How are you all doing regarding Google Earth hits now?

[Hans ter Horst]

Even though the red markers for my panoramas now show up from around 30 to 200m above the ground (instead of needing to zoom in to 5m), I am still back to only about a third or fewer of the hits that I received before this issue started early this summer. My panoramas are nothing special so it probably makes sense that one need to zoom in a lot to view them, but I am a bit surprised that my Panoramio photos show up from a much higher altitude even though they have few hits too. At the moment it looks like nobody bothers to zoom in further when loads of Panoramio markers have popped up so all the precious panoramas I did pass by undetected. :-) Do you experience the same thing with your GE hits on your panoramas?

[Peter Steneld]

Absolutely, although I am in a rather international wise less interesting part of the world, southern Sweden, I am noticing that it is almost only those panoramas situated in the center of my City that still gets hits in GE. And that is not surprising, I mean, no one, including my self, bothers to zoom in to about 600 meters (where my GE panoramas starts to show as red markers) in the middle of nowhere even though there might be a beautiful place with a panorama to show it. So all those beautiful places in the middle of nowhere, which has been found and documented by panorama photographers, risks to be lost in GE void. Instead of poking for interest as little red markers, impossible not to click on, high up in the GE air.

[Calvin Jones]

Hi, my hits are starting to come back up.  I wonder why the red squares don't start showing up the same time that the blue photos from Panoramio.  Clusters of Panoramio photos start showing up at 1000 km.  I would think that 360 cities panoramas should be given the same priority as the Panoramio photos.

Looking at some of my photos in central Utah, they don't show up on google earth until 2.67 km.  That's a big difference from 500 km for a cluster of Panoramio photos in the same area.  Individual Panoramio photos start showing up at 4.3 km in the same area.

Anyway, I just wish that the 360 cities panoramas in the default layer behaved and had the same visibility as the Panoramio photos.

[Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji]

i have more than 100 panos there , they are not located in same
place, from east of iran to west of turkey and from caspian sea to
persian gulf :)
2 years ago , my panos was much weeker in quality but i had many
visits.
Now when i traveled to many places with better quality panoramas,the
highest visit of my pano is only 20 !
I have 2 or 3 pano with 20 visits per day and others less than 10.
What made me sad is about my recent isfahan panos :) i traveled
distance to reach there. But have about 2 or 3 visits for panos there.
This made me to forget about GE and just take photos cause i like it.

[Ronald Tichelaar]

I've got more then 100 panos selected for GE. In the good days I had more then 1000 views a day. After the GE modified the 360cities layer it went down to around 60 - 80 views a day. Now I'm back to around 100 views a day. It got a bit better when editors picks got a higher viewing height but not nearly as good as it used to be. I've got a pano on a ferry at sea that received more than 14000 views but will never be viewed as no one would ever zoom in to a sea to reach a height on witch it's icon will show... well 15 people a week do actually.

http://www.360cities.net/image/on-the-ferry-from-denmark-to-norway

[Ralf]

I have published 105 panoramas in Germany. No great art, but the most beautiful destinations in the region of Bavaria, Baden Württemberg, the Rhine, etc. Now the GE visitors decreased by 90%. My top photography had 5.000 visitors a year. And today? It is not found, because the red square is missing. On my personal website I have ca. 1..200 visitors for this panorama. This proves the interest for this location (Lorelei on the Rhine). For an amateur photographer (not a paying member) 360cities is no longer the right place, perhaps?

[Peter Steneld]

As I have understod it, this has nothing to do with whether you are a paying member or not. I hope they eventuallty can arrange some good system so it will be possible to have these red marker visible on greater altitudes...espesially in areas where it is not likely that people do zoom in anyway.

Perhaps they could have a system where red markers are visible on greater altitudes in non city areas, that would promote panoramas showing great nature fenomenon and still not clutter the cities which are already full of other markers in GE.

[Ralf]

I do not know if commercial aspects are important. Money and business .... But I want to show an example: Start Google Earth and look Frankfurt am Main Römer. There you will find red squares in a height of 4km. And then look for the photographer. You will find only one name. Strange? At this point, there are many good panoramas of other photographers. Where are its markings? Gone! 

You're right. We want to see good quality. No bullshit. And of course, 360Cities is an excellent place for us. The question is: GE selected panoramas? A mistake? Is it an error, the elimination takes a long time, indeed

[Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji]

well , what we need is visitor :) . who see our panos!!

why just Google ?! maybe 360cities can get connected to other websites too .

in other hand now days Televisions are getting Smart . it can be Good Idea for 360cities to make Section for Televisions , then we can Enter Address Directly and Enter . then see or show wonderful panoramas to others .

a family will see in living room and see beauties of world together in TV screen . ( sure it can make better feeling and all will be more attracted , but one alone sitting in front of PC cant feel ART well )

or 360cities can also try to be synced with Bing and yahoo maps . or many other places on net .

as I know 360cities is not part of Google like Panoramio . why all of our panos are forced to be published on GE ? and why there is no option that allow us select with image be on google earth or not .

Regards , Mohammad Reza

[Peter Steneld]

You are probably right, and if it wasn't for that we had good priority in GE for a while we wouldn't probably complain about the current one :) ! Anyway, I'm glad for the oportunity to be able to publish my material on 360 cities, it is a much better experience when panoramas are viewed from within 360cities.net than through GE.

[Jan Vrsinsky | 360cities.net]

Hi everybody

I won't comment on every single individual post here but just FYI we are still working with Google on further improving the visibility of our red squares. It's all about clustering, showing the right panos, visibility algorithms, and us communicating with the google team... We are very excited that they are working on it now and that 360Cities visibility will most likely be improved even further hopefully soon!

Jan

[HighDesertView]

I also saw some high hit rates for some panos before things changed.   I've noticed, then and now, that panos out in the middle of nowhere tend to be visible at greater altitudes in GE, assuming they are separated by some distance from other panos.  There's obviously some part of the algorithm that considers the local density of photos in the area.

The date of the photo also seems to matter, at least on panoromio.  I've had newer photos of mine replace older photos in the area and show up at higher altitudes.  The old panoromio photos sort of fall in "altitude" (priority) when new ones come along.  I have not noticed this with 360s however.

Now, hits are starting to climb up again slowly from the depths they plunged to after the change in the system.  I'm waiting for some more photos I took recently in the "middle of no where" to finally appear in GE.  They're google approved but not visible yet - waiting for GE to batch them in.  What I'm curious to see is whether they'll similarly show at high altitudes (Gallery view) because of the lack of other 360s in the area.  As far as I can tell the default view (red squares) are still stuck down below 5km.

I'm not a paying member, so in the end, the hits are not so important.  I've always wondered though whether the GE hits count toward the ad revenue the pro accounts get.  If so, it would seem to me the pros should pepper the landscape with photos wherever there weren't any and get the rewards of showing up at high altitude.

[HighDesertView]

Has anyone else noticed that the priority in the Gallery Layer has shuffled around lately?  Panos once visible from great altitude are not visible until a lower altitude and vice versa.  At first I thought it was a change based on publication date, but some very old panos are now visible at very high altitude that weren't before until you reached lower altitudes.

The change (random?) in priorities definitely shows up in a change in my GE stats. 

I'm not talking about the Photos layer, which still puts things at very very low altitudes.

[Zoran Strajin]

Agree... Some of my "editors pick" are now visible at very low altitude. Its a shame... Also Im noticed that several members got high priority, many of theirs panoramas appears from very high altitudes. Try to find them at very high altitudes. Its very easy! Whats the point? Business maybe? Im very disappointed

[Jan Vrsinsky | 360cities.net]

We never rate panoramas by the type of membership you have. We've never done it and we are not planning to do it, ever. I want to make this very clear. All panoramas are equal citizens no matter if you are a PRO, PLUS or FREE - no matter what you pay.

Many months and years ago it used to be only Editors' Picks and number of views that mattered. That has slowly changed. We are now ranking panoramas according to how good they are - being an Editors' Pick is only one of many attributes we use. The algorithm has become very complex and clever.

One of the attributes we now also weight in is how old each panorama is - when it was first published and taken. This will make sure fresh content is seen better. Therefore it is only natural that panoramas that you used to see prominently will slowly fade away. I understand this might upset some members that were promoted when our Google Earth layer was static but the new system is very good for 360Cities in general and increases the attractiveness and value for viewers and for our content layer. In the end this new system is also very good for all photographers publishing to 360Cities, although some might disagree now. :)

[HighDesertView]

Thanks for the update.  I can't say I was ever disappointed, but the altitudes at which panos appear does seem confusing.  If I wanted to reverse engineer your algorithm by looking at panos and figuring out what they shared in common (recent date, location, quality, etc.) I don't think I could figure it out.

For example, in my part of the American West, the first panos to show up at 3600 km altitude are from 2008 and 2009, only one of which is an outdoor picture of the geologic wonders of the area.  The other two are urban settings, one an interior.  Oddly enough, no panos appear in the continental US, while a few start popping up in Mexico at around 3900km.  Poor Canada is out in the cold until around 3100 km.

Of course, I don't browse at super high altitudes forever.  Eventually I zoom in, but it is nice to see more at higher altitude so that I can bounce around.

Does your algorithm factor in geographic isolation?  So for example, an older pano far removed from any neighbor would still appear at high altitude, despite its age?  Obviously, there's a tradeoff with clutter - you don't want too many red dots at any altitude.  Panoromio may be a bit overdone in this regard.  But it doesn't make much sense to me that there can be large gaps in the 360s until you zoom in to lower altitudes.

Does your algorithm produce the final priority/altitude as it appears in GE?  Is there a chance that GE is applying their own priority, modifying yours after the fact?

I'm assuming that you're not doing this entirely manually, but that you probably take several measurements (date, location, quality, hits, etc.) which are then fed to a formula.  Any chance we could see the formula?  (Geek here!)

[HighDesertView]

I wanted to ping this question again because I am curious about the priority algorithm.  As a free member, I don't really have any stakes in the game, but is there any reason we couldn't share the formula for discussion and suggestion?  

For example, I don't think panos should always be phased out with time if they are the only pano within some X miles/kilometers of another pano.  If someone ever does a 360 from the top of Mt. Everest, I don't think it should ever go away just because it gets old!  Not unless someone else comes along and does a newer 360 from the top of Everest.

Could we have more discussion of this priority formula?  I can't imagine why it would need to be kept secret.

[Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji]

Hi, the problem is they dont even use this formula.
For example in Iran, the lastest panos are mine, ( also the latest
editor's picks) . But old panos are showing in distance.
Maybe resolution is another matter, or another thing in their
formula, cause my panos are taken with 8mm fisheye
.
I think 360 panos on 360cities are mostly amazing, there must be some
creative ways to share them. Maybe adding some parts like rating,
have good gallery of editor's picks, user friendly website design, I
mean sth like 1x.com.
I am sure many people love amazing panos.