This is a sad day. Probably the best automatic Maps contribution tracking site lgstats.xzy is closing down by the end of this year.
I have enjoyed and benefitted from this site on several occations to see much more details about my contributions over time than what Google offers.
The site did store your contribution stats daily if you had verified your account on the site.
But now the kind German who created the site decided to stop making contributions on Maps because they are disappointed by the way Google treats the volunteers.
What started as being fun has become largely frustrating. Contributions often don’t get accepted and no clear reasoning gets provided. Posting reviews is especially bad - you spend valuable time writing truly helpful reviews, just for some algorithm to determine that they are not worthy to be on their platform. And if they get accepted, businesses can easily get them removed if they don’t like them. At least in my country, Google usually doesn’t fight takedown requests for alleged defamation and decides to remove reviews rather than protecting the interests of their users and the integrity of their review system.
I think Google should reflect on this coming from a volunteer who has spend countless hours making it more interesting to contribute to Google Maps. Please be more considerate and appreciative towards your volunteers!
I will soon download all my data collected over the past 3 years and I’m sending a huge thank you to the anonymous creator and host of lgstats.xyz
Thanks. I’m sad to see you discontinue a valuable resource for Local Guides.
I loved this service and it is really sad to let it go. From my point of view, I can understand and sympathise with the author’s arguments. It only remains for me to say thank you for this great site.
It’s frustrating but it reveals a lot of truths @MortenCopenhagen … it’s not as motivating as being a local guide these fews years… there are no more perks and you really have to be passionate. The number of views has also dropped drastically… It’s a shame!
Morten, I was just about to write an article about this, then I found yours.
I didn’t visit LGSTATS very often, but I wanted to check something last month and found it had gone “read-only”. I was just about to make another attempt at adding myself as a verified profile, but that option was gone.
Now I look again in February and the page no longer loads at all. How sad, but I can understand the reasoning of the LG who ceased to keep it going. Let’s hope our own @AdamGT doesn’t do the same some day.
to the anonymous creator and host of lgstats.xyz
