How to Add a Virtual Tour to Your Google Business Profile (and What It Does for You)

When someone searches for your business on Google, the panel that appears on the right of the results (or at the top on a phone) is your Google Business Profile. Photos, reviews, opening hours and, if you have one, a "See inside" virtual tour all live there. This guide explains how the tour gets there, what it costs and what Google's own research says it does.

What a Google virtual tour is

A Google Street View virtual tour is a set of 360-degree photographs of the inside of your premises, connected so that a visitor can walk from the door through your space exactly as they can walk down a street in Street View. Once published it appears on your Business Profile, on Google Maps and in the Street View layer, and can be embedded on your own website. Unlike a bespoke tour, it is hosted by Google, has no branding or hotspots, and has no ongoing cost.

How it gets published

Google no longer has a "trusted photographer" badge scheme, but publishing interior 360 imagery still requires the right equipment, the Street View publishing tools and a linked, verified Business Profile. In practice the steps are:

1. Verify your Business Profile. If you have not claimed it, do so first at business.google.com; publishing links the tour to that listing.
2. Plan the route. We agree which areas to include, usually the entrance, main customer-facing spaces and anything you want to be found for. Our preparation guide covers tidying, signage and lighting.
3. The shoot. Individual 360 images are captured every few metres. A small shop or clinic takes 30 minutes to an hour; a large venue up to two hours.
4. Stitching, blurring and connecting. Faces and number plates are blurred, the images are connected into a walkable route and the tour is published to Google against your listing.
5. Embedding. We supply the embed code so the same tour appears on your website, as we did for EvoDental's Edinburgh clinic.

Publication is usually within seven days of the shoot. Google occasionally takes longer to show the tour in every surface, but the Business Profile is normally first.

What Google says it does

Google commissioned independent research in 2015 in which 1,201 people were shown business listings with and without a virtual tour. Listings with photos and a tour were twice as likely to generate interest. The same paper cites Oxera research that consumers use mapping products 44% of the time when searching for businesses and that 41% of place searches on maps end in a visit.

Google's current Business Profile guidance says customers are 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable when they find a complete profile, 70% more likely to visit and 50% more likely to consider buying. A virtual tour is part of what "complete" means. Note what Google does not say: it has never confirmed that a tour improves your ranking. The gains are in trust and conversion once you are found, which we explain in virtual tours and local SEO.

Who it suits

Any business that customers choose partly on the look and feel of the premises: restaurants, hotels, dental and medical clinics, gyms, showrooms, nurseries, salons, event venues and offices that want to reassure visiting clients. Our article on the Street View blue line covers larger sites such as retail parks and campuses.

Cost

Our Google Street View tours start from £350 for a small premises, rising with the size of the space, with no travel charges anywhere in mainland UK and no subscription afterwards. We also offer a Business Profile audit alongside the tour, checking categories, attributes, photos and opening hours so the whole listing works as hard as the tour. Multi-site operators get a single project manager and per-location pricing.

To get a price, send us your address and a line about the space. If you are weighing Google against Matterport, our Matterport vs Google Street View comparison will help.