It seems that photos are not as important as they used to be for Google My Business profiles (now called Google Business Profiles). With a recent update that has moved most profiles to the ‘new’ on search editor, there are no longer stats for photos.
On the new performance reports, there are no stats or metrics for photo views of any kind.
If you are a Google Local Guide, you get emails which tell you how many views your photos have, so it’s not like the function to record views has been taken away.
In the previous Google My Business dashboard, you could go to your photos and see how many times each photo on your profile had been viewed. Also, you could see a photo report in the Insights section, which detailed the number of times a photos had been viewed on your profile, compared to similar profiles.
There is a trick to get back into the old Google My Business dashboard, and that is to click the ‘Edit products’ button on the search editor. But I don’t expect this to be available for long. If you go to the old dashboard, most areas now redirect you to the on search editor.
However, as of writing (15th November 2022) – the views for photos have gone from the original dashboard, and the section for the photo report had gone from the Insights.
On the photo itself, it would have the date it was added (or how many days / weeks old the photo is) on the right and on the left side a view count. The count for views has gone.
Why have Google removed photo metrics?
I have a feeling that photos on profiles had been taking up too much storage space for Google, so removing the ‘album’ and stats for photos might save some space. However, this could be a temporary change, and that Google are working on a new photo insights report. We can only hope.
But this begs the question, are images that important, if Google apparently does not care about them? Google does not even mention photos in their article about the changes to Insights data.
Should you still add photos to your Google Business profile?
Yes. It’s always important to have images of your services, products, or even the building you work from, and your logo on your Google Business profile.
A BrightLocal study found that Google My Business profiles with more than 100 images get 520% more calls, 2717% more direction requests, and 1,065% more website clicks than the average business.
It’s not clear if this is an issue, or Google have changed something so the insights don’t show for images anymore. But from what I can see, Google have removed visible metrics from the old insights section fairly recently, so this must be something they have been rolling out.
It’s a shame, as now we can’t see how well photos are performing and how this relates to more engagement for a profile. But if lots of people make suggestions and send feedback regarding this, they might reconsider.
What do you think? Do you think images are important for Google Business profiles anymore? Let me know in the comments below ⬇
