharing”), which is nice but doesn’t add anything useful to a discussion. It’s like people writing a short review that doesn’t offer any useful/descriptive insight (e.g. “Great place”).

• “I’ve invested so much time/effort into this post and it’s only been Liked once” is the sentiment that I’m feeling at the moment and is also my worst fear! So, here’s a tip: write shorter posts, publish more often. A long and detailed post can be split into shorter posts. Use that opportunity to create a series where you can link out to all the posts in the series; free advertising! The guidance that I’ve seen from the Local Guides team is to keep posts short; 300-500 words.

But I also think the new algorithm needs the following changes:

• the feed is currently only showing a title and an image (if there is any). This is really hard to gauge if a post is worth reading or not. I have suggested in the feedback form that snippets should be shown (maybe 2-3 lines, or more, of text).

• there should be a Previous and Next buttons added to each post so that users can easily “move” to the next post up/down a feed without having to press on the Back link. On mobile, they could implement a swipe left/right gesture too. Consumption would be so much simpler and faster.

• the Trending filter needs to be improved. It could be that because posts are not seeing lots of engagements, the Trending filter is unable to capture the popular posts. Currently, the results are showing posts that are not sorted by time posted, nor number of Likes or Comments. So, it might be sorted by Views (which is a data that’s not visible to us) or maybe by a combo of multiple factors. It would be nice to have a choice to sort by most Views, Likes or Comments.

So anyway, those are my thoughts.

Summary:

• I’m not keen to go back to the old algorithm where a post is deemed popular simply by the virtue of new comments elevating it.
• I am willing to give the new algorithm a chance but I think we need snippets showing and a faster way to move through posts with Previous/Next buttons.
• Trending filter needs an option to sort by the number of Views, Likes and Comments.
• The community should focus on writing posts that are 300-500 words long. What makes a good post? Join the discussion here.

[MortenCopenhagen]

Thanks so much for taking this discussion to a higher level.

I’m also very relieved that the days with repeated solicited small talk replies just to get trending are now over.

Have you tried configuring your Bell feed to help you find more interesting content?

I wish we had more effective strategies like customizing the Bell feed.

The feed showing what people I follow posts is not very helpful to my interests. Maybe it is helpful for other?

I hope more Local Guides will join this conversation and share their experiences with finding new interesting content. Is the follow feed helping you?

[WilfriedB]

Thanks four detailed thoughts, @AdrianLunsong!

@AdrianLunsong

Regarding posts getting buried very easily in any of the feeds, that is a “problem”

To me the biggest change compared to the old Connect, is that I rarely ever did watch the feed in the browser and rather managed my notifications coming in via email (delete or read immediately or keep for later reading).
Now, I only receive an email when mentioned with @ or some other rare occasions, I am not sure why.
Watching the feed, I have difficulties to follow up what I did read and what not.

[MortenCopenhagen]

Please try playing with the notification settings.

[AdrianLunsong]

You would want to go to your Email preferences and then adjust the settings accordingly.

Because I’ve made changes to it before, I can’t be certain if I’m correct but I think the screenshot shows the default set up. The only when away setting is probably why you don’t always get an email notification i.e. you will only get an email notification if your browser is closed when the event occured.

Also, you may be interested in setting the Activity Summary as such:

It hasn’t triggered for me yet so I have no idea how that email will look like or what will get recommended to me.

[WilfriedB]

Thanks @AdrianLunsong , but the email setting was the first thing, I looked at and they are identical to your suggestion.

[MortenCopenhagen]

I still think you need to use the default tracking preferences. They are what gives my a notification every time a new discussion is started. If I’m online on Connect it is just in the bell feed. If I’m not online an email is generated.

[AdrianLunsong]

@WilfriedB just to be clear, in case there’s a misunderstanding, you should set the only when away setting to always. The screenshot wasn’t my proposed suggestion but just what the default is for everyone.

Setting always should get you notifications through email regardless of whether you have the Connect page opened in a tab or not.

And you will need to adjust the Tracking settings if you want to trigger a notification whenever a new topic is posted for certain categories and/or tags, as Morten has suggested.

[WilfriedB]

@AdrianLunsong

set the only when away setting to always.

Thanks @AdrianLunsong I overlooked that line. Probably the better choice.

[tony_b]

Thanks for Bell Tip #4A. This sounds a bit like the search that was configured in the old Connect, but we’ll need to wait and see if I get similar results.

[tony_b]

Morten, the Follow feed was interesting because it gave me something to look at, whereas I’d started with nothing and wondered why it seemed so quiet on Connect compared to old times. But now I find that some of what comes up in the feed is useless to me.

I fully agree with the assessment by @WilfriedB as to previously working with the email flow, rather than watching a feed.