Learning to be a Reviewer
(50 Reviews in on Google Maps)
I wrote my first Google Review in Google Maps while at a cafe in an industrial estate in Brisbane (Australia). The cafe was offering a small discount on the bill for people who left a review, so I joked with the group that I was sure I could bash one out and I did.
Afterwards I started to get some encouraging feedback from Google, people were reading it and viewing the photos. These were in the form of a few simple automated emails from Google saying my “review was helping in a big way.” From a learning perspective I was interested in learning about how a company like Google was using gamification and other incentives to encourage the behaviours it wanted displayed, so I thought I might write some more reviews and learn more about how their model worked.
When I started doing more reviews through Google Maps, I came up with a simple plan: I would do a review whenever I went out to eat somewhere as a nice, as a way to keep a record of the places we went to eat locally, and while we were travelling around the world. I thought this would be more useful than starting a separate food blog for no one to read, or merely posting photos of my meals on Instagram, and it would allow me to learn more about the functionality and features of the Google platform.
Recently, I posted my 50th review, so I thought it was a good milestone moment to pause and reflect on what I’ve learned about Google's use of badges and points, as well as how they are using gamification and other elements to encourage engagement and interactions. I thought I might also consider some potential improvements for encouraging regular contributions of value.
The Power of Badges and Points
Google's use of badges and points is a clever strategy to motivate users to contribute reviews. As a reviewer, earning points for each review, photo, and edit provides a tangible sense of progress and achievement. Badges, awarded for reaching certain milestones, add a gamification element that keeps contributors engaged in the early stages. The excitement of moving from a Level 1 Local Guide to a Level 5 Local Guide might sound silly, but in the early stages, as you move through the early levels relatively easily, I have to admit that it did become a motivator. I am now almost a Level 7, and the gap between 6 and 7 is the largest gap in points between badges so far (see Figure 2 below). At this stage, having written 50 detailed reviews, including photos, videos and captions - the rewards so far have remained entirely points based and virtual.
Google does say that rewards and benefits such as early access to new Google features happen (see Figure 2), as part of being a reviewer who is trusted. But I haven’t noticed that I have been recommended more when contributing at a higher level, there have been no discounts or other financial incentives so far. I also haven’t received invites to go and review new local establishments or creating special events for reviewers in areas haven’t happened yet.
So while there is a vague promise of rewards, and early access to features, I have not observed or accessed anything like this yet. I’m not sure if they are a actually a thing, or what Google really thinks about doing non-virtual rewards for contributions, but 50+ detailed reviews in, and nothing like that has happened. I think Google are doing the lowest possible level of this sort of thing, and aren’t necessarily investing or thinking about it as something of value. As part of a motivation matrix, rewards are a basic strand in a much larger rope - but it would be good if someone they paid to do this thinking piloted or tried out some of these ideas.
What Google Does Well
1. Gamification: the points system and badges are effective in creating a sense of rewarding the behaviours that they want, especially in the early stages of making contributions. It encourages reviewers to contribute more regularly and do things like write longer reviews, add captions to photos of dishes, include more photos and videos and other positive actions will get you more points.
2. Visibility: reviews on Google are highly visible and I am sure the the cumulation of negative reviews over time can have an impact on a business's reputation. The visibility includes emails they send to contributors that ensures that you become aware how many times your reviews and photos are being viewed and that people are finding your contributions helpful and that it has some value and meaning (see Figure 1).
3. User-Friendly Interface: Google's interface for writing and submitting reviews in the Maps app is straightforward and user-friendly, making the process fairly quick and easy. I tend to write mine in a Google Doc first, but the interface is easy enough to use and interact with.
4. Integration with Google Maps: the integration of reviews with Google Maps enhances the overall user experience, making it easy to find and review places on the go. I use the Maps to get places and then you get reminders afterwards asking you to review the place, this integration and prompting is helpful for encouraging the behaviour they want.
5. Recognition: regular emails from Google, acknowledging your contributions and progress, telling you people are reading them, liking them helps to keep you motivated and reminds you about contributing.
6. Acknowledgments from Restaurants: I have received responses from several restaurants (Figure 3 includes one), thanking me for my review and being nice. That made me feel good and helped motivate me to keep going. I worked in hospitality so don’t weaponise my reviews, I only write them for places I want to remember going to because I had a nice time and I want to record it and share it.
Areas for Improvement
While Google's approach in gamification and engagement to encourage positive behaviours from reviewers, there are several areas where they could improve to encourage more frequent and honest reviews:
1. Enhance Reviewer Feedback Mechanism: I’ve had some issues with some reviews not being accepted and needing to change them to get them posted. From my perspective there was nothing wrong or offensive or anything like that about the review, I’ve even had to escalate some and they were later published (Figure 3 shows appeal approval). Providing more detailed feedback on why certain reviews are flagged or removed would help reviewers understand and adhere to community guidelines better, the link to the guidelines is broad and isn’t super helpful in these cases.
The guidance and feedback provided to reviewers generally about what makes a good review or what things people reading reviews like to know isn’t great. They have introduced different emojis for readers to respond with, but this functioanlity is fairly basic. While the way you get points as a reviewer targets certain actions and behaviours, if I got some feedback about what I’m doing well or what I could do better, it would encourage me to do better. This could be done using AI these days, but when learning or coaching people towards certain actions and behaviours feedback is a crucial component and it’s not a strong element of Google’s approach here.
2. Improve Mechanisms for Constructive Criticism: there could be other ways to encourage reviewers to provide balanced feedback by highlighting well-written, detailed reviews that include both positives and areas for improvement. Things that shouldn’t stop people from going, or wouldn’t stop you from going back, but that you’d like to mention or highlight. This could be extended to maybe even having a public post option and and a way for reviewers to suggest areas of improvement to the restaurant only without it needing to potentially be viewed as a public attack to the place.
Letting a place know that something wasn’t quite right outside of a public declaration. A way to pass on some minor positive suggestions might be helpful to a restaurant, without it being seen as a criticism that could negatively impact their patronage in a difficult industry and economy. Even if this was only an option for higher level reviewers, it might be cool. Currently things that aren’t public don’t get points or rewards, and things that they flag as not following guidelines don’t either.
3. Local Events and Meetups: organising local events or meetups for reviewers could connect and strengthen the community and provide additional motivation to contribute. There is a ‘Local Guides Connect’ site, but I haven’t seen anything anywhere near me, I haven’t seen any in big cities like London either. This seems to be all on the Guides themselves to organise and drive and there is no explanation of the benefits or rewards of going to all this effort except to contribute more to Google Maps and things that benefit Google directly, not the reviewers outside of “making friends”. During the next phase of this journey I will try and engage more with the ‘Local Guides Connect’ - but it seems Google themselves are reluctant to lean into this space too much.
4. Improved Points System and Incentives: in the early part of the points system the gaps between the levels is small, this incentivises you early to contribute. Between Level 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 the point differentials are huge and it almost works in reverse, as a disincentive and without other benefits or incentives it feels impossible to get to these higher levels (see Figure 2). While the points gaps increase, the badge reward is an extra point on the star inside your orange circle, and I am not sure how much readers pay attention to this, or how much higher level reviews influence the algorithm or if they just order the reviews by most recent.
I’m doing this for other reasons for now, but it seems odd and arbitrary to make the gaps so wide and hard to attain when there doesn’t seem to be much point or information about why you want to get to these levels. The amount of effort that goes into taking the photos, writing the reviews, uploading them feels undervalued by Google. They are obviously more happy to have a volume of contributions from a smattering of rapid fire occasional contributors than they are in building a network of people who they actively want to spend time and effort on to make them feel valued.
5. Rewards: the current share price of Google (Alphabet Inc.) is approximately $158.37, and the total market capitalisation of the company is estimated to be around $1.94 trillion. It is one of the most valuable companies in the world. It could reward reviewers and restaurants more than it currently does, and not just with food or drink vouchers - but that would be one way to start. It is clear that it does not want to bias reviews, but it could potentially reward restaurants who are getting a lot of good reviews or reviewers who write good reviews with discounts or rewards for their paid services - that could potentially support their marketing and business costs in a difficult economy and industry by reducing the costs of advertising and other admin, incentivising their use of Google’s paid services. Google's paid services include:
1. Google Workspace
2. Google Ads
3. YouTube Premium
4. YouTube TV
5. Google One
6. Google Play Pass
7. Google Play Movies & TV
8. Google Domains
9. Google Nest Aware
10. Google Fi
I know you don’t get to be a trillion dollar company necessarily by giving things away, but it is actually how Google has done it historically. Our data, information and insights are an integral part of their value. Encouraging businesses and people who review them to opt in to more of Google’s paid services as part of a “reward” doesn’t seem like it would be too hard for them. It would definitely encourage me to keep engaging with their products and to review a wider variety of things potentially.
As a company they regularly try and give away free months of access to lots of their products to all humans on the planet. It seems obvious and disingenous to not be adding additional rewards and benefits to those who are actively engaging and contributing to the value of Google Maps and adding detail and richness to Google’s search. This seems like an easy change they could make. Writing a review because you go bad service is one thing, but to write 50+ or to go further and progress to Level 7-10 is a massive amount of effort for an individual to make purely for a more pointy digital star (see Figure 2).
The Consumer Perspective of Reviews
As a consumer, I've often found the disparity between reviews amusing and perplexing. It’s not uncommon to see a one-star "worst ever" review followed by a five-star "best ever" one for the same place. These extremes highlight the subjective nature of reviews and the importance of reading multiple perspectives, but it also shows that most people doing it aren’t necessarily thinking of themselves as reviewers, more as adhoc contributors or mudslingers. I am not sure how helpful some of these types of reviews are to helping consumers or businesses.
As someone who studied film, theatre and literature - I am aware of reviewing as a profession, I admire some reviewers who made it an artform in its own right. Names like: Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, Kenneth Tynan, Harold Bloom, Michiko Kakutani, Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Ruth Reichl, Jonathan Gold, Robert Hughes, and John Berger come to mind. My favourite reviewer of all time is the fictional Anton Ego from Ratatouille, when he flashes back to being a child as he eats, is one of my favourite moments in film.
I’m definitely not trying to compare myself to the great reviewers, and not delusional enough to think Google Maps Reviews are the equivalent of the New Yorker, The Observer or Rolling Stone in their heydays. But when I decided to do it, I wanted to pay the craft it’s dues. I wanted to write honest, slightly ‘gonzo’ style reviews that felt worth your time to read. I am primarily celebrating places that I think are serving good food and acknowledge the enormous amount of thought, hard work and effort that goes into serving great food in a great environment.
I’ve only got 21 followers so far, but I like that some people have wanted to do that after reading the reviews, and some have read many. If Google could find ways to encourage readers to do this or suggest and support contributors wanting to build some sort of audience outside of writing well and crossing fingers that could be helpful. It is not a common practice really to follow people as contributors on Google Maps, certainly not in the same way it it is done on social media, but that could change over time if the culture and community of it was to shift.
Writing Honest and Detailed Reviews
Working in hospitality and running restaurants is challenging, and I wanted my reviews to reflect that. Here are some tips I've followed to ensure my reviews are honest and detailed:
1. Be Specific: instead of vague statements like "the food was good," I describe the specific dishes, flavours, textures and other things I liked or observed when I visit.
2. Context Matters: I like providing some narrative context about my visit, such as the time of day or the reason or occasion behind my visit, as I think it makes it more interesting and helps readers understand my experience better.
3. Balanced Feedback: highlighting both strengths and some areas for improvement without being nasty or attacking a place makes the review more credible and useful. I don’t bother reviewing bad restaurants but that said, I don’t go to many. But I also like to not just write reviews full of glowing hyperbole that makes them seem like the owner wrote it under a pseudonym.
4. Empathy and Respect: I often think about the staff when I’m at a restaurant, as I used to one, so it makes sense to me to acknowledge the hard work of chefs and staff shows respect for their efforts. Knowing how hard their jobs are and how hard it is to do what a chef does to the quality and consistency they do it every day encourages me to do the reviews. Part of me hopes that if they do read them they will be pleased with what they read and maybe show it to other members of the team. I hope it encourages them that their work is valued and appreciated. Some of the responses I have gotten from restaurants (see Figure 2) suggest this is the case, and that I find encouraging.
Conclusion
My time so far contributing reviews on Google has been enjoyable. From the initial goal of keeping a personal record through to exploring the potential of becoming a contributor to a large online community has been interesting. I look forward to contributing more and seeing how the review landscape evolves between now and review 100.
If you have a Google account and are interested in trying it out, I would encourage you to do it. It is empowering to share your experiences – which I assume is why someone who has a bad experience fires up and is compelled to share it, and let the place and everyone else know about it. It is probably a special kind of person who does enough to move through the levels, even to the level I’m at now.
Follow me
If you want to follow my reviewing as it continues, you can do that by clicking here. I think the writing and the photos are good, and having them to remember my travels and experiences is working well for me so far.
Here are my 20 favourite reviews and places I have been blessed to visit so far. They are listed in the order I reviewed them. I hope they show a variety, a quality and a slight evolution in my writing: