Hello everyone! It's time to send another sign of life and take you behind the scenes of Local Guides Ranking.
As some of you might have noticed, we had massive problems automatically retrieving profile data from Google Maps until about a month and a half ago. This caused us quite a few headaches. But: Good news! We were able to fix the issues, and the retrieval is running absolutely stably again.
This leads us directly to the next point: A huge thank you to you! Since the site is reliably getting its data again, it is amazing how many people actually use it. Your interest motivates us enormously.
From the Brake to the Gas Pedal
Now that the data supply is back up, I (the programming part of our two-person team) could finally concentrate on further development and, above all, optimization again.
Maybe you've already noticed: I have heavily optimized the site speed over the last few weeks. Due to the increasing traffic, we simply hit a technical limit with our current, simple web hosting (which I booked at the beginning and had been sufficient until now).
That's why I spent the entire last weekend migrating the whole site to a new cloud server. (If you readers don't know what to make of this, good - it is significantly more work than it sounds like ;-))
A Little Transparency Note: I don't need to make a secret of it. The webspace was hosted by Hetzner, a German hosting provider. Accordingly, I also booked the cloud server with Hetzner and I cannot stress enough how thrilled I am with it. The setup, administration, and performance are truly perfect. Hetzner has solved this really well. If you are looking, feel free to check out their offer. Via the following link, you will receive a €20 promo code upon registration: Hetzner Cloud.
LocalGuides-Ranking in Figures
Accordingly, things are currently going well with the site. A few current statistics:
- 75,706 profiles.
- All profiles combined have 2.55 trillion views and 253.87 million uploaded photos.
- There are 13,305,891 data records stored in the database for all profiles. Just these daily snapshots currently take up 2.2 GB of storage space and approx. 13 MB are added daily. That sounds like little. But in the long run and with an increasing number of profiles, this will very soon become very powerful.
- In total, our database is currently 6.4 GB in size.
- Over 10.4 million page views since September 2024
Further statistics can be found at our Insights.
Outlook: A Fresh Coat of Paint
Currently, I am reworking the design. It is supposed to become more modern. The original design was just quickly thrown together when the crazy idea for the site popped into our heads. But as already mentioned, features take a little longer for us, since I program alone (and only on the side).
Nevertheless, we are happy about any kind of feedback. Feel free to send it directly to our email. (The function to log in and open discussions is still coming. But that is more work and other things simply have priority on the site right now).
We rely on your feedback and your ideas.
Best regards,
Your team from Local Guides Ranking (LGR)