What you get back
Links to images,
not the images.
This is the distinction worth being clear about up front. What comes back are the photo
links Google publishes for a place - the same kind of value the Maps Scraper's
photo_url field carries, described in our data dictionary as a
"link to the image of the place". Not image files in a zip.
For most work that's what you want: links are small, they join cleanly onto a place table,
and you can fetch or render only the ones you actually need. If your workflow requires local
copies, downloading from the links is a step you control - which also keeps the licensing
question in your hands rather than ours. More on that below.
- query
- The place you submitted, echoed back on every one of its photo rows.
- place_name
- The name of the place the photo belongs to.
- place_id
- Google's identifier for that place - your join key onto an existing place table.
- photo_url
- The link to one photo. This is the row: one link per row, not one row per place.
4 columns per photo - every column above on every plan, including the free tier.
It's a deliberately narrow shape, and the narrowness is the point: place_id makes
the export joinable onto place data you already hold, so the photos become an extra table rather
than a parallel copy of your place list. Expect many rows per place - a single well-photographed
business can produce dozens - so the row count is driven by photo volume rather than by how many
places you submitted.
Scrape photos from Google Maps places
Livescraper's Google Maps Photos Scraper collects the photo links published on a place's Maps listing. You add the places or paste the place IDs you already hold, pick an output format, and download the result as CSV, JSON or Excel - each row tagged with the place it belongs to.
It's worth being clear about what arrives: links to images, not image files. That's the same kind of value the Google Maps Scraper's photo_url field carries, which our data dictionary describes as a link to the image of the place. Links are small, they join cleanly onto an existing place table, and you fetch only the ones you actually need - which also leaves any licensing decision in your hands.
The reason a separate tool exists is breadth. A standard Maps run already gives you photo_url, photos_count, logo_url and street_view on every row. If a thumbnail per place is enough, that's the tool to use. But a photos_count of 60 means 59 images you cannot see, and that gap matters when the question is what a place actually looks like rather than whether it has a picture.
Operations teams audit their own footprint and find refurbished sites still showing an old fit-out. Marketing teams compare storefront imagery across a category, since photos are the first thing a customer sees in local results. Property and field teams assess frontages, car parks and interiors without a site visit. One caveat throughout: a link is not a licence, and photos on a listing generally belong to whoever took them. Start free - your first 500 rows cost nothing and need no credit card.