How to add a 360° virtual tour to your Google Business Profile
By Charles Mansfield-Osborne ·
A 360° tour on Google Maps lets people look inside your business straight from search results. It is one of the few parts of your Google listing that you fully control, and it is still possible to add, even though Google closed its Street View Trusted programme at the end of 2024. Here are your options.
Option 1: a single photo sphere
The simplest version is one 360° photo of your interior, taken with a 360° camera or a phone and uploaded to your profile or to Google Maps as a photo sphere.
Good for: a small shop or café with one main room. Watch out for: phone photo spheres often have stitching errors, and bright windows turn white. It is a quick start, not a tour.
Option 2: a connected tour
A connected tour is a set of 360° panoramas linked together so people can move from the entrance to the rooms inside, the same way they move along a street in Street View. It needs:
- High-quality panoramas of each space, ideally shot in HDR so windows and shadows both hold detail
- Accurate positions, so each panorama sits in the right place on the map
- Connections between the panoramas, so the arrows take people where they expect to go
- Publishing to Google Maps, where the imagery is associated with your business listing
This is what we do for most businesses. We shoot the panoramas, position and connect them, and publish them.
What Google controls
Google decides where and how your 360° imagery appears. It usually shows in your listing’s photos, and people can open and move through it on Maps. Nobody can honestly guarantee a particular button or placement. Be wary of anyone selling a “Google Trusted” tour. That badge no longer exists.
Don’t stop at Google
The tour on Google is valuable, but Google’s viewer is plain, unbranded and has no way to book, enquire or learn more. The same panoramas can power a branded tour on your own website with:
- your logo and colours
- a floor plan and menu
- booking, enquiry and “buy now” buttons in the scenes
- video, audio and information hotspots
- analytics showing which rooms people look at
We shoot once and publish to both, so you get the reach of Google Maps and a tour on your site that actually turns interest into enquiries. Pages with a tour to explore also tend to hold visitors’ attention for longer.
Keep it current
If you refurbish, rebrand or move, update your 360° imagery too. Out-of-date tours are worse than none. If you’ve moved premises, we can also capture the approach and entrance so Street View shows customers the right front door.
What it costs
Publishing to Google Maps is £195 as an add-on to any of our tours (up to 15 scenes), and it is included in our Signature and Production tours. See Google Maps 360 tours or ask us about your premises.