Google Business Profile photos: what to upload and what to skip

Before anyone reads your reviews, they look at your photos. Is it clean? Is it the kind of place I want to go? Will I recognise it from the road? Photos answer those questions faster than any text.

Most small businesses have either no photos on Google, or photos customers uploaded - a blurry plate, a dark corner, a picture of the parking.

The photos every business needs

Aim for at least ten, covering:

1. The outside, by day. Shot from across the road so people recognise the front, the signboard and the entrance when they arrive. This is the most useful photo you will ever upload.
2. The entrance or the approach, if you are on an upper floor or inside a market. "Second floor, above the bank" is easier as a picture.
3. The inside, from the door, so people see what they are walking into.
4. What you sell or do. Your best dishes, your products on the shelf, a finished haircut, a clean treatment room.
5. The people. Your team at work. Customers trust faces.
6. Your logo and a cover photo - the two Google shows most prominently.

By type of business

• Restaurants and sweet shops: signature dishes in daylight, the menu board, seating, and the counter during a busy hour.
• Clinics: a clean waiting area, the reception, the outside with the board. Never photograph patients, and nothing that shows treatment.
• Salons: the stations, finished work (with the customer's permission), the product shelf.
• Shops: shelves and range, the billing counter, and the front.

Google's size rules

• Format JPG or PNG.
• File size between 10 KB and 5 MB.
• Recommended resolution 720 x 720 pixels or more; minimum 250 x 250.
• In focus, well lit, without heavy filters.
• Videos up to 30 seconds long.

Any phone photo from the last few years is fine. Shoot in daylight and wipe the lens first.

What to skip

• Stock photos. Customers can tell, and they feel misled when they arrive.
• Posters full of text. Offers belong in a Google post, not in your photos.
• Heavy filters or edits that make the place look different from reality. The gap shows up in your reviews.
• Fifty photos of the same thing. Range beats volume.

Bad photos uploaded by customers

You cannot delete a photo someone else uploaded. You can:

• Report it if it breaks Google's rules - offensive, irrelevant, showing a different business, or someone's personal information. Open the photo and use the flag or Report option.
• Push it down by adding better photos of your own. The more good photos you have, the less any one bad one is seen.

A fair photo of a real problem - a stained table, a broken sign - is best dealt with by fixing the problem.

Myths worth ignoring

"Geotag your photos to rank higher." Adding GPS coordinates to image files is a popular tip, and there is no good evidence it does anything. Spend the time taking better photos.

"Upload photos every day." Fresh photos help customers see you are open and active, but there is no magic number. Add a few new ones each month, and whenever something changes: a new menu, a refit, a festival display.

Keep it current

A photo of a counter you replaced two years ago is worse than no photo. Once a quarter, look at your profile as a customer would and remove what is no longer true. The free profile checker counts your photos as part of its score.

Sunaam's checkup counts your photos along with everything else on your profile, and you can upload new ones straight to Google from the app.