Google has been pushing their Street View service commercially in recent months with the introduction of interior street view and indoor photos for businesses. The latter was expanded into its own service called Business Photos allowing users to see the interior of their store or building through Street view. Now they’ve introduced a new service called ‘Trusted Photographers’ which allows companies and retailers to be self-reliant when getting published on street view.
The service gives you the opportunity to select a photographer if there’s one available in your city, and arrange with them directly to schedule a photo shoot. Once that’s arranged, the photographer will arrive to take a 360 panoramic photo of your outlet to give visitors an idea as to what to expect if they arrive.
If you wish, you can blur some parts of your panoramic photo once it’s uploaded up or even have it taken down. At the moment, Google say they can’t take down individual panoramas so if you have more than one, you’ll have to take all down or leave them online. Users also have the option to add the embed code onto their web page, Google+ or Facebook page.
The service is available in a limited number of cities in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, France and the U.K. If the service isn’t available in your area, you can still upload images via Google Places. Below is an example of one: the Spice Market located in New York City.