Google Publishing Pro

This tutorial explains how you can publish panoramas and tours on Google Street View.

Prerequisites

Before you can publish your content on Google Street View, you will need to connect your Kuula account to your Google account. This process is described in the this article. During the linking process, it is very important to check the permissions checkbox, as shown below:

Once the accounts are linked, you can start publishing your posts and tours to Google Street View.

Publishing

Per Google terms of service, photos of residential properties are not allowed on Google Street View. Breaking Google's terms of service could result in your Google account being banned from Street View.

Additionally, we recommend checking this article which contains additional guidelines for publishing images on Google.

Once you make sure that you photos conform with the Google terms and guidelines and you are ready to publish them, please navigate to the tour or a post you want to publish from your profile and click the Share button on the right side of the screen (or on bottom, if you are on mobile). This will open a popup with all the sharing options that are available:

In that window, click on Google.

Post selection

If you share a tour, after clicking on the Google option, in the next window, you will see a list of posts. At this point you can select which ones you want to publish to Google. If you are sharing a single photo, this screen will be skipped and you will be taken to the next step right away.

Only 360 photos can be published to Google. If the tour contains any 2d/flat images (for example, a floor plan) those posts will be disabled for selection.

Only images containing location data (GPS coordinates) can be published. If your posts do not have a location data, you will need to add it before publishing. Please refer to this article to see how to do that.

Hotspots

Google Street View will not render hotspots, labeps, cards or any other interactive elements that you can add to your tours on Kuula. However, it will use the hotspots that connect photos in your tour to create it's own "arrow"-style connections. To make sure all your photos will be correctly connected by Google, please move the heading on each photo so that it points to the geographical north and add all the connecting hotspots.

Please note that based on Google guidelines, "maps may alter connections to improve viewing. When multiple 360 photos are published to one area, connections between them may be automatically generated. To ensure a realistic, connected viewing experience, we may adjust, remove, or create new connections, and adjust the position and orientation of your 360 photos."

Associating your posts with a Google Place

After you select the posts in the previous step and click Continue you'll see a screen similar to this one:

If the photos you are submitting are close to one or more Google Place, Google will return the names of those places and you can select one of them from the dropdown below the map. This way, the submitted photos will be tied to a place and you will be able to access them using the "See Inside" feature on Google Maps.

If Google doesn't find any Places near the coordinates for your photos, the dropdown will be hidden. In this casem if you submit your posts anyway, they'll have their location listed as "Unknown" on Google Maps.

After you select a place, take a moment to check if all the coordinates of the photos are in the correct places on the map. If all looks good, simply click Publish to finish the process.

Processing the submission

At this point, your posts will be added to a processing queue. The publication process typically takes 5-10 minutes, but it can take longer if your tour is large.

When all your posts are processed. You will receive an email. The message will contain a link to the published post. That same link will also be added to the post on your profile. You can find under the post description on the right hand side:

Google processing delay

Submitted photo will no be added to the map immediately. First, Google will review your submission, which can take anywhere between 24 hours and several days. If your photo is accepted, you will get an email confirmation from Google. If Google rejects the photo, it will never get published to the map but the direct link will still work. To learn more about Google policy, please refer to this website.

If you submit a tour where posts are connected by hotspots, Google will use the connections data to generate arrows connecting the photos on their side. That process is pretty slow: it can take up to 72 hours or more after the photo is published. This means that you may see photos without any connecting arrows first and the connections will only appear later.

Removing photos from Google

After the publication, your post on Kuula will be linked to the photo on Google. You can remove any post by clicking on the Remove button next to the Google link, as shown on the screenshot above.

Please note that in this case, Google does not remove the photo right away. It typically takes around 30 minutes for the photo to dissapear from Google Maps.

Browsing your submissions

All the content you published can be found on the Google Maps website. To see your submissions, navigate to the Maps website, click on the menu button on the top/left side and choose Your Contributions:

In the next section, open the Photos tab. In there, you can see all of your submitted photos.

Limits

Google Street View publishing is available to PRO and Business users. You can publish up to 1000 photos per month.

Troubleshooting connection to Google

If there is an problem with the Google submission, you will see Google connection error message when trying to publish your post or tour.

In most cases, that issue can be fixed in one of the following ways:

1. Try to log out from Kuula and log back in, using the Sign-in with Google button.
2. Alternatively, unlink your Google Account and link it back again in the Profile Settings.
3. If the above steps do not solve the issue, you can unlink your Google Account and remove Kuula from your Google connections list on your Google Account page. This will reset all the settings on the Google side. Then, you can link to Google account again.

If none of the solutions above helps and you still experience issues or if you have any feedback about the Google Street View publishing feature, please contact us.