How many photos is the right number of photos?

[nathangdavidson]

I've been thinking for a while about photos on my clients Google Business Profiles.

Does anyone think there is an optimum number of photos to upload?

Is it simply a case of having more on your Profile than your competitors? (I hadn't noticed the "Post more to stay ahead" prompt in GBP Insights before today, but is that a clue?).

Google are pretty clear in their guidelines, for example that profile owners should add "at least three photos of products" that they sell.

Tips for business-specific photos on your Business Profile - Google Business Profile Help

Your business will look best on Google if you add category-specific photos. These photos spotlight features of your business that your customers use when making purchasing decisions. Photos you add ca

support.google.com

They're similarly clear about services - "at least three photos that are representative of the services you offer".

So if I sell 20 products, I upload at least 60 photos, 3 for each.

Or if I offer 5 services, I upload at least 15.

But my question is how many is too many?

Is there such a thing as "photo bloat" on a GBP Profile.

Do we keep asking our clients to add photos forever more?

Should we also be asking them to remove some at any stage as well?

Has anyone carried out a large cull of photos from a Profile and experienced improvements in their rankings for example? Or the opposite?

Has anyone actually experience an uplift in rankings simply by adding photos regularly?

It would be great to gauge your thoughts.

Thanks,
Nathan

 

[Phil Rozek]

@nathangdavidson, I've never seen any rankings benefit from uploading GMB photos. Maybe there is some benefit, but just not enough for me to have noticed.

Do businesses with lots of photos tend to rank better? It seems so, but my assumption on that always has been that a GMB page that's replete with photos is more likely to belong to a business that puts in the work in other areas, and that other work helps their rankings.

For the sake of persuasiveness, though, it's still good to upload photos whenever you have something to show. For that reason, it's also worth encouraging customers to include photos with their reviews, if possible and if appropriate.

 

[nathangdavidson]

@nathangdavidson, I've never seen any rankings benefit from uploading GMB photos. Maybe there is some benefit, but just not enough for me to have noticed.

Do businesses with lots of photos tend to rank better? It seems so, but my assumption on that always has been that a GMB page that's replete with photos is more likely to belong to a business that puts in the work in other areas, and that other work helps their rankings.

For the sake of persuasiveness, though, it's still good to upload photos whenever you have something to show. For that reason, it's also worth encouraging customers to include photos with their reviews, if possible and if appropriate.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts Phil.

I don't doubt having a decent amount of photos on a GBP can aid conversions. My sense is they don't actually impact rankings, although I don't have evidence to support this.

Keeping photos up to date seems to make business sense and perhaps there is no optimum amount.

Encouraging customers to add photos with their reviews is a great shout.

 

[Orlando Sydney]

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts Phil.

I don't doubt having a decent amount of photos on a GBP can aid conversions. My sense is they don't actually impact rankings, although I don't have evidence to support this.

Keeping photos up to date seems to make business sense and perhaps there is no optimum amount.

Encouraging customers to add photos with their reviews is a great shout.

Not sure if this helps you but in my case I've got 96 photos and Insights dashboard says "Your photos receive 581% more views than similar businesses." (for the last qtr)

Does this help get more eye balls on my business, does it help get more enquiries compared to similar business? No idea as I can't see their results.

I know I've had many prospects say to me over the phone they looked at the photos before calling. And upon further conversation they didn't even get to my own website. Just stayed on GBP and that was it.

No concerns of photo bloat from me and I'll keep weekly photo uploads going.

 

[nathangdavidson]

Not sure if this helps you but in my case I've got 96 photos and Insights dashboard says "Your photos receive 581% more views than similar businesses." (for the last qtr)

Does this help get more eye balls on my business, does it help get more enquiries compared to similar business? No idea as I can't see their results.

I know I've had many prospects say to me over the phone they looked at the photos before calling. And upon further conversation they didn't even get to my own website. Just stayed on GBP and that was it.

No concerns of photo bloat from me and I'll keep weekly photo uploads going.

Thanks for chipping in with your thought @Orlando Sydney Yes, I've seen those claims in GBP Insights too now, I just can't get my head around where they get these numbers from or how much they should be believed.

 

[georgenenni]

Nathan,

We monitor multiple GBPs for a few hundred U.S. and Canadian car dealers, and trend this data using a Google Data Studio report with GBP API. We definitely see that new Service, Body shop and Parts departmental GBPs tend to start off very slow, but once they get to 20 Owner Photos (and 5-20 reviews) they started getting more searches, views and actions.

Searchengineland did a study in late 2019 that showed GMBs with more than 100 Owner Photos got exponentially more actions and image views:

New research shows strong link between Google My Business photo quantity and search performance

Here's what analyzing 580,853 images across 15,191 Google My Business listings taught us about how GMB images could be impacting user behavior.

searchengineland.com

So we recommend, add at least 20 Owner photos, for humans and Google

 

[alexo]

Totally agree with @georgenenni
2 Cents from me: IMO it's not so much important you have 20/50 or100, it's more effective when you upload photos on regular basic - AKA activity ( f.e. adding 2-3 photos / month )

 

[Orlando Sydney]

Thanks for chipping in with your thought @Orlando Sydney Yes, I've seen those claims in GBP Insights too now, I just can't get my head around where they get these numbers from or how much they should be believed.

Cool. I recon it's kinda like the impression numbers they give us on Search Console.
I'm curious as to where are all the places they are actually shown, that's not so obvious to me.

 

[keyserholiday]

Not sure if this helps you but in my case I've got 96 photos and Insights dashboard says "Your photos receive 581% more views than similar businesses." (for the last qtr)

Does this help get more eye balls on my business, does it help get more enquiries compared to similar business? No idea as I can't see their results.

I know I've had many prospects say to me over the phone they looked at the photos before calling. And upon further conversation they didn't even get to my own website. Just stayed on GBP and that was it.

No concerns of photo bloat from me and I'll keep weekly photo uploads going.

Photos insights are made up stats. I have had plenty of business profiles show insane photo views within seconds of getting verified. Photos have absolutely zero impact on performance or rankings.