Feature
Your panoramas on Google Maps, without leaving the tour
A public tour whose views carry coordinates publishes to the map with one button, under your own Google account and onto the venue’s listing when it has one. The tour itself stays with you.
Why getting a panorama online became awkward
Because the tool built for it is gone. Google pulled the Street View app from the stores on 21 March 2023, and only two official routes remain, neither of which was designed for twenty panoramas shot from a drone.
The first route is the “Contribute” tab in the Google Maps app: one photo at a time, picked from a phone’s camera roll and pinned to a place. For a single panorama, that is fine. For a whole campsite shoot, it means moving files from the drone to the phone, then repeating the gesture once per viewpoint.
The second is Street View Studio, on the web. It takes batch uploads, but the Google help page that documents it is written for 360 videos, and Google’s own contributor page recommends cameras you mount on a vehicle or a helmet. It is a route-mapping tool, built for streets - not for placing six spheres above a golf course.
The programme that used to frame professional work is gone too: Google closed Street View Trusted on 31 December 2024, badge and photographer directory included. Publishing is still possible, and in fact more open than before - but nobody holds your hand any more.
Publishing is more open than it was. What disappeared is the path, not the right.
The gesture
Four steps, once
The account is connected once, for the workspace. After that, each tour publishes with a single button.
- Step 01
You connect a Google account
In the workspace settings, once. That account is the one that publishes, and it is the one that owns the photos. The choice matters: see below.
- Step 02
You pick the business listing
At publish time, tour by tour: search the listing by name, pick it from the list. A drone pilot working for several clients has nothing to reconfigure between two tours.
- Step 03
You publish the tour
One button sends every ready view: the ones carrying coordinates, not excluded, on a tour that is public. Each view leaves with its position and its heading.
- Step 04
Google decides, and you get an email
Google’s review is asynchronous and final. When the wave settles, one email per tour reports what is online and what was refused. No deadline is promised, because none can be.
Under the button
What is handled for you
The four things that make a manual upload fail, and that you are never asked for here.
- The file in the required formatGoogle asks for a JPEG at an exact 2:1 ratio, at least 7.5 megapixels, carrying equirectangular metadata. The derivative is built from your original; a file that does not meet the rules is refused here rather than sent for nothing.
- Position and headingBoth are already in the tour: read from EXIF on import, correctable by dragging on the map. A misplaced view moves here, and the correction goes back to Google without resending a single byte of image.
- The arrows between viewsThe tour’s navigation links become Google’s connections: on the map, you step from one panorama to the next as you would in the tour. An excluded or refused view drops out of the graph without breaking it.
- Removal, for realThe workspace settings list everything the account has published, with a link to each photo. Unpublishing from Moorea genuinely deletes the photo at Google - not just here.
Compare
Three ways to get a panorama onto the map
Google’s own tools are free and often enough. This table says when they are enough.
Our format
Moorea
- What you send
- A tour’s views, as a batch
- From where
- The browser, inside the tour
- File preparation
- None: the compliant derivative is built for you
- Arrows between views
- Taken from the tour’s links
- Business listing
- Chosen at publish time, changeable later
- Removing a photo
- From the workspace settings
- What it costs
- Included in the Pilot plan
Other format
Google Maps app
- What you send
- One photo at a time, from the phone’s camera roll
- From where
- The mobile app
- File preparation
- Yours to do, before transferring
- Arrows between views
- None
- Business listing
- The one you publish from
- Removing a photo
- From your Google contributions
- What it costs
- Free
Other format
Street View Studio
- What you send
- Batched files; Google’s help page documents 360 videos
- From where
- The browser
- File preparation
- Yours to do
- Arrows between views
- Inferred from the route
- Business listing
- No
- Removing a photo
- From Street View Studio
- What it costs
- Free
Checked on 27 August 2026 against Google’s public documentation. If you have a single panorama to publish, the Google Maps app does the job and costs nothing: this table exists for when you have twenty.
What goes to Google, and what stays with you
What leaves is the bare shot. Not the tour, not your brand, not the logo you placed at the nadir.
On Google Maps, a panorama is a document, not a piece of brand design. Promotional overlays are the first reason imagery gets taken down, and a takedown is final. So we send the original, changed only by what the format demands. Two consequences, better known in advance: the nadir logo you pay for here does not appear there, and the zenith hole typical of drone panoramas stays visible.
The other way round, everything that makes the tour stays with you: hotspots and info cards, the interactive map, the booking button, the analytics, your brand and your domain. The two surfaces do not replace one another, they follow one another. Someone finds the place on the map; they land on the tour because that is where there is something to do.
The phrase we keep, to say both at once: your tour on your own site, your panoramas on the map.
The photos belong to the account, not to Moorea
We are neither the owner nor the credited author of what is published, and we keep no copy of it at Google. The account that publishes is the only one that matters - and for a drone pilot, that is a commercial decision.
Two setups, two opposite outcomes. Connect your own account to publish for a client, and the photos stay yours when they leave: they will be able neither to edit nor to remove them. Connect the client’s account in their workspace and the reverse is true - which is the setup to prefer when the tour belongs to them.
None of this is reversible afterwards, which is why the screen says so beforehand. Connecting a different account to a workspace leaves the previous account’s photos online and out of Moorea’s reach: the only moment to clean up is before switching accounts, from the inventory in the settings.
One guarantee in the other direction: downgrading a plan, suspending the workspace or archiving a tour touches nothing at Google. The publishing screen goes away, the photos stay. Deleting a view or sending the tour to the bin, on the other hand, does delete the photo.
Questions
Do I need a Gmail address?
No. Any Google account works, including one created on a work address. What matters is that it is the account you want the photos to appear under.
Can I publish without a business listing?
Yes. With no listing, the view becomes a point on the map: viewable, but not part of any venue’s gallery. That is the case for a site, a district or a construction project with no listing. You can attach one later without resending anything.
How long before the photo appears?
We do not announce a figure, and be wary of anyone who does. Google’s review is asynchronous, opaque and final: it takes hours or days, it can refuse, and it can remove a photo long afterwards. An email tells you when publishing has settled.
What kind of panorama does it take?
A complete geolocated sphere. Google requires a JPEG at a 2:1 ratio, at least 7.5 megapixels, with its equirectangular metadata; a panorama stitched by the drone maker usually carries them already. The conversion happens here, from your original.
Does the tour have to be public?
Yes. A private, password-protected or unlisted tour cannot be published. Publishing makes panoramas public on someone else’s platform, durably: we do not trigger that from a surface you believe to be closed.
Does the nadir logo show on Google Maps?
No, deliberately. What leaves is the raw master. Promotional overlays are the first reason imagery gets removed at Google, and a removal cannot be appealed.
Does this replace the virtual tour?
No. On the map there are panoramas and arrows. In the tour there is group navigation, info cards, the interactive map, the booking button and the analytics. The map brings people in, the tour keeps them.
From which plan?
The Pilot plan, at €19/month excl. VAT, and Studio. Free is excluded on purpose: it is our Google authorisation that answers for what is published through it.
Further reading
- GuideUploading 360 photos to Google Maps: the guideThe three routes in detail, what Google requires of an image, and what the platforms selling this feature charge for it.Explore
- What the aerial view shows that nothing else doesThe category page: the whole site, its volumes and its distances, against indoor tours and video.Explore
- Hosting the tourWhat “included” means, and why a tour should outlive the provider who made it.Explore
- JournalStreet View without its app: where things stand in 2026The story of the Street View app closing, and what it changed for drone pilots.Explore
Your tour on your own site, your panoramas on the map
Publishing is included in the Pilot plan. The free plan is enough to build a first tour and see what it looks like.