This is all very good information that gets overlooked and as a commercial photographer, I can vouch for your assessment about the kind and quality of images – too polished doesn’t look real and if it’s simply not a good image, get rid of it. We have to remember to help both Google and the viewer to get the right message and help them make decisions.

One of the things that is not made clear with respect to 360° photos is that, if you want to have them work as a virtual tour (Google Street View technology applied to 360° photos directly published to your business profile) they must be published by a Google Trusted Photographer who have the ability not only upload the images, but also interconnect them as a walk-through navigation. Otherwise the images will be simple 360 views and a viewer’s expectations to click through to the next view simply won’t work.

Another feature that Google doesn’t mention that clearly is how easy it is to leverage your virtual tour directly in your website by using their own embed iFrame functionality. That said, that tends to be more for small premises or virtual tours that don’t need a lot of enhancement. For a bigger, more complex space, virtual tour photographers can add additional technology to simplify this navigation, including placement of images across multiple levels in a multi-level building.