Photos on your Google listing: how many, of what, and how often

The listing in position 1 has 48 photos. Yours has 12. That is a line we write in a lot of reports, and owners are surprised every time, because nobody looks at their own photo count.

Customers do. A person choosing between two restaurants opens the photos before the reviews. A listing where the newest photo is two years old looks like a place that might not be open.

What to upload

• The front of the shop, from the street, so people recognise it when they arrive.
• The inside, on a normal day, with people in it if they do not mind.
• What you sell, close up: the plate, the haircut, the finished job, the treatment room.
• The team, if you are comfortable with it. A face converts better than a logo.

Take them with your phone, in daylight, and do not filter them into something that does not look like your shop. Customers who arrive and find the real thing worse than the photos leave the reviews you do not want.

How many

More than the three businesses ahead of you, and that number is different on every street. If they have 48 and you have 12, add 10 this week and 10 next week. If they have 200, do not try to catch them this month; get to 50 and move on to reviews, which weigh more.

The gap is a number. A scan shows how many photos the listings above you have, next to yours. See what Watch would tell you about your listing, $29 a month.

The rule that matters more than the count

Recent. Ten photos this month say more than a hundred from 2022. Put a reminder in your phone: first Monday of the month, five photos. It takes ten minutes, and it keeps the listing looking like a place where things happen.

Two things people ask

Does the location data inside the photo file help? No, Google strips it. Does the file name help? No. Upload the photo, give it a moment, move on.