Hello everyone it’s Shannon here from iGuide Durham in GTA Canada. We are ramping up to make a huge effort towards Google Business listings and embedding the iGuide 3D Tour into Durham Businesses.
I have do e a fair amount of market research and the one piece of the puzzle missing for me is whether we are allowed to call ourselves"Google Trusted Photographers" or not.
Through this whole process I understand that the program was orphaned two years ago but I think we can make this claim because of Planitar’s relationship with Google.
Can anyone help me here? Other comments/suggestions are welcome.
I’m very curious to hear how you’re pricing and promoting the service in your market and what’s working or not working for you. So far I’ve only done one Google Business iGuide – a large showcase that I want to leverage into more iGuides for business.
I have about 500 panos uploaded to GSV from doing some public buildings. Unfortunately, I have two google accounts, personal and business, so it took a bit of messing around to sign in on the correct one through that app. Once I got signed in on the business account that already has a bunch of photos uploaded, I clicked “yes” on the “available for hire” setting, and I was instantly given the Google Trusted Photographer designation. There should now be an added badge or symbol showing that designation on my business google profile, but I haven’t checked for sure yet.
Here is a screen shot of my profile…it stills needs a bit of work, like a profile picture. I think the “star” is the trusted photographer designation, but I’m not sure
Edit -
Sorry for all the posts. I just completed the forms for the “Trusted Photographer” designation so I can be listed in their directory.
I can say for certain now that the “Trusted Google Photographer” designation is real, and following the link from LeroySchulz got me where I needed to be to achieve that designation.
I finally got to the bottom of this last night based on responses here and looking through the forums. You need to upload 50 Panos to Google Maps to be invited as a Trusted Photographer. I’ve now done that and just waiting for it to process.
The lost link for me is that they pushed the whole program out to the world and increased accessibility to consumer grade 360 cameras and smart phones and then buried the Trusted Program in the Street View App.
The benefits of being Google Trusted means that you can pull that out to start the conversation with prospective business clients and voila, instant Google Street cred.
FYI - I’ve been a Google Trusted Photographer for about 4 years now. It has meant nothing to anyone unfortunately. When I did it, I had to pass a test, etc.
Not any longer. I talk about it but don’t spend a lot of time on it for a few reasons:
-It’s a tough sell to small businesses. They don’t like spending money.
-Google doesn’t publish any hard information on the actual benefits of a business spending the money on these tours. Would be useful if they would give us some numbers as to how much it helps with their SEO, etc.
-There is no way to keep the tours (or photos we take for businesses) at the top of the photos list for the business listing in Google Maps. As people take photos and post them, they push the tour panos, etc. farther down and, unless someone looks for them, they’ll never see them. This is my single biggest reason I can’t spend too much time on this.
It’s a shame as Planitar has done an EXCELLENT job trying to get us info and making it VERY easy to publish a Google Maps Tour. We just get no support from Google on them.
I get a much better return on my time spent with the traditional people who use these tours (i.e. realtors, builders, etc.).
