14 DAY TRIAL // Google is now enabling anyone to upload a photo in Places, allowing users to add their own photos of the location, dishes served or anything else that might prove useful to others. If a photo meets Google's requirements it will be visible to everyone checking out the place.
"Whether looking for images of a restaurant’s cuisine, or getting a feel for the ambiance at a local bookstore, photos immediately help me learn more about a place," Roland Kehl, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.
"The 'Photos' section of the Place page now includes an 'Upload a photo' link. This new link enables you to select an original photo on your computer and easily add it to the group of photos in the gallery," he announced.
Google Places already has photos for many locations, but, until now, they only came from a small number of places. Verified business owners could upload their own photos.
Google has been populating the photos section with images from other sites as well, just like it does for reviews and other content. Google Places pulls information from a wide variety of places, from Wikipedia to YouTube to review sites, though some sites, notably Yelp, have complained about this.
Now Google is expanding the feature to enable users to contribute. As long as the photos follow Google Maps' review guidelines, which are rather generic such as forbidding copyright infringing content, violence, adult content and so on, they will be added to the 'place.'
"The most useful photos are descriptive ones that help others experience or envision a place before they visit it in person. It might be a close-up of a popular dish, a wide shot of a business interior, or a picture of the outside of the building," Kehl explained.
The photos will show up in Google Places but also in Google Maps, Google Earth and even in search results. Photo uploads helped Foursquare see a surge in usage, though the two services are rather different.