I contributed a photo on Google Maps that has seen over 44,000 views over the past month. I'm having a hard time understanding why it has so many views. Ostensibly, you'd need to look at the exact location where I posted the photo to even be aware of it.
This is the thumbnail view of the picture from "My Contributions" on Google Maps:
I'm wondering if there is a way to see a list of referrers to that photo, or if there is a place either on Google Maps, or elsewhere, that I can see more details about a photo than is shown on the map… for instance is the photo stored somewhere like Google Drive or Picasa?
I'd like to see if these 40k+ views are really from people looking at this restaurant. I like the restaurant and everything, but the other photos have hundreds of views, not many thousands, like this particular one, which is making me wonder if someone pasted a link to it somewhere else.
As of July 19th, 2019, the photo now has 1.4 million views:
One year later (2020-10-20), the photo has only gained a few thousand extra views, and is now at 1,487,448 views.
Best Answer
I have seen this happen where :
My photo somehow works its way to being in the 'default' list for its location. If it sits as 'the' default photo, the views must just roll in. I'm not sure if just landing on the 'location' home page gives you that 'view' count or if the photo actually needs to be clicked.
The location is somewhere on Google Maps that would be linked to navigation, eg a road number. I have roadside images into the hundreds of thousands and I put them down to navigation hits (as they would be unlikely to be searched for directly on Maps).
As to detailed stats, I haven't been able to find anything beyong what the 'My Contributions' entry on Maps gives you.