Google Business Profile Photos: Types, Sizes and a Shooting Plan That Works

Photos are the part of a Google Business Profile people actually look at. Before they read a word, they swipe through the images to see whether the place looks real, clean and like somewhere they want to be. This guide covers the photo types Google recognizes, the format and size rules Google publishes, shot lists for four kinds of local business, how to shoot well with a phone, what to do about customer photos, and a monthly cadence a busy owner can keep.

Photos are Step 9 of our pillar guide on how to optimize your Google Business Profile. The free Google Business Profile Optimizer will tell you quickly whether your public profile is short of a basic set; what it counts, and what it cannot, is explained further down.

What photos do for a local business, honestly

Google’s guidance on how to improve your local ranking names relevance, distance and prominence. Photos are not on the list, and in our experience adding photos does not move Maps positions the way a category change or a run of new reviews does.

What photos do is decide the choice once you are visible. A searcher comparing three clinics opens the one whose exterior they recognize, whose rooms look clean and whose staff look like people. Google’s own guidelines say an exterior photo helps customers recognize your business when they arrive; photos are a conversion and trust job.

Four things matter, in this order: relevance (your actual business doing its actual work), quality (in focus, well lit, straight), quantity (enough to cover each category that applies) and recency (new photos appear first, and a gallery that stopped years ago says the business may have too).

Google’s photo and video guidelines

Everything below is from Google’s photo and video guidelines; check that page before a big shoot, because the limits have changed before.

Requirement	Photos	Videos
Format	JPG or PNG	Standard video formats
File size	Between 10 KB and 5 MB	Up to 75 MB
Resolution	Recommended 720 × 720 px; minimum 250 × 250 px	720p or higher
Duration	n/a	Up to 30 seconds
Quality	In focus, well lit, no significant alterations, no excessive filters or AI edits; the image should represent reality	Same principles

Three operational details from the same page: photos and videos show only on a verified profile; new uploads can take 24 to 48 hours to appear and each shows in the dashboard as Pending, Not approved or Live; and the content rules in the guidelines for representing your business apply to images too.

The photo categories and what each is for

Google distinguishes a logo, a cover photo and business photos, and within business photos it describes several types, each with a suggested minimum. The categories are less visible in the interface than they once were, but they still describe what a complete gallery contains.

Category	What it is for	Google’s suggestion
Logo	Recognition; shows once name, address, categories, phone and hours are complete	One, square, plain background
Cover	The image that best represents the business; Google may still pick a different first image if yours is low quality	One, landscape, your best real photo
Exterior	Recognizing the building on arrival	At least three, from each direction customers arrive
Interior	What it feels like inside as a customer	At least three, truthful
Team	Faces; less formal is better	At least three, management and staff
At work	The type of work you do and how	At least three, covering different services
Products	Representative or popular items you sell	At least three, evenly lit
Food and drink	Detail for the menu	At least three of your most popular items
Common areas	Lobbies, waiting rooms, gyms, breakfast rooms, parking	At least one of each
Rooms	Guest rooms for hotels and lodging	At least three of your most popular room types

The cover photo should be a real photograph, not the logo again and not a graphic with text; Google’s note that it may substitute a user photo for a low-quality cover is a warning to take seriously. And because the logo displays only once the basic information is complete, a missing logo is often a missing phone number or hours.

Geotagging: what actually happens to your EXIF data

Advice to add GPS coordinates to your photos before uploading has circulated for years. Google strips EXIF metadata, including location, from uploaded images; download one of your own photos back from the profile and the coordinates are gone. Nothing Google publishes lists photo metadata as a ranking input, and in our experience geotagging changes nothing that can be measured. Skip it.

Shot lists by business type

Aim for at least three photos per category that applies to you.

Business	Must-have shots
Service business (plumber, electrician, HVAC, cleaner)	Vans with signage; the team in uniform; technicians on real jobs (with the customer’s permission); before and after of finished work; tools laid out; the office or yard if customers visit
Restaurant or cafe	Exterior in daylight and lit at night; dining room during service; bar or counter; six to eight signature dishes in natural light; the kitchen or chef at work; outdoor seating; the entrance and any step or ramp
Clinic (dental, physio, GP, vet)	Exterior with signage from each approach; parking and accessible entrance; reception and waiting area; every treatment room; key equipment; each clinician in their room; treatment in progress with a consenting staff member as the patient
Retail	Storefront and window display; the shop from the door; each department or aisle; close-ups of representative products; seasonal displays; staff at the counter; fitting rooms

Every branch of a multi-location business needs its own set; another branch’s interior is a misleading photo. Google supports bulk photo uploads by spreadsheet for ten or more locations, covered in our multi-location Google Business Profile guide.

Shooting well with a phone

A recent phone is enough; the difference between a good and a bad gallery is almost never the camera.

• Clean the lens first; hazy interiors are usually fingerprints.
• Shoot in daylight and turn every light on. Open blinds; avoid mixing daylight with warm bulbs in one frame where you can.
• Do not use the ultra-wide lens for rooms. It bends walls. Stand in a corner with the standard lens at chest height.
• Tap to focus and hold to lock exposure on the subject, not the window behind it, and keep verticals straight with the grid overlay.
• Declutter first. Cables, bins, yesterday’s cups and stacked boxes are what the eye lands on.
• Get consent from anyone identifiable, staff included, and never photograph a patient or customer without written permission. Check whiteboards and screens for names.
• No filters and minimal editing. Straighten, brighten slightly, crop. The image should represent reality.
• Export the original by cable, AirDrop or a cloud drive set to original quality. Messaging apps compress images badly.
• Shoot more than you need, then choose the best of each scene. Thirty keepers from ninety frames is normal.

Videos

Google currently allows videos up to 30 seconds and 75 MB at 720p or higher; check the current limits on Google’s guidelines page before planning. Short and steady beats produced: a slow walk from the street through the front door, a dish being plated, a technician explaining a single job in one take. Hold the phone in landscape, do not zoom, and skip the music; many people watch muted. One video a quarter is plenty.

Customer photos, and what to do about bad ones

Customers can add photos to your profile and you cannot delete them. The Photos section separates By owner from By customer, and a healthy gallery has far more of the former. For a customer photo that breaks policy (off-topic, offensive, a different business, private information), open the photo, use its menu to flag it, and choose the reason; Google removes photos that violate its rules. A photo that is merely unflattering will usually stay.

The realistic response is to outnumber and out-quality. New uploads appear first, so a steady flow of your own photos keeps the customer shots further down. It also helps to invite good customer photos: when you ask for a review with the free Google Review Link and QR Code Generator, ask happy customers to attach a photo of the result. Our guide to Google Business Profile reviews covers the ask itself.

A monthly cadence you can keep

Month one is the library: a single afternoon shoot that covers every category that applies, uploaded over a week rather than in one dump. After that:

1. Every month: three to five new photos. One at work, one product or result, one seasonal or team shot.
2. Every quarter: one 30-second video, and a check of the By customer tab for anything to flag.
3. Every year, or after a refit or rebrand: a fresh cover photo and a sweep of your own gallery for anything outdated: old signage, a closed patio, a departed team member.
4. Whenever you publish a Post: use one of the month’s new photos. Our guide to Google Business Profile posts explains the formats.

Signed in on Search, each photo shows its source and total views in the bottom-left corner, which tells you which kinds of image people actually open. Fold the sweep into the quarterly review in our Google Business Profile audit guide; the Google Business Profile checklist lists photos as a setup item.

How the GBP Optimizer counts photos

The Google Business Profile Optimizer reads your profile through Google’s public Places data, not through your dashboard. That has three consequences. The public data returns at most ten photo references per place, so the tool can confirm you have a basic set but cannot tell twelve photos from two hundred; its Photos check passes at five or more. It cannot separate owner photos from customer photos. And it can lag the dashboard by a day or two while new uploads are processed.

Use it as a fast, outside-in check that a profile is not embarrassingly bare, alongside the other five checks and the AI suggestions. For the real count, the owner and customer split and per-photo views, open the Photos section of your own profile.

Worked example: a Brisbane physiotherapy clinic builds a 30-photo library in one afternoon

Paddington Physio (fictional) is a four-clinician clinic in a converted Queenslander on Latrobe Terrace in Brisbane, with three treatment rooms, a small rehab gym and off-street parking behind the building. Its profile had a logo, a dark photo of the reception desk from 2021 and eleven customer photos, two of them of the cafe next door. The owner blocked out a Thursday afternoon, briefed two staff members to stand in as patients, and shot everything on a two-year-old phone.

1:00 pm, exterior (5 photos). The building from both directions along Latrobe Terrace, the signage close up, the front steps and the ramp beside them, and the parking sign at the rear entrance. Daylight, standard lens, verticals straight.

1:30 pm, interior (6 photos). Reception with the desk cleared, the waiting area from the door, the hallway, two of the three treatment rooms (the third was identical) and the rehab gym from its corner. Every light on, blinds open, whiteboard wiped.

2:00 pm, team (4 photos). The four clinicians on the front steps, then three individual shots, each in their own room, unposed and mid-conversation.

2:30 pm, at work (8 photos). Hands-on treatment of a shoulder and a lower back, taping an ankle, a shockwave session, dry-needling setup, gait assessment on the treadmill, and two rehab-gym shots coaching a squat and a reformer exercise. Staff as patients, consent forms signed.

3:15 pm, equipment and common areas (7 photos). The reformer, the shockwave unit, the retail wall of braces and foam rollers, the resistance-band station, the accessible bathroom, the children’s corner and the rear parking with the entrance visible.

4:00 pm, cull and export. Ninety-two frames became thirty keepers. The owner straightened and brightened, transferred originals by cable, and confirmed each was a JPG between 10 KB and 5 MB. The exterior from the main approach became the cover photo, replacing the logo.

Upload. Ten photos on Thursday evening, ten on Saturday, ten the following Tuesday, each batch mixing categories. Everything showed as Live within two days. The two cafe photos were flagged as showing a different business and were removed within the week. The owner then set the monthly reminder: three photos on the first Monday of each month, one of them from the gym.

Common mistakes

• Stock photos or AI-generated images. Against the guidelines, obvious to customers, and the kind of thing that gets a photo marked Not approved.
• The logo as the cover photo, or a cover made of text and a phone number. The cover is for your best real photograph.
• Text overlays, collages and heavy filters. Google wants the image to represent reality; the reader wants to see the place.
• Dumping sixty photos once and never returning. Recency is the signal you can control every month.
• Screenshots and messaging-app copies. Compressed, soft, sometimes under the minimum resolution.
• People without consent, especially patients, children and other customers, and screens or whiteboards with names on them.
• Spending an hour on geotags instead of ten minutes on three new photos.

Do this now

• Run the Google Business Profile Optimizer to check the profile is not bare, then open your own Photos section and note the By owner and By customer counts.
• Pick the categories that apply from the table above and write a shot list of at least three per category.
• Block out one afternoon, clean the lens, turn on the lights, get consent, and shoot three times as many frames as you need.
• Confirm every keeper is a JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB, upload in batches over a week, set a real exterior as the cover, and check each item reaches Live.
• Flag any customer photo that breaks policy; outnumber the merely unflattering ones.
• Put a monthly three-photo reminder and a quarterly video in the calendar, then continue with our Google Business Profile optimization guide.