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Today, at the Social Loco conference in San Francisco, CA, Google’s Vice President of Location and Local Services Marissa Mayer revealed the launch of Business Photos for local businesses’ Google Places pages.

Currently the Google photographers are available for only a few of the major cities targeted by the Google Places promotion campaigns, but any business could apply for the shooting and the rise in the demand would help Google decide which places to include further. At present the list with the selected cities consists of:

United States: Orange County, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Bay Area, CA; San Antonio, TX; St Petersburg, FL

Australia: Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Darwin

New Zealand: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, Blenheim, Nelson

Japan: Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, Fukuoka, Hyogo, Okinawa

Korea: Seoul

United Kingdom: London

France: Paris

However, not every business that applies for it would get it as the demand would definitely be large. Only chosen ones would have the privilege to be attended by a Google photographer. The pictures they would take would be panoramic of the interior and exterior of the business place. They will be then uploaded by Google on the business’ Place Page, but the business owner would still be able to post their own pictures via the Google Places Dashboard. Google says that they are most interested into shooting the following types of businesses: restaurants, hotels, retail shops, and other storefront businesses; but they “are always open to new ideas”. Unfortunately for some, they are currently not shooting legal, medical, or chain establishments. For more information, you could check the FAQ page for Business Photos.

Businesses could apply for a photo shooting session via the Application form.

If you have already had any experience with Google Places Business Photos, feel free to share in the comments section.