David Mihm has been providing brilliant predictions about local search for as long as I can remember. In his most recent discussion with another local search legend, Mike Blumenthal, they discuss the changing local landscape and how images seem to be growing in importance. I blogged about GMB images recently but wanted to bring to light this discussion and theories on how it will be used going forward.  David and Mike share some great examples of how these images are showing up in search.

Add Images, Ask for Images, Label Your Images on GMB

What do we learn from this? Along with asking for Google reviews, we should be asking for people to share images to your Google My Business page. In addition to adding as many images as we can ourselves, we want to inspire others to leave nice pictures on our page to feed the Google beast and give them more ways to learn about and show your business.  Though David shares some tactics Google uses to understand what your pictures are, it can’t hurt to label them appropriately.  An image that is named for what it represents is going to provide more information than a generic number or photo name.  If the picture represents a service or product you offer, label it as such.  It seems basic, but many forget and I see images with the name img1003 or something similar all of the time.  This doesn’t help.

David is often right on his local search predictions and as we see more people searching directly from Google Maps or Google presenting eye-catching images in local search results, you don’t want to be potentially left out from a potential appearance in a search.  Take lots of pictures and include them on your GMB. It is a fairly easy way to help improve your presence.