An inside review of Google City Experts

I am a Google city expert. What is that, one might wonder? The next question is how does it work and what pros and cons are there, if any? In this article you will find some of my personal thoughts and opinions of the program, together with room for improvement and potential solutions.

What is Google City Experts?

Google City Experts is a community that inspires enthusiasts to share their opinion of local places in writing, but also adding on photos on occasion, either through Google Maps, Google search or Google+ on either stationary or mobile devices. Reviews are displayed in various places; on personal Google+ profiles it may look like this:

Why apply to become a City Expert?

The reasons I decided to apply were several. Foremost, I enjoy using software by Google and saw a need for more visible reviews online. Everyone I know happily uses Maps, but how many bother to scroll down to add a sentence about the places they visit, even in a crowded place as Amsterdam?

How does it work and what pros/cons are there?

Four months ago, I was accepted as part of the City expert program and a dedicated community promised "exclusive offers" (firstly communicated through contacts on social media, later sent in an email.) The City Expert program criteria were:

• That you have written 50 high quality reviews.
• A continuous minimum of 5 high quality reviews published on a monthly basis to keep your Google city expert status.

Currently, I am over 200 reviews and steadily increasing. There are a couple of thoughts after being part of the community for a while. To first mention cons, there would be some fixable ones:

• Language barriers. Being a Swedish expat in Amsterdam (NL), the program and most of its communication was offered in Dutch which I found somewhat disabling seeing as my Dutch is limited. Mostly, the community members kindly replied to posts in English, but on occasion swapped over to Dutch.
• The multiple communities could be better structured. The Dutch City Expert community has a decent amount of activity, despite the modest amount of members. However, language-wise can be somewhat confusing. You can be a great City Expert that suck in Dutch but miss out. What is a bigger problem though is The generic City Experts community. It mostly has questions and/or content specific to city, region, country or even continent. A problem occurs when the community grows too big, or when the content is not targeted enough. The communities are a great access, but can benefit from rethinking. Perhaps it would be beneficial to create a new community focused on specific locations but with English as language.
• Where the exclusive offers went. Although four months passed, I am yet to see any exclusive offers from Google other than that my Maps-making seemed to enjoy speedy approval. There was one event during vacation time when I naturally was out travelling. For this reason, and because I think there may be many other City Experts in the same seat, Google could perhaps rethinking events to be across borders. That would mean if you happen to be in a country where there is an event, you could join even if it is not your home base. The increased networking this would trigger is in my eyes completely worth it.
• Risk of being fined for contributions. In France, a reviewer was sued for leaving a negative review primarily based on a title encouraging others to not visit the restaurant. The content of the review was valid and explained in detail why the headline was there, in my opinion. Applying some reason, anyone that is looking for a review of a restaurant would click on the headline to read more about why it is there. This is France and one notable case. Nevertheless, it bothers me that I should risk being fined when leaving reviews to help the greater good. Ultimately, leaving a review in France that is anything but nice just seems like a silly risk. The reviewer was not known as a City Expert. Google could, however, back up their conditions for City Experts with legal support in case of fines.

There are some pros too, naturally:

• The people. City Experts are great ambassadors and there is always someone willing to offer a hand, be it input, a good discussion or just a comment. The engagement level is high, knowledge likewise and the group is so far a great resource. Does not hurt to see colorful foodie pictures in between the discussions either.
• SEO bliss. I love the fact that all Google contacts that are logged in can easily spot my reviews, should they search for related search queries. The relevance has on several occasions triggered my friends to mention how they have seen and surprisingly read the reviews, which is why I can confirm it to be effective.
  
• Supporting local businesses that deserve it. It takes you one minute to open Maps, find the business you are visiting, scroll down to the review and add a line with your star rating. The fact that I on a regular basis take a photo of the place to remember to review it later when I want to wait with reviewing triggers friends to ask about why and they get the idea. Hopefully we can trigger more people into engaging.

All in all, it has been an interesting experience to be part of the community so far. Hopefully some of the points for improvement will be taken into consideration and more of you people out there can apply to join!