With the rise of local searches on the internet and the increase in Google My Business listings, Google partly lost control over what was and was not published on Google Maps. Here, the idea arose to create a super user moderator called Google Local Guides.
With this, what was intended from the beginning was to provide integrity to the information offered in Google Maps so that users who browse the APP would find real reviews from “trustworthy” people.
For this reason, the idea of a premium community was developed (although there is no cost to belong to it) that would be responsible for providing clarity and verified information to Google My Business listings.
Logically, people do not offer their time for free as a general rule. Therefore, initially, this program encouraged its users to write reviews by offering them small Google products for free, such as free storage space in the cloud or free streaming music services.
This has meant that since the Local Guides program came to light in 2015, the barrier of 50 million Local Guides users on Google has been surpassed. A complete success.
What is Google Local Guides?
Google Local Guides is a Google program to creates a community of super users who are responsible for verifying that the information offered by Google Maps is correct and contributing to it.
That is, these users will be in charge of giving their assessment of each local business they find through their reviews and opinions, with their opinions being more important than those of the rest of the users who barely collaborate and are not Local Guides.
This system helped Google filter out those users who spammed Google My Business listings or those who only gave negative reviews to the competition.
It also helped Google discover new places that were interesting to the public, but that were not a business in themselves, such as places, monuments of interest in certain cities, etc.
All this information offered for free by users has meant that Google can almost certainly show us the best places to eat in a city, the monuments that must be seen in a town, the hidden corners for mass tourism, etc.
This has led to the fact that in sectors such as tourism, the Featured Snippets offered in Google search results are direct information published by its users that help other users in the same situation.
What is the purpose of being a Google Local Guide?
Being a Google Local Guide has a series of advantages, such as:
