Google Maps Gets Even Better

Google has been making so many great updates to their services, it’s hard to keep up, but of course, they’ve done it again. The service of interest this time is Google Maps.

Google has now added some new functionality to their already awesome app, Google Maps. If you do a search, you may find the results showing Google Book search results, photos from Panaramio (if they have been geo-tagged), and even videos from YouTube. I’ve also noticed photos being pulled from credit.net which is owned by InfoUSA, so if you don’t already have a listing with InfoUSA, which you should, I definitely recommend you do that right away.

If you want an example of the photos from Panoramio, go to Google and make sure you are zoomed way out so that they don’t make the results localized. Then do a search for “Irelands biggest waterfall”. I pulled in a result for Irelands biggest waterfall.

Photo Results in Google Maps

If you want to see how they are using video, do a search for “sky diving in Greensboro”. If you watch this video, you also get an awesome bonus song that is sure to put you in a happy mood.

YouTube videos in Google Maps

On a post on the Google Lat Long Blog, they mentioned that you can find book results by searching for “Christmas books in Jerusalem”.

Book Results in Google Maps

As you can see, the photo results and video results need a little work, but it is brand new, so you can expect Google to fiddle around a bit before they get it to a more usable state. With options like saving your own maps with custom locations, sending maps to your phone, the ability to change the marker of your business to the exact location, “Street View”, traffic info, and now these new abilities, I just can’t imagine how much more Google will pack into this great service in the future.

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