Google Posts also showing in main photos ?

[SylvainEver]

I recently spotted a Google Post displayed in main photos of a restaurant listing. For now I've managed to recreate it for other restaurants and retail listings only.

It's a great way to give Google Posts a better visibility, but I wonder wich Posts can be displayed ? Is the quality of the photo taken into account ?

I don't think it has been discussed here before, have you ever seen this before elsewhere than in France ?

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

I recently spotted a Google Post displayed in main photos of a restaurant listing. For now I've managed to recreate it for other restaurants and retail listings only.

It's a great way to give Google Posts a better visibility, but I wonder wich Posts can be displayed ? Is the quality of the photo taken into account ?

I don't think it has been discussed here before, have you ever seen this before elsewhere than in France ?

While not exactly the same, @mblumenthal recently tweeted/discussed something very similar being tested out by Google with GBP allowing captions on photos:
Originally heard him talk about it on LocalU's "Last Week in Local" series with Mike and @CarrieHill at/around 4:58:

Google Business Profile Tests Captions On Business Photos

Google is testing allowing business owners to add captions or descriptions to photos they upload to their business profiles. Mike Blumenthal spotted this in a Google Business Profile Help thread and

www.seroundtable.com

Maybe Mike will chime in with his thoughts

 

[mblumenthal]

Thanks for the tag

The "add a Post to photos" feature is NOT something I have seen before. It is interesting and to the best of my knowledge not available in the US. It is pretty cool.

Google has long added Post images for restaurants to their photo collection but never annotated them like this.

As to quality of images, Google has been getting very aggressive applying their AI safe search and quality judgements to images. Often stupidly so.

So images that are blurry, or dark or show too much skin or or or are being rejected in the Post. It appears from the forums that is also starting to be applied to general photos uploaded by the business (but not by consumers).

Clearly images are playing an increasing role in search and Google is exploring everyway to get more value to the searcher through them as they compete with Instagram and TikTok

 

[mblumenthal]

Cool. Test or live?

 

[SylvainEver]

While not exactly the same, @mblumenthal recently tweeted/discussed something very similar being tested out by Google with GBP allowing captions on photos:

Yes I saw the news about captions and also timestamps on photos. Looks like Google is increasing the importance of photos (before videos maybe ?).

Cool. Test or live?

I think it's just a test for now, a colleague of mine tried to recreate it, and on the exact same restaurant, the Google Post didn't show up in the main photos.. The only difference is I'm on Android and she has an Iphone.

But I just saw a tweet by Tricia Clements, she's sharing the same feature, so it's not just in France. As she says, the consistency would be the main factor to have our post highlited in the main photos. Even though the quality of the photo in her example could be better.
>

It would be interesting to know if a Google Post with a video could be displayed in main photos too. But I hope the feature will stay, it's a very interesting way to boost Google Posts visibility !

 

[Marcin Karwowski]

In Poland, photos added to almost all posts in all profiles (and categories) appear in the main gallery with this distinction. I've noticed this for several weeks.
Of course, this only appears on mobile devices.