How can we better control GMB photos on Google SERPs?

[SummitAuto]

Has anyone had luck choosing photos to display on SERPs for their Google My Business profile pages? Recently, Google has been overriding our photo choices and they've picked some terrible, user-submitted photos to show on SERPs. Our clients are understandably upset about this and we've tried flagging photos which works only a small % of the time.

When we call Google they say they can luckily remove individual photos, but this isn't too scalable across dozens of clients we work with.

How can we have better control over the photos that show on GMB listings? Any suggestions or best practices would be appreciated!

Attached is an example of one we have showing on SERPs for a dealer.

Screen-Shot-2017-10-25-at-2.16.52-PM.png

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Matt,

A tough subject. I'm guessing you've read all the general advice on ensuring that you've added plenty of your own guideline-compliant photos on behalf of your clients so that Google has good stuff to choose from, and it sounds like you know how to flag photos or report them like this: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Basics-for-Business-Owners/Remove-Photo-From-Location-Listing/td-p/1131795

But as to doing this at scale, I'm not aware of a solution that gives you any additional control over GMB images than you have with manual management. I think I once asked Local SEO Guide if their Locadium product alerts customers to new images being uploaded to their GMB listings, but I don't believe they ever replied. You might investigate that product further to see if you can get an answer. My question to them may simply have gotten lost - it's the one thing I wondered about when the product debuted. But, even if a product were to alert you to photos being added (which would be half the battle) the other half of the battle would be that it's up to Google to plunk photos into your listing - it's their choice. You can report unwanted images, but you can't proactively prevent Google from accepting them or displaying them. Definitely a pain point, and one of the impactful outcomes of Googles crowd-sourcing approach to location data.