The media policy, and what to shoot
The limits above govern what you can control and what you can count. The rules below govern the images themselves: where they are allowed to come from, and what they have to be.
The media policy, and the AI-image problem
This is our reading of Google's published guidance, not legal advice. Two different pages carry the two halves, and conflating them is a common error. Provenance comes from Tips for posting media to Maps, in the Maps user-generated content policy help (
support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7411351). The file constraints come from Photo and video guidelines, in Business Profile help (support.google.com/business/answer/6103862). Neither carries clause numbers, so the phrases below are quoted as published and read on 2026-07-27.
Google asks you to "Use media that you captured" — media of a place "that you captured using a camera" — and to "Avoid screenshots, stock photos, GIFs, collages, heavily edited or otherwise manipulated photos, or imagery created by other parties".
Interpret that separately from the quote: the guidance is about provenance, not quality. A beautiful photograph you did not take is against it. A mediocre one you took on a phone is not.
Where AI-generated images sit
Which puts the current fashion for AI-generated profile and post imagery in an awkward place. An image a model produced is, on any plain reading, not media you captured with a camera, and it sits close to two of the phrases above — "imagery created by other parties" and "otherwise manipulated photos".
Whether Google enforces that against generated imagery is an open question: no Google statement we can find names AI-generated images, and the wording quoted above predates the current tools. Practitioners report uploads being rejected, but we have not traced any such report to a Google source (unresolved as of 2026-07-27).
The upside is cosmetic, the downside lands on a client's public listing, and the rule you would be relying on has not been written yet.
This manual does not recommend AI-generated imagery on a Google Business Profile, and neither should you. Use it for a blog header if you like. Not here.
Format, size and review
The practical constraints that go with the policy:
- JPG or PNG. Not WebP, not HEIC. If your phone shoots HEIC by default, convert before uploading.
- Between 10 KB and 5 MB. Both ends are published limits, so a file under the floor is refused exactly as a file over the ceiling is.
- At least 250 × 250 px; 720 × 720 recommended. Those are Google's published numbers, and note that they are square — Google publishes no aspect-ratio requirement at all, so anyone quoting you a mandatory 4:3 is quoting something else. Shoot landscape anyway (inference — thumbnails are centre-cropped on the surfaces we have compared, so a portrait shot loses its subject).
- Photos are reviewed like any other edit. Usually minutes. Sometimes longer. "I uploaded it and nothing changed" is normally this.
The same policy governs images attached to posts, with tighter rules again — see Publishing without getting rejected.
What to shoot
Photos answer the questions a customer has before they commit to walking in. Shoot the answers.
| Shot | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| The storefront, from the direction people approach | "Will I recognise it from the street?" |
| The entrance and the parking situation | "Where do I actually go?" |
| Interior, wide, lights on | "What am I walking into?" |
| The thing you sell, close, in real conditions | "Is this what I want?" |
| The team, faces visible | "Who am I dealing with?" |
Take them yourself, on a phone, in daylight. That is not a compromise — it is what the policy asks for, and profiles that look photographed tend to read as more trustworthy than profiles that look art-directed.
Add over time rather than dumping forty at once. A steady trickle keeps the profile looking maintained and keeps the per-profile edit allowance free for changes that are time-sensitive.