Google Maps photos: which ones customers actually look at

Aug 22
3 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Introduction

For a business with a physical location, the photographs on your map listing are often seen more than your website. They are what someone checks before deciding to visit.

They are also usually a mixture of one image from the day the listing was created and whatever customers have uploaded since, which is a poor way to represent a business.

1. Google Maps photos are viewed in a predictable order

People look for the same things, roughly in sequence: what the outside looks like, what the inside looks like, what you sell, and whether it looks busy or empty.

The exterior matters most and is most often missing. Someone deciding whether to visit needs to recognise the building from the street, in the conditions they will arrive in.

Cover that sequence deliberately rather than uploading whatever is available. Ten photographs answering the four questions beat forty of your products.

2. Take the exterior shot properly

One photograph does more work than any other, and it has specific requirements.

Shot from the pavement at the angle someone approaching would see, in daylight, with the signage legible and enough surrounding context to be recognisable. If you have a difficult entrance, show the entrance.

Add an evening version if you open at night. Places look substantially different after dark, and a customer who cannot recognise the building drives past.

3. Show the interior as it actually is

Interior photographs set expectations, and mismatched expectations produce complaints regardless of quality.

Photograph it at a normal time, with normal lighting and normal occupancy. An empty room shot at nine in the morning is technically better and misleads people about atmosphere.

If space is tight, show that. Customers who arrive expecting something larger are disappointed by an accurate business.

4. Photograph what you sell, plainly

Product and service photographs should be honest rather than styled.

The dish as it is served, the finished job, the room after cleaning, the actual products on the shelf. Heavily styled images invite comparison with reality, and the comparison rarely favours the styling.

Take them on a phone in daylight near a window. That is sufficient, and for map listings it often performs better than studio work because it reads as genuine.

5. Include people, with permission

Photographs with staff in them consistently outperform empty spaces.

They signal that the business is open, staffed and welcoming, and they help a nervous first-time customer picture the visit. Ask permission from anyone identifiable, and re-check when staff change.

Avoid photographing customers without explicit consent. A busy room shot from behind, where nobody is identifiable, achieves the same effect without the problem.

6. Upload regularly rather than in one batch

Freshness appears to matter, and it certainly matters to the person reading the listing.

Add a few images each month rather than thirty once. It keeps the listing current, reflects seasonal changes, and means the top photographs are recent.

Attach it to the monthly routine so it happens without anyone deciding. Two or three photographs a month is a trivial commitment that most businesses still do not make.

7. Handle customer photographs sensibly

Customers can upload their own images, and those often appear prominently.

You cannot remove them for being unflattering. You can report images that breach the platform's rules — irrelevant content, other businesses, offensive material — and those are usually removed.

The practical response to poor customer photographs is to upload better ones consistently, so the overall impression is accurate. If customer photographs repeatedly show something you would rather they did not, that is generally a business observation rather than a photography problem.

8. Name the files and check what appears first

Two small technical points worth doing once.

Give files descriptive names before uploading rather than leaving camera defaults. It costs nothing and adds context.

Then look at your listing as a stranger, on a phone, and see which images appear first. The order is not fully under your control, and if the leading image is a poor one, uploading several strong alternatives is the available remedy. Check this quarterly — it changes.

Conclusion

Cover the four things people look for in order: exterior from the street in daylight, interior at a normal time, what you sell photographed plainly, and staff with permission.

Upload a few images monthly rather than in bulk, name the files descriptively, report only rule-breaking customer photographs while out-publishing the rest, and check quarterly which image appears first.