Street View | Trusted is the name of Google’s Certified Virtual Tour Photographer Program. Previously know as Google Business Views it had a name change , rebranding and significant overhaul of the “rules” associated with it, on September 3rd 2015.
Street View | Trusted Photographers are able to use a special system called the StreetView Editor to upload sequences of panoramic photos (called ingesting) and process them to form a Virtual Tour – which can then be associated with your Google+ Business Page.
All Google Virtual Tours are attached to your Google Business Page, and are accessible direct from Google Search and Google Maps (and once published can also be embedded into your website or social media account).
There are essentially three different types of Virtual Tours which can be created under Google’s Street View | Trusted Program as outlined below
Standard Virtual Tours
Standard tours make up the vast majority of Google Tours – they are ideal for the average “shopfront” or brick and mortar business with a single area, or multiple connected areas over a single “layer”.
Multi-level Virtual Tours
Multi Level Virtual Tours are designed for businesses that have multiple areas scattered across different vertical levels, e.g. a department store, or a business spread across several floors in a multi story building.
Multi-level Virtual Tours are characterized by 2 or more “level” buttons (normally tagged 1,2,3 etc) which can be clicked to jump from any location on one floor to a starting location on another floor (or level).
Hotel Mode Virtual Tours
Hotel Mode Virtual Tours allow for 2 or more separate virtual tours (each of which consists of one or more interconnected panospheres). These separate tours are known as “islands” and would typically be used to show for example a hotel reception and common areas, and a number of different room types.
There is no specific extra navigation buttons, but separate islands are accessed by selecting a different panorama from the photo carousel.
Enhanced Tours
Once published, any Google Tour can be further enhanced by intergarting them with one of a number of 3rd party service providers – allowing additional features – such as sophisticated navigation, hotspots, information popups, sound, and even embedded photos or videos – to be added.