Questions Google Maps Updated on
Your 360 tour on Google Maps and Street View
The short answer
Through Street View Studio, Google's free upload environment.
You no longer need a certification for it since Google ended the Street View Trusted programme at the end of 2024. What you do need is imagery that meets the technical requirements: a correct equirectangular projection, sufficient resolution, accurate position data and panoramas that are linked to one another. In addition, your business needs a verified Google Business Profile to be able to attach the imagery to it.
- Publishing goes through Street View Studio, free and without certification.
- Street View Trusted ended at the end of 2024; the badge no longer means anything.
- Panoramas must be equirectangular, with accurate position data.
- Attaching to your business requires a verified Google Business Profile.
Why you would want this
On your own website you reach people who have already found you. On Google Maps you appear in the place where people search for what you do in the area where you are.
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That is a different kind of visitor: someone who does not yet know you exist.
There is another reason that is mentioned less often and that came out of our own research. Your Google Business Profile is the heaviest lever you have, and 360 imagery on it is one of the few things that sets you apart from the neighbours there.
For local searches in the Netherlands, the answer is almost always determined by the map block, not by an AI answer.
What has to be right technically
2:1
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Equirectangular imagery with an aspect ratio of 2:1. That is the format in which a sphere is unfolded onto a rectangle, and it is what a 360 camera delivers by itself.
- Sufficient resolution. Google applies a minimum, and imagery just above it looks accordingly on Maps. Our captures of more than 20,000 pixels wide are comfortably above it.
- Position data. Every panorama needs to know where it stood. Outdoors that comes from GPS, indoors it does not, and then the viewpoints are placed on the floor plan. This is where things most often go wrong with indoor captures.
- Links between panoramas. Without connections you get loose spheres instead of a route you can walk through.
What has to be right organisationally
You need a verified Google Business Profile at the address where the capture was made. Without verification you can upload imagery, but not attach it to your business, and then it sits loose on the map instead of with your listing.
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Make sure the business details are identical everywhere: the same name, the same address, the same phone number on your site, on Google, and in other places where your business appears. That sounds like a detail, but it is exactly where matching listings gets stuck.
What happens afterwards
Google processes the imagery and blurs faces and number plates. That happens automatically and it is not flawless, certainly not indoors.
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Whatever really must not be in it, you remove before you upload.
Publication is not instant. There is processing time in between, and imagery can be rejected if it does not meet the requirements. Once published, the imagery also stays up if you later switch tour builder: it then sits with Google, not with your supplier.
Anyone may upload, and not everything stays up.
And Street View Trusted?
Street View Trusted was a certification Google gave to photographers who had put enough approved 360 captures on Maps: a threshold for volume, not a judgement of craftsmanship.
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Google ended the programme at the end of 2024. So you do not need the badge to get onto Google Maps, and a provider still showing it as a quality mark says something about how recent their website is and nothing about their captures. Ask instead for a tour you can walk through yourself, and check whether the image stays sharp when you zoom in.
What Omnitour does here
Publishing to Google Maps and Street View is available on request with us: we do not yet show an example of it on this site, so we do not promise here how it goes.
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In the call you hear what is possible for your tour. What is certain is the imagery: equirectangular, and more than 20,000 pixels wide.
What you keep yourself in any case is the business profile: it is yours and it should stay yours.
Sources
A few follow-up questions
Does publishing to Google Maps cost extra?
Google charges nothing for it. What the work around it costs with us, you hear together with the rest of the tour.
Is the tour on Maps the same as on my website?
No. On Maps you get the 360 imagery and can look around and walk through. The interaction you have in your own tour, such as information points, video and buttons, does not work there. They complement each other.
Will existing Street View Trusted imagery now disappear from Maps?
No. Imagery that has already been published stays up. The end of the programme concerns the certification of photographers, not the imagery they uploaded.
Can imagery be taken down later?
Yes, whatever you published yourself you can also remove yourself through Street View Studio.
Continue reading
- May people appear recognisably in a virtual tour? When you need consent for people in a virtual tour, why staff are a special case, what blurring solves, and what applies to imagery made with AI.
- Do I choose a 360 tour, a 3D scan or both? A 360 tour is photography, a 3D scan a model you can measure in. When to choose which, what we do in 3D, and why it can also be both.
- What happens to my virtual tour if I switch supplier? What happens to your 360 tour if you switch supplier, and the four questions to ask before you sign.