Most first-time listeners find VoiceMap tours through an online search, and quite often they aren’t looking for a tour at all. They’re searching for a place they want to visit, like a museum, a famous square, a historic building or even a shop, and a tour that goes there shows up alongside it. Here’s a great example from a review that came in recently for The Ted Lasso Way: A Richmond Walking Tour.
Google Things to Do makes a connection like this possible, using the landmarks you’ve linked to your tours. Read more on how that works here.
Why this matters now
We advertise VoiceMap tours in lots of places, but a significant share of our spend goes to Google Things to Do. Since August 2025, Google has shown our Things to Do ads for VoiceMap tours more than 130 million times, and in recent weeks almost all of the clicks (93%) came from searches that name a specific place, like “national gallery” or “cologne cathedral”, instead of generic search terms like “things to do in bristol”.
In other words, it’s the places your tour visits that bring listeners to it. When someone searches for an attraction or landmark online, your tour can appear under related “Experiences” in Google Search, or under “Tours & Activities” in Google Maps. Maps is a particularly good fit for VoiceMap, because people often use it when they’re already out exploring, which is when a flexible, on-demand tour makes the most sense. But your tour will only show up if it’s linked correctly to that landmark.
So it’s worth taking a few minutes now to review the landmarks you’ve already added, even if you checked them when you published your tour. We’ve also recently raised the limit to 30, and the more relevant landmarks you add, the more opportunities you create for listeners to discover your tour.
Here’s an example of a VoiceMap tour as the first suggested “Experience” for the Tuileries Garden in Paris:
What works best
We looked at how often Google showed VoiceMap tours in Things to Do over seven weeks, comparing each tour only with other tours in the same destination. The tours that do well tend to have a few things in common.
1. They name a place in the title
Tours that include the name of a place they visit in their title were shown and clicked over 40% more often. If a well-known place or a historic landmark is featured on your route, with at least one location dedicated to it, consider putting it in your title. London’s Best-Kept Secret Gallery: A Tour of the Wallace Collection and Grand Central Terminal’s Secrets are good examples. Although this was one of the clearest patterns we could find, it won’t work for every tour. Title changes go through your editor, so get in touch with them to discuss whether it suits your tour.
2. They link more landmarks
The more landmarks a tour links to, the more often it tends to be shown. Tours with 20 or more landmarks were shown about 60% more often than tours with fewer than 5. Link every place on your route that your tour visits or talks about, and check your tour’s description too: if it mentions a place on your route that isn’t linked, add it.
3. Their landmarks are linked correctly
- Only add landmarks your tour visits, passes or talks about along the route, and leave out places that are only seen from a distance or mentioned in passing, so listeners aren’t disappointed.
- Pick landmarks from the VoiceMap suggestions where you can, since these already have VoiceMap tours linked to them. If a landmark isn’t there, use Search via Google.
- Only use Add as Text if you can’t find a landmark on VoiceMap or Google, because text landmarks won’t connect your tour to a place on Google. If you’ve added one as text and it is on Google, replace it with a linked version.
- Make sure you’ve selected the correct landmark. Many places share a name, like St Mary’s Church or Marktplatz, so check the street or city before adding it.
How to review your landmarks
- Go to your dashboard, scroll down to Your Tours and click the Distribution icon next to the tour.
- Open the Distribution tab and click Google Things To Do.
- To add a missing landmark, go to Linked Landmarks, start typing its name and pick it from the suggestions. If it doesn’t appear, click Search via Google, find the right place and click Add.
- Drag the landmarks into the order listeners pass them, then click Save and Submit.
You can also add an image made for Google (2048 x 1366px works best) and check your starting point address. Once you’ve submitted, your changes are sent to Google automatically and should reach it within 24 to 48 hours.
For the full guide, including how to add landmarks before you publish, see our documentation.
Check the landmarks of each of your tours this week, and if you have any questions, please post them below.