Do you Feel Street View for inside a local business is a ranking factor for the local algorithm?

[BCutrer]

I'm working in a market where the Google Trusted photographer is rolling out. The question came up if providing this data would boost your rankings in the local map pack. I've been asking a few fellow SEO peeps but I thought I would throw it out here for your opinion.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bill,

My pleasure...and, yes, correlation is probably not causation in this scenario. Probably lots of other factors at play.

I hope there will be more documentation and commentary on this topic soon. The slideshows are pretty neat. But, as you say, the price is somewhat hefty.

[BCutrer]

Thanks for your thoughts Miriam. That's kind of where I am with it. It just got rolled out in my area and one of my clients got pitched by the photographer. It's pretty steeply priced at a grand to shoot a small space. It definitely doesn't have the ROI on its own. What was interesting is I looked through the photographer's client list and I noticed one of the clients is ranked in the local search #1 for a very competitive keyword in our area. I know the mantra of correlation and causality, but it made me wonder a little bit.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bill,
Despite the fact that Google began rolling this out two years ago, there has been so little writing or research done on it. I read Local SEO news on a daily basis, and have yet to encounter any of the top Local SEOs saying that they implemented this for a client and saw X impact on the rankings. I actually just spoke with Darren Shaw who has a client who did this and he did not feel it impacted rankings, but as I say, people just haven't really published studies on this (not that I've seen, anyway).

Thinking this over, the one way I could hypothesize that this might have some small impact on rankings could be user behavior. This is a big 'if'. If participation were, for example, to cause users to stay on the + page longer, and if Google chose to view this as a signal that the page was more trusted or more active or some other positive attribute like that (I'm not saying they do, mind you), then perhaps that could slightly influence rank, but I wouldn't bank on it. And because you can't tell that a business has participated in this program until you're actually on their page, CTR can't be part of picture. So, no ranking factor there.

I think this app needs to be viewed more from a conversion standpoint than a ranking one. To my mind there are 2 things to consider here.

1. Client motive...whether the client's business has a strong visual component that could make a virtual walk-through persuasive to the user. For example, a beautiful restaurant can show off it's gorgeous setting, but a car garage might not have that same desire/need.

2. Google motive...see the final point on this page http://maps.google.ca/help/maps/businessphotos/faq.html#q2
   Google has always loved neat technology, so there is a 'coolness' factor, of course, but this program is a way to increase participation in Adwords Express, so Google has a very good reason to want business owners to participate.

I hope these are some good thoughts to consider, Bill, but as I've said, this whole issue has been so little documented, that I just don't have an authoritative answer beyond suggesting that this more about conversions than rankings, from what I can see.

[matbennett]

I suspect that Google will be quiet keen to show this off