You spent the time and money to get a Google Business View tour up on the Internet, so the question you’re probably asking yourself is, “what now?” What can someone do with a virtual tour?

Embed the Tour onto Your Website

To embed a tour on your website, you should follow these easy steps:

1. Go to your business’s Google Maps page.

2. Enter the virtual tour by clicking on any of your professionally-posted 360º images.

3. Click the three dots at the top left of the page.

4. Click “Share or Embed Image” and copy the embed code.

5. Finally, paste the embed code onto your website!

Post it to YouTube

You might have to contact your photographer about this, but it is possible! Either ask them to create a video for you, or ask them for the original 360º photos. If you do it yourself, follow these steps:

1. Gather your 360º photos.

2. Open your favorite video editing application and create a new project.

3. Set the resolution at a 2:1 ratio, such as 7168x3584 pixels. How you get to this setting varies by application.

1. Note: the latest version of iMovie doesn’t support this, but there are many good and free applications that do support this.

4. Import your 360º photo files.

5. Place the photos onto your timeline in the order that you want them to be displayed.

6. Adjust how long they will be displayed for. I usually display each photo for 7 or 8 seconds.

7. Export the video as an mp4 file. This format is important for the next step.

8. Run the video through Google’s “Spatial Media Metadata” app. You can download it here.

1. To do this, you must open the app, click “Open,” select your video, check the “My video is spherical (360)” box, click “Inject metadata,” and click “Save.”

9. Upload your video to YouTube.

Make sure to credit your photographer if you make or post the video yourself!