Lesson 7: What You Will Need to Begin Building a Google Tour

Before you begin building a virtual tour, there are a few checklist items we recommend going over. You will need:

The correct verified Google Maps listing
This is one of the most important things you'll need, besides your panoramas, of course. As you'll learn in Lesson 8 and 9 when you first start building, you'll need to first find the location on Google Maps in TourBuilder. An official, verified business listing on Google will have both a Place ID and a CID. Both of these will appear once you've selected your location. Be sure you know the correct listing - whether it is the official Google Maps link or CID. What is a CID?

Why is this so important to have? Once you have chosen the location and have begun uploading your scenes, but find that you have chosen the incorrect listing, the location cannot be changed. You may have to start over if you've chosen the wrong listing, so it is highly recommended that you are sure of the location you are finding in TourBuilder.

Pre-stitched 360 panoramic images
TourBuilder only accepts pre-stitched 360 panoramic images. The tool does not automatically stitch images for you. If you do not know how to stitch your images into seamless panoramas, TourBuilder also offers a stitching service that can help.

In addition, we recommend maintaining your images with a 2:1 width to height ratio and a size of at least 6000x3000. We do not recommend cropping your nadir (black portion at the bottom of your panoramas), as this compromises the 2:1 width to height ratio and will display incorrectly on Google's viewer.

Other items to consider
If you are a free TourBuilder user, the blur and nadir patching tools are not available in your account. Before uploading your images, you may find it necessary to blur any faces or license plates in a third-party photo editing software as well as patch your nadirs outside of the platform.