How do you get links from a photo pointing to a third party site in Google Places?

[HICRM]

How do you get links from a photo pointing to a third party site. I’ve seen a number on other Places accounts but I can't figure out how to do it.  They had a picture/logo and the url underneath it (instead of it saying 'from the owner' underneath it), when you clicked the photo it took you to the website instead of just a page with only that photo on it.

Please see image as an example. I've highlighted the image links below.

Thanks in advance for your help

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[RobertFisher]

Rahul, I believe those have to be posted by a third party. Places then puts the link to them. I went into several accounts just to be sure and could not find a way to append a url. These are from affiliates on this site. I know from posting photos on a ton of Places accounts that the photo always has from the owner when you are logged in.

Best

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rahul,

Google has certain sites from which it draws third party photos (such as Panaramio, Yahoo, etc.). In order to get links like that, you would have to be considered one of Google's trusted third party image sources. Does this answer your question?

Miriam

[RobertFisher]

Hello Miriam,

Are you sure there is no way for an affiliate to upload to Places, state who they are, and then have the url? 
I am not 100% and that is why I am asking.

Best

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Robert!

I want to make sure I understand your question. Can you define what you mean by an 'affiliate'? Obviously, Google allows UGC from anybody on Place Pages (any user), but I'm not quite sure this is what you mean. Thanks!

[RobertFisher]

Assume I am a boutique hotel in Clearwater, FL. I want to pay an affiliate (publisher) to drive traffic to my site. I hire a small affiliate ClearwaterHotelPages.com to assist me. They list reviews on hotels.

Can they place pictures of my hotel on my places page and will Google include their url? It would seem that if Google allows Hotels.com or Yelp, or etc. they are almost compelled to allow a smaller affiliate as well.

[HICRM]

Hi Robert and Miriam,

Thank you both for your help.

Cheers,
Rahul

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rahul & Robert,

If I've understood your questions correctly, you want to know how one becomes a third party image provider in Google Places so that linked images are showing up on Place Pages from your body of data. I want you to both know that I have researched this and have also spoken with Mike Blumenthal (imo the top Local SEO in the country) to be confident that my facts are correct.

As I mentioned before, it is up to Google to decide with whom it partners for this service. There is a form somewhere for submitting a request to become a Google partner, but for the life of me, I couldn't find it and Mike wasn't sure where it was either. It may be somewhere within this set of pages:

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/mapcontent/

I spent about 10 minutes hunting for it to no avail, so it seems it's not very obvious, but maybe with some more searching, you can turn up the form.

What you can typically expect is that Google is only going to partner with very huge companies able to provide a huge set of data. If you are small, it won't hurt to contact Google (if you can find that dratted form) but I would not expect to become a partner.

Other than being a partner, there appears to be a more random sourcing of data from various sites using rich snippets, so that is something you both might want to investigate further. I sincerely hope this answer helps.

Miriam