Virtual Tours on Google Maps — Certified Google Photographer

How many people actually view these panoramas? Google doesn't publish its exact ranking formula, but it names three main factors — relevance, distance to the searcher, and prominence. Prominence is directly shaped by visitor engagement: photo views, clicks, direction requests. According to Google, profiles with more photos get significantly more calls and direction requests than profiles with few or none.

A 360° panorama is a format that holds attention longer than a regular photo — people scroll, look around, "step inside" a space before ever visiting. In my experience, 5 panoramas per account is roughly the working minimum — the point at which it starts noticeably shaping how a business is perceived. More is better, but even 5 is already a meaningful threshold. Here are real view counts from panoramas I've shot for different businesses in Kyiv (data from my own Google Maps contributor profile):

Every tour is processed manually and professionally, which is what guarantees a quality image for your business. Here are two photos from two different virtual tours shot indoors. The first tour was shot and manually processed by me, then published to Google Maps; the second was also published by a certified Google photographer, but processed automatically (a faster, cheaper approach).

You can judge the difference for yourself.

To set up a business virtual tour on Google Maps, reach out at +38 063-700-06-02 (Viber, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp) — Serhii Hadzhylov, Certified Google photographer and panorama specialist.

I create virtual tours for Google across Ukraine, Kyiv, and internationally.