Replacing the Boring Default Marker Icon in Google Maps With your Company Logo or Photo

Here's an idea that users of Google Maps often miss.

You can replace the boring "inverted raindrop" marker icon used in "My Google Maps" to mark listings with your own company logo or photo.  The process is quite easy.

Replace this

With this

Or even this

For this tutorial, I'm choosing our Madeline Island real estate company logo, instead of an agent photo.

Make your Google Map of your property listings look like this:

[Map of Madeline Island Realty property listings on Google Maps]

Let's get started.

First, log into your Gmail/Google account, locate "Maps" and click on "My Maps".  I'm assuming here that you have already created a Google Map for your area with listing locations marked by the default "inverted drop" marker.

Click on one of your listing icons and you'll see the detail below (we'll call it the "Description" box).  Note the marker in the upper right-hand corner.  Our goal is to replace it with our company logo.

Click on "Edit", just above the Map title and to the top left of the map itself.

Then click on a listing marker again to re-open the "Description" box and then click on the "inverted drop" marker in the upper right-hand corner.  You'll see this:

Click on "Add an icon" and you will open a small window that allows you to upload a custom logo or photo.  The image you upload needs to be hosted somewhere on the Web.  I'll show you how to do that for free below.

I used FreeImageHost.net for this purpose, but of course there are other places to host an image for free and gather the URL for the purpose of customizing your Google Maps icons.

I simply uploaded an image of my company "sailboat" logo from my desktop by browsing my computer.  The site then generates a URL for the hosted image, which you will paste into the window below:

Click on "OK" in the upper-right corner and your hosted image will appear in your "My icons" file.  Now go back to the "Default icons - My icons" box and click on "My icons":

This will take you to the "My icons" box.  Simply select your logo and it will populate the upper right-hand corner of the "Description" box for your listing.

Which gives you the result you want:

Click "Done" and "Save" on your Google Map.  Success!  Now do this for each of your listings and you'll have a Google Maps page that looks like this:

and your map will look like this:

 Voila!  Now it's your turn.