A couple months ago, I first noticed a change when searching on Google Business Profile (GBP) photos and virtual tour layouts. Google had them organized really nicely in one compelling look, right from their organic search results! This is mostly noticeable via desktop/laptop, but it’s for mobile as well.

Just this recent virtual tour shows you different exterior and interior photo spheres, accessibility features, and spacious areas for comfort and trust, all derived from an organic Google search.

Huge Improvement

User-focused, and used for many business photo categories. Viewing the tours from your Google Business Profile (GBP) can sometimes be challenging. Users have to be either savvy enough to detect a 360 photo from the platform or proactively take another step to click the “street view and 360” tab.

Layout Examples

Would you like to see the landscape at Theo Wirth Golf to see whether you and your friends are up to the challenge before you visit?

Maybe you’ve always wanted to go to Young Joni for their famous Korean BBQ pizza and want to first check out their vibe and open space for comfort and ease.

Blending with organic search

An interesting piece is that these organized results appear in organic Google searches on the desktop, and not from within GBP itself.

You can Google them or any other company to get a first-hand look. From an organic search result, it looks just as it always would.

• For visibility, locations in GBP in general do better with photos in their profile vs. those who do not, in which each 360 sphere within a virtual tour is a photo. It’s nice to see that they’re making a proactive step to make it easy for the user.
• As of recently, the number of public Google photos viewed was visible to the public. It stopped, and people took notice. Here’s a specific Q&A in GBP Help discussion on that.

Note – These Google views are still available internally to the users who provide them and this info can be shown to respective clients.

• For Google, this gives users the option to take a virtual tour at the same place they can see photos of you and your staff, menu, videos, services, vibe, and other features. Just go through the different tabs. 
• The “street view and 360” tab houses the Google car photos. More often, virtual tours take up the most real estate here.

This combination of viewing options can all help bring users to the door. I suppose that’s the plan.

As either a consumer or marketer, does this newer photo layout affect your trust in deciding to visit a new place? Sound off on Twitter !

Localmn provides both custom and Google virtual tours, and local SEO services for our virtual tour customers.