TL;DR:
For best results, get a Google Street View virtual tour and add an overlay when publishing it on your website.
The Viewer is the Director
Since COVID-19 and its impact on local businesses, interest in virtual tours has grown. It makes sense: a virtual tour gives you a unique advantage over other media. With a virtual tour, you let the viewer become the director. They can choose what to see from any viewpoint. That’s a big deal.
This reverses the usual visual process. Some business owners, photographers, and videographers might feel like they’re losing control over what the audience sees. But what does this mean for decision-making? We know people spend much longer exploring virtual tours—sometimes twice as long—so businesses have more time to connect with potential clients.
If virtual tours are so powerful, it makes sense to use platforms that make the most impact in local search—especially Google.
Google: The Real Herd of Elephants
If there was a better place than Google Maps and Google Street View to publish tours, I’d recommend it. But despite some limitations (occasional slow load times, clunky navigation, less-smooth transitions), Google is the world’s most used map system and the biggest search engine. With over 90% market share, not publishing your tour on Google Street View could hurt your business.
So why do some photographers skip Google Street View? Usually, it’s a lack of understanding about the vital connection between where your content is hosted and how it’s used online. When I’m asked how important Google My Business is, I always say it’s a #herdofelephants, not just the elephant in the room.
Like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, Google prefers to keep users on its platform. If you’ve ever tried adding external links on Instagram, you know how tricky it is.
Convert More Clients
We’re seeing a trend in local search: more conversions are coming directly from Google My Business pages. Many searchers don’t even visit the website—they use photos, virtual tours, reviews, business info, posts, and Q&A, then ask for directions or call directly from their mobile. Google tracks and reports these actions to you in Google My Business insights.
What if your virtual tour is published on your business website? If it’s embedded and still hosted by Google, Google keeps seeing activity on the images.
Custom Overlays for Google Street View Virtual Tours
Here’s my usual recommendation:
Embed your Google Street View tour on your website, with a custom overlay. The overlay adds functions you’d find on self-hosted tours—navigation, menus, info cards, clickable hotspots, calls-to-action, and links (both internal and external—great for SEO). You might lose out on silky transitions and very niche features, but you gain almost all the benefits a virtual tour should offer. Most importantly, overlays help convert visitors into enquiries.
Are Virtual Tour-Based Websites the Future?
Lately, some platforms let you build a “website” around a virtual tour. While this is exciting, these are not full websites. They often lack essential features for SEO, like meta data and proper structure, so search engines struggle to “read” them correctly. Cool as they are, they’re not (yet) ideal for local SEO.
The temptation to use them is strong, but if your website doesn’t rank as well after switching, you haven’t gained. Until virtual tour-based sites become SEO-friendly, stick with embedding Google Street View tours with overlay enhancements.
Choosing the Right Virtual Tour Hosting
Want to know more about making virtual tours work for your business? I can help you leverage Google My Business, Google Street View, and other tech to get found and trusted online.
Call me: 0424 357 118
Email: marc@workpics.com