Street-level map images are often years out of date, showing a previous tenant's sign or an empty unit. Add current photos of your front to your listings and website, and describe the building and a landmark in your directions.

The door they memorised

Before driving somewhere new, many people look at the street first. They find the address on the map, drop into Street View, and memorise the front of the building.

That picture may be years old. In suburbs and industrial areas the street-level photographs are refreshed only occasionally, and yours may show the previous tenant's sign, scaffolding, a leasing banner or an empty unit.

So the customer drives past your door looking for someone else's, or walks into the business next door to ask.

Each confusion costs a few minutes and some goodwill. Now and then it costs the visit.

How old the picture is

Street View prints the month the image was captured in small type at the bottom of the screen. Look up your own address and check it.

If the date is before you moved in, renovated or put up a new sign, the picture is describing a different business.

The same imagery can also appear beside your listing in Google's results as a look at the outside, so a customer may see it without ever opening the map.

What an old picture gets wrong

The fourth causes the most trouble, because it cannot be seen from the car. A customer parks at the front, finds a locked door, and may leave before walking round to the side.

Street View is not yours to update

Google decides when its cars photograph a street, and a business cannot order a new pass on demand.

What you control is everything around the picture: your own photographs on the listing, your website, and the words that describe how to find you.

Those are also what a careful customer looks at next, once the street view has left them unsure.

Your own photographs on the listing

Google My Business lets you add photographs to your listing, including the outside of the building. They appear on the listing and on its Google+ page.

Take them from where a customer arrives: from across the street, from the parking, and close up at the door, in daylight, with the sign readable.

Add the same photographs to Bing Places for Business, and use one as the cover photo on the Facebook page if the shopfront is your best side.

Directions that describe the building

Most directions pages give an address and a map, which is what the customer already had. Add what they will actually see.

Describe the building in a sentence: the colour, the sign, what is on either side, and which door to use. Name one landmark visible from the road, such as a gas station or a school.

Say where to park. If the unit was a well-known shop before you, mention it, since people remember old landmarks longer than new names.

Put a current photograph of the front beside the words, so the description and the picture agree.

A worked example

A film processing lab develops colour and black-and-white film and prints from the negatives, for enthusiasts, art students and a few professional photographers.

Two years ago it moved from a downtown storefront to a cheaper unit in a row of older shops and workshops in a suburb, on a side street off the main road.

The street-level imagery for the new address had been taken the year before the move. It showed the previous tenant, a nail salon with a pink sign.

Film customers come from across the region a few times a year, and most had never been to that street. Several a week parked, looked for the pink sign, and asked at the bicycle repair shop next door.

The owner photographed the front from across the street, from the parking spaces and at the door, and added the photographs to the Google My Business listing and to Bing Places.

The contact page got the same photograph and two sentences: the black door between the bicycle shop and the bakery, the lab's name on the glass, parking out front.

The bicycle shop still gets the occasional film customer, mostly people who skipped the website.

Other maps and directories

Customers do not all use the same map. Bing's maps, directory sites such as Yelp, and your own Facebook page each show their own pictures of the business.

Check each one for an old front, a previous name or an earlier address, and replace it with the same current photograph.

Where a site shows customers' photographs, adding your own gives people at least one accurate picture to compare with.

Where the listing appears

A search for a type of business nearby shows a map and up to seven businesses beside it. A customer choosing between them often opens several listings to compare.

Photographs are much of what they see when they do. A current front, a clear sign and the inside of the shop answer the question an old street picture raises.

The point is not ranking. It is whether the person who chose you can find the door.

The counter-case

Some businesses have little to fix. If customers never come to you, as with most trades that work at the customer's address, the street picture matters less.

A shop in a mall, or the only building on a corner, is hard to miss whatever the imagery shows. And where Street View is recent and correct, it is doing the job for you.

Anywhere with a side door, a second floor, a unit in a row, or a recent move, check the date, add current photographs and describe the building in words.

This week

  1. Check the capture date on your street image.
  2. Photograph the front from where customers arrive.
  3. Add the photographs to Google My Business.
  4. Describe the building in your website directions.
  5. Name a landmark visible from the road.
  6. Say where to park and which door.
  7. Repeat the photographs on Bing and Facebook.

Step four is the one that works even while the pictures are wrong. A customer who knows to look for a black door beside a bakery will find it, whatever sign the map shows.

Deciding who keeps these photographs current is part of who decides what goes on the website this year.

Frequently asked questions

How old are Street View images?

It varies by street. Many suburban and industrial streets are photographed only every few years, and Street View shows the capture month in small print at the bottom.

Can I ask Google to update Street View?

Not on demand. Google decides when its cars photograph a street. You control the photographs on your own listing, your website, and how you describe the building.

Which photographs should I add to the listing?

The front of the building from where customers arrive: across the street, from the parking and at the door, in daylight, with the sign readable.

What should my directions page say?

What the building looks like, what is on either side, a landmark visible from the road, where to park and which entrance is yours, beside a current photograph.

Does an old picture matter if customers rarely visit?

Less. If you always go to the customer, the street picture matters little. Shops, clinics, studios and anywhere with a hard-to-find door gain the most from fixing it.

Where else do customers see old photographs?

Bing's maps, directory sites such as Yelp and your own Facebook page each show their own pictures. Replace any old front with the same current photograph.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Customers walking into the shop next door?

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