How to place a virtual tour on Google Maps: a step-by-step guide
How to Post a Virtual Tour on Google Maps: Step-by-Step Instructions In Brief: Posting a Virtual Tour on Google Maps is an effective way to improve your business's visibility and attract customers. We, the 360° Space team, regularly help our customers integrate tours into their Google My Business profiles, for example, for a chain of coffee shops in Moscow. Integrating a virtual tour into Google Maps is not just a fashionable feature, but a powerful tool for business promotion. If you are the owner of a cafe, store, hotel or any other establishment that wants to be visible on the Internet, these instructions are for you. We'll walk you through step-by-step how to add your 3D tour to your Google My Business profile, based on our experience working with dozens of clients. Step 1: Prepare a Quality Virtual Tour Before you post anything, make sure your virtual tour meets Google standards. This means high-resolution panoramas (minimum 14 megapixels), no artifacts and good lighting. Google is very particular about quality, and understandably so: their goal is to give users the most realistic experience possible. We always recommend using professional equipment and software to avoid problems at this stage. If the tour is made by us, then we have already taken care of all the technical details. If you have a third-party tour, make sure it meets the requirements. Photos should be stitched together without visible seams, and color correction should be natural. Remember that Google may reject low-quality photos. Step 2: Create or access a Google My Business profile Your business must be registered and verified with Google My Business. If you don't have one yet, create one by going through the verification procedure. This may take from several days to several weeks, depending on the confirmation method (usually by mail or telephone). Without a verified profile, you will not be able to manage your information on Maps, including adding a tour. For our clients who already have a profile, we often request access to it in order to upload the tour themselves. This saves time and avoids mistakes. If you plan to do this yourself, make sure you have administrator or profile owner rights. Step 3: Upload panoramas via the Street View app To upload panoramas, Google provides a dedicated Google Street View app (available for iOS and Android). Open it, sign in to your Google account and click the add new photos button. Select the "Import 360-degree photos" option and download all the panoramas of your tour. Important: Panoramas must be in JPEG format with metadata indicating their 360-degree format. Many tour creation programs automatically add this metadata. When downloading, the app may ask you to indicate the location of each panorama on the map. This is critical to properly linking panoramas into a tour. Step 4: Link the panoramas After loading the panoramas, you need to “stitch” or “link” them into a single tour. In the Street View app this is done manually. Select one panorama, then click on it and see arrows that you can move, indicating the direction to the next panorama. This process requires care and precision. We, as specialists, use professional tools that automate this process and ensure smooth transitions. But for independent work, the Street View application is the only official way. Take your time, check each transition so that the user does not get lost in your tour. For example, when shooting a 600 m² restaurant with several halls and passages, correctly linking the panoramas took us some time so that the logic of movement was intuitive. See all projects → Step 5: Wait for moderation and publication After you have uploaded and linked all the panoramas, Google sends them for moderation. This process can take from several hours to several days. At this time, Google specialists check the quality of the images, their compliance with the rules and the correctness of the connections. If everything is in order, your virtual tour will appear in your Google My Business profile and will be available on Google Maps and Street View. If a tour does not appear or receives a “Rejected” status, it is likely that some rules were violated. In this case, you will need to find the reason and repeat the download. Sometimes this may be due to geo-referencing or low-quality images. Once a client from Kazan was faced with the fact that Google rejected a tour because the photos in one of the rooms were too dark, so they had to reshoot. Step 6: Integrate a tour into your website (optional) Although this step does not directly apply to Google Maps, it is very useful. After publishing the tour on Google, you will have the opportunity to embed it on your own website. This is done using HTML code that can be generated directly from Google Maps. Simply find your tour, click Share and select the Embed Map option. This will allow your website visitors to immediately immerse themselves in the atmosphere of your establishment without leaving your page. In addition, we offer flexible formats for hosting tours, which we create: (1) 360° Space cloud - high-speed servers with technical support; (2) customer’s server - the tour is deployed on the client’s own infrastructure; (3) offline - standalone version for PC or a separate assembly for a VR headset, works without the Internet. So, even if you don't want to depend on Google, you always have alternatives. Common mistakes when posting a virtual tour on Google Maps Poor quality panoramas: Blurred, dark or too bright photos will be rejected. Google strives for maximum realism. Incorrect location reference: Panoramas must be accurately positioned on the map, otherwise they will not display or link correctly. Lack of logical connections: If the panoramas are not connected by arrows, the tour will look like a collection of individual photos rather than a single space. Violating Google Policies: Failure to follow content guidelines (such as personal information or obscene images) will result in disapproval. Using outdated content: If your establishment has undergone renovations or major changes, the old tour will be misleading to users. Update content regularly. Frequently asked questions How long will my virtual tour be visible on Google Maps? Once published, your tour remains on Google Maps indefinitely until you or Google remove it. However, we recommend updating the tour if there are significant changes in the interior of your establishment. Can I post a tour not created by 360° Space? Yes, you can post any virtual tour as long as it meets Google's technical requirements (high-quality panoramas in JPEG format with metadata). We can help you with verification and downloading if necessary. What should I do if my tour is rejected? Google usually provides a reason for the rejection. Read the message carefully, correct any identified deficiencies (for example, replace low-quality panoramas or double-check connections) and repeat the download procedure. If this doesn’t work, contact 360° specialists...