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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google My Business Upgrades Business Photos

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 1.46.14 PMGoogle has just announced a major update to Google My Business that finally rationalizes photos and their use across all of the places where your listing is shown.

From the post: Starting today, you can tell us which image you’d like to appear when customers search for your business on Google. Just log in to Google My Business on the web or in the Android or iOS apps, and visit the Photos section. While you’re there, you can also give your business a fresh look online by updating your profile, logo and cover photos.

Historically it was difficult from an interface point of view to add a cover photo and control which photos Google showed as it was split across three interfaces. With this upgrade all photos can be added from a simplified single user interface.

Best practices from the Google Help Files:

Your photos will look best on Google if they meet the following standards:

  • Format: JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP
  • Size: Between 10KB and 5MB
  • Minimum resolution: 250px on the longest side for profile & logo photos; 720px on the longest side for other business photos
  • Aspect ratio: The longer dimension of the photo should be no more than four times the shorter dimension. Landscape photos look better than portrait photos on Google products. Panoramic photos may use different aspect ratios.
  • Quality: The photo should be in focus, well-lit, have no photoshop alterations, and no excessive use of filters. The image should represent reality.

Here are screen shots of the upgrade:

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This is the primary interface where all photo related interactions take place. While Google segments photo types (interior, exterior, product etc) these categories are not used in the user facing UI
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The interface is the standard drag and drop interface offered by Plus
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For the first time, Google allows you top specify whether a logo, profile or cover photo will be seen first in Maps and search. Hopefully businesses will now be able to control this function.

 

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When uploading a logo it needs to be at least 250 pixels on the shortest side with the longest side no more than 4x that. This is an example of the error message when an inappropriate size is uploaded’
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Previous photos are stored in the Additional Photos area and can be dragged and dropped into an appropriate sub section
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When see examples is clicked Google provides contextual help (although neglects to mention image size requirements on this screen). You need to head to the help files to see that.
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The image editor from Plus is available to each photo allowing for cropping, rotating and enhancing of the photos.
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Photos for everything other than the Logo need to be a minimum of 750 px on one side.
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To access the new Business Photo manager click on the “Manage Photos” link within each listing.