Google made an upgrade to its Local Guides feature, which offers thrilling and exciting perks to beat Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Foursquare in terms of quality reviews for local businesses and gaining visitors.
Local Guides offers rewards for "locals" or people who upload photos and post reviews, fill in information, and give response to basic questions through Google Maps. According to Google, Local Guides is "a global community that helps you explore the world while earning perks."
Google users must sign up first on Local Guides then go to Google Maps to write a review and upload photos. To check the user's review progress, the reviewer must select contributions in Google Maps.
Users gain points for each review or contribution to Local Guides. Higher points equal bigger rewards. The top Level 5 Local Guides users who earned 500+ points may receive an invite for Google's inaugural summit in 2016. Level 4 users with up to 400 points will have 1 free terabyte capacity storage for Google Drive. Level 3 entitles a user with a Local Guides badge, Level 2 gives preliminary access to latest Google products, and Level 1 allows users in selected countries to join exclusive contests to win amazing Google devices.
According to Time, through this campaign, Google's task to collect information on several local restaurants in different countries followed by rewards, could encourage users to contribute more. However, Wikipedia also gained more than a thousand of volunteers to provide and collect information and found it highly efficient without any form of rewards. Google, on the other hand, with a billion dollar earnings can offer greater incentives.
Google's approach to reward Local Guides users for quality reviews and uploaded photos could be more effective and successful.
The rewards given to Local Guides users will increase the accuracy and efficiency of Google Maps. Once the user search for a local place or a restaurant not known in the city but popular to the locals, detailed reviews will show up quite like the way Yelp, TripAdvisor and Foursquare gave the experience in which they provide information for the local spots.