Does ingress likes and photos still have any impact on pogo gym choice creation? And if on one pokestop i have like 3 photos and every photo has 2 likes i have a total score of 9?
Not current votes, but if Ingress votes were trapped to the photo way, way back when Niantic switched from using Ingress as the database to Lightship, then those still appear to count. It can take more votes than expected to promote a different photo to be the one displayed on the disc spinner.
The photos that were added to the Wayspot before the split from Ingress in May 2025 will stay, but no new ones will be added from Ingress.
In regards to Gym creation there seems to be different opinions.
IMO: I have seen unexpected stops being the 1 that becomes a Gym, it’s possible that there is some other factor at play…
- Showcase stops will not become a Gym.
- Property Owners can restrict to “Stop Only” instead of removal.
IMO: Gym creation is no longer decided just on photo votes.
Apologies, I went to grab this link and got sidetracked. I answered in terms of changing the disc photo, because Niantic has called trying to manipulate which becomes the gym to be abuse in the past. Here is a topic on this forum where this was discussed. From PokeStop to Gym?
Ingress likes havent had any impact for quite a while, well before the split, on what becomes the gym. When it comes to gym creation I genuinely think its random now. Ive had the brand new pokestop become the gym on more than one occasion, the ones I see most are the oldest stop becoming the gym, but other times I’ve had pokestops, that were the middle of the road for age, had almost zero foot traffic and only 1 photo with 0 likes on it become the gym, no logic at all lol