Google is one of the world’s largest and most ubiquitous technology companies, used by billions of people every day to communicate, plan activities and search the web.
Since 2014, EVG has worked with Google to create richer and more immersive content for this global audience, with a particular emphasis on travel planning. With our large, far-flung team of writers, editors and local experts, we have crafted everything from punchy captions for Google Maps to exhaustive, app-based public transportation guides for travelers on the go.
If you’ve booked a restaurant or fleshed out an itinerary over the past few years, there’s every chance you’ve stumbled on our content.
100000
Google Maps captions
compelling travel experiences
Project Highlights
- A core team of freelance writers and editors trained and mentored by EVG
- Content ranging from 40-character captions to full-blown app-based tourist guides
- Eclectic range of projects encompassing high-visibility content and experimental pilots, covering 3,500+ destinations
- From describing the vibe of a destination and the best things to do there to knowing what buses go to the airport
- 700 contributors spread across 160 countries
City neighborhoods around the world
For the Neighborhoods project, EVG’s global team of sharp writers and savvy local experts crafted 10,800+ descriptions of buzzing downtowns, leafy suburbs, and everything in between. This is high-visibility content, displayed on Google Maps and the Google Search front page, so factual accuracy and cultural sensitivity were paramount.
- Hired and trained a global network of local experts to ensure the accuracy and salience of our content.
- Multiple writing challenges: a 40-character headline conveying the neighborhood “at a glance;” a 100-character overview capturing its essence and main points of interest; a 420-character essay painting a broader picture.
- Thoughtfully assigning tags and keywords to each neighborhood so that Google can optimize search results and recommendations.
- Drafting neighborhood boundaries to be displayed on Google Maps, requiring in-depth research of official sources and some cartographic skills
Populating Google Maps
The Place Summaries project showcases our team’s productivity and appetite for producing high volumes of quality content within a narrow time frame. Zoom in on Google Maps and you’ll quickly see our work — 40-character headlines and 100-character overviews describing points of interest ranging from vast national parks to back-alley noodle bars. This project also demonstrates our international reach, with a high proportion of the content written in German and Italian for those respective markets.
What Was Involved?
- Writing and editing over 100,000 Google Maps captions in intense 2-3 month bursts.
- Managing an international, multilingual team of freelance contributors.
- Adhering and contributing to a rigorous style guide and lexicon to ensure that descriptions are objective, accurate and evergreen.
- Onboarding and training new hires to use Google’s content management system.
