Photos in a Google Business Profile - what to add, how many, what to avoid

Maciej Stolarski, August 24, 2026

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A customer who finds your business in Maps looks at three things in order: opening hours, ratings and photos. A profile with three stock images loses to one with twenty real ones, even when the ratings match.

This guide covers the six types of photo you need, the technical requirements, how many photos are enough, why Google removes them and what never to upload.

Contents

Which photos the customer sees first

On the business card in search results and in Maps, Google shows a small selection: the cover photo, the logo and a few frames from the gallery. The rest sits one click away in the photo tab, sorted into categories such as inside, outside, team and by customer.

The practical conclusion: two files make the first impression, the logo and the cover photo, and the gallery decides on the visit. Both stages deserve attention, because a replaced cover photo does not help when the gallery behind it holds four blurred frames from 2019.

Profile photos are also one of the signals that a business profile is being kept up by somebody, rather than abandoned after verification.

Technical requirements

Google publishes its own file requirements, and following them keeps an upload from being rejected:

Parameter Value
Format JPG or PNG
File size 10 KB to 5 MB
Minimum resolution 250 by 250 pixels
Recommended resolution 720 by 720 pixels
Logo square frame
Cover photo landscape frame, 16 to 9

Three things sit outside the requirements and still decide the result: sharpness, no filters and daylight. A phone photo taken at ten in the morning next to a window beats a night shot with flash, and it costs nothing.

Six types of photo you need

Logo. A square on a plain background, without borders and without an address typed into the graphic. This is the file that appears next to your review replies and posts.

Cover photo. One frame that shows what the business is. For a restaurant, the room at lunchtime. For a garage, the bay with the lift. For a clinic, the waiting room. This file does the most work.

The entrance from outside. A photo that lets a customer recognise the door while standing on the street, with the sign, the building number and part of the surroundings. Without this frame people call to ask where exactly you are.

Inside. Three to six frames: what the customer sees on entering, where they wait, and where the service happens. An empty space in the morning looks calmer than a crowd.

The team at work. Faces sell local services harder than equipment does. You need consent from anyone recognisable in the frame, given before publication rather than after.

The product or the result. Hair after a cut, a kitchen after a renovation, a finished cake. Before and after frames work well when both are taken in the same place and the same light.

Six types is the minimum that describes a business without gaps. Anything beyond that is the difference between a complete profile and one people want to scroll through.

How many photos and how often

Twenty photos in the gallery is enough for a small service business. For a restaurant, a hotel or a beauty salon the sensible number is forty and up, because there the gallery replaces the menu and the price list.

Rhythm matters more than volume. Two or three new photos a month keep a profile in the 'maintained' state, while one session of thirty frames followed by two years of silence looks exactly like what it is. The simplest approach ties uploads to what you already do: a new item in your service list, a refit, new equipment, a seasonal change of décor.

Remove old frames too. A photo of the room from two renovations ago does more damage than no photo, because the customer arrives with a different picture in mind than the one they will see.

Photos added by customers

Customers add photos themselves and you cannot delete those files from the dashboard. You can only report them when they break Google's rules, for example when they show something unrelated to the business or contain personal data.

More often than not this works in your favour. Customer photos are evidence that the business is alive, and they carry exactly the credibility that promotional frames lack. When a customer photo shows a real problem, say a messy waiting room, the more useful response is to fix it and add your own current photo rather than to report theirs.

The same mechanism applies to reviews: a profile with visible customer activity reads as active.

Why Google removes photos

Five reasons that hit small businesses in practice:

  1. Content unrelated to the business. City views, quote graphics, memes, family pictures.
  2. Overlays and promotional graphics. A phone number, a URL, a price list or the word 'sale' pasted onto the image.
  3. Photos from other sources. Frames from a manufacturer's catalogue, from a stock library or from a competitor's website. Google can recognise them and the rights holder can file a complaint.
  4. Duplicates. The same photo uploaded repeatedly, including across several profiles of the same business.
  5. Sensitive content. People's likeness without consent, licence plates, documents, personal data visible on a screen in the background.

A removal usually comes with no notification, so it is worth counting the files in the gallery once a month. When several disappear at once it is not a coincidence and it usually points to one of the reasons above. Repeated breaches can end in a suspended profile.

What never to upload

Five things worth deleting from the gallery today:

  • Stock images. A smiling team in suits around a laptop is recognisable at a glance and tells the customer that real photos do not exist.
  • Collages and text graphics. Prices, opening hours and phone numbers belong in profile fields, not in an image file. In the fields they are clickable and translated; on a graphic they are dead.
  • Screenshots. A screenshot of a website, an invoice, a message or the Google dashboard tells a customer nothing about the business.
  • Party and private event photos. Even the office Christmas dinner rarely shows what a customer wants to see before a visit.
  • Frames with visible data. Faces without consent, licence plates, documents, a monitor showing customer data in the background. That breaks Google's rules and creates a data protection problem at the same time.

Photo order - what you set and what Google decides

You set two files: the logo and the cover photo. Google arranges the gallery order, taking into account frame quality and how customers react to each image. There is no 'pin this photo first' control.

The conclusion is simple: a weak frame cannot be pushed to the front, so the only lever is uploading good frames only. Ten sharp photos work better than thirty of which twenty are dark.

Mobile services with no premises

A business that travels to the customer has no interior to show, and that is not an obstacle. Instead of an interior, show the branded vehicle, equipment set up for work, yourself working at a customer site, the finished result and documents confirming qualifications.

With a service area instead of an address, photos do even more work, because they are the only evidence that the business physically exists. A photo of a van with a logo and a phone number on the door is the exception to the overlay rule, since the lettering is part of reality rather than a graphic added in an editor.

Fifteen minutes with a phone

A session that genuinely covers a small business: turn on the camera grid, pick an hour with good daylight, switch off filters and take three frames of each shot from the list of six types. Then keep the sharpest of each three and delete the rest.

Check three things before uploading: no faces of people who have not consented, no documents or screens with data, and the photo shows the current state. It is the same reflex you apply to the business name and contact details: you publish what is there, not what you wish you could show.

FAQ

How many photos should a Google Business Profile have?

Twenty photos in the gallery plus a logo and a cover photo is enough for a small service business. Restaurants, hotels and beauty salons benefit from forty or more, because the gallery replaces the menu and the price list.

Why did Google remove my photo?

The most common reasons are content unrelated to the business, promotional text or graphics pasted onto the image, a file taken from another source, a duplicate, and visible personal data. There is usually no notification, so the loss only shows in the photo count.

Can I delete a photo added by a customer?

Not from your own dashboard. You can report it to Google if it breaks the rules, for example when it has nothing to do with the business or contains personal data. A photo that follows the rules stays, even if you dislike it.

What photos should I add if the business has no premises?

A branded vehicle, equipment set up for work, yourself during the job at a customer site, the finished result, and proof of qualifications. With a service area and no address, photos are the main evidence that the business operates.

See also

The fastest way to see the gaps is to look at the profile through a customer's eyes. The free ProfileForBusiness audit walks the profile field by field, shows the missing photo types and the elements Google displays first.