SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

August 13, 2008

Microsoft's Live Maps Schools Google, Yahoo, Ask and AOL in Georgia Mapping

If you've been keeping up with the conflict in South Ossetia, perhaps you were curious about where the contentious events were occurring. I hope you ended up at Microsoft's Live Search Maps, because it is the only map of the top 5 search engines that could find both Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's self-declared capital, as well as Abkhazia, another separatist region where Russia has opened a second front.

Live Search Maps - Ts'khinvali

Live Search Maps - Abkhazia

Yahoo was the second best map. It found Tskhinvali after I typed in Microsoft's suggested spelling of Ts'khinvali. But the map was extremely zoomed in and you didn't have a sense of where you were until you zoomed out. It found Abkhazia with ease.

Yahoo Maps - Tskhinvali (can't find)

Yahoo Maps - Ts'khinvali (Microsoft's suggested spelling)

Yahoo Maps - Ts'khinvali zoomed out

Yahoo Maps - Abkhazia

Google found Ts'khinvali (even without the apostrophe), but an initial search for Abkhazia landed me in Glendale, California, at a business listing for an institute dedicated to policy in the Georgian region. Eventually, after searching for Ts'khinvali, a subsequent search for Abkhazia at least landed me in the correct region. But the problem was there were several results sprinkled across the troubled Georgia. Google has said it has had a hard time finding satisfying data for the region. They might want to try whatever Microsoft is having.

Google Maps - Ts'khinvali

Google Maps - Abkhazia, Glendale California

Google Maps - Abkhazia, Georgia

Ask.com's Maps and AOL's MapQuest couldn't find either city.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

March 7, 2008

Yahoo Maps Announces Updates

Yahoo Maps announced Wednesday that an update was rolled out, which includes several data and style improvements. Gus Maldonado, senior product manager, wrote on the Yahoo Local Maps Blog that users can expect to see lower zoom levels, new neighborhood data for 300 North American cities, and expanded worldwide coverage.

New points of interest have also been added and include schools, rest areas, and ski resorts. Usability was also a focus of the recent update, offering increased city density as well as adjustments to hybrid road and label colors.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:05 AM | Permalink

May 9, 2007

Yahoo Enhances Travel Maps

Yahoo has added some mapping features to Yahoo Travel, using AJAX to add layered images right on a Yahoo Map. For example, a map of the Boston Freedom Trail can be overlayed on a map of the city. Or a map of the Philadelphia International Airport can be matched to the highway map.

The opacity of the layers can be adjusted, so a user can choose to see one or the other map, or a mix of the two.

Greg Sterling has more details at his Screenwerk blog, and says that he expects the functionality to be extended to other parts of Yahoo, including local search, in the near future.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:34 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

Yahoo Travel Upgrades Maps, Adds More Features

Earlier this week Yahoo upgraded its Travel Guides with more dynamic mapping (including satellite and hybrid maps), more community features and the addition of a "My Travel Module," not unlike the recent introduction of "My Local" on Yahoo Local.

Here are some of the additional new features according to Yahoo:

* Pop-up icons providing quick user rating and review snippets on all listings * Booking capabilities direct from listings * Cool "Add to Trip" animation * Yahoo! Answers and Trip Plans display prominently for all cities * Photo Albums for points-of-interest and ability to upload photos * Display of user submitted photos on cities and points-of-interest

Maps and more community content have been rolling out across Yahoo's properties. Real Estate, for example, became more "map-centric" recently. But in my view one of the fullest expressions of Yahoo's social media strategy is Trip Planner.

Yahoo travel properties and content are a bit of a crazy quilt right now, with video, FareChase metasearch, its main travel property, Trip Planner (which, as I mentioned, is especially valuable) and Answers. At some point Yahoo will integrate all these assets into a more coherent whole I would imagine.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 10:03 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

Saving Addresses At Google & Yahoo Maps

Matt McGee posted an entry on a fairly new feature at Google Maps, that allows you to save locations for later use. He notes that Yahoo has had this feature for a while. In addition, the Google Blog has announced this feature earlier this month. I thought it would be useful to write a "how-to" save addresses at Google Maps and Yahoo Maps.

Saving Addresses on Google Maps: (1) Go to Google Maps (2) Sign in to Google, if you are already not signed in (link at the top right of the page) (3) On the left hand side you should see "Recent locations" and links to the most recent places you search on. You should also see a link to "See all saved locations" under the recent locations on the left and also a link at the top right of the page to "Saved Locations." (4) Clicking on the link will take you to a screen where you can manage your locations (add/edit/delete locations). (5) You can also "Enable auto-saving of locations," which I believe is on by default. (6) For more information on Google Maps Saved Locations see the help section.

Saving Addresses on Yahoo Maps: (1) Go to Yahoo Maps (I am taking you to the beta version) (2) Make sure you are logged in (3) Under the "Get Maps and Directions" field for "A", if you click on the arrow down in the input box, it should show you "recent locations." (4) To edit your recent location, in the same drop down, click on the link that says "Save/Edit Locations" (5) You can then either clear your recent locations or manage your other locations. You can add up to 10 saved locations to Yahoo Maps. (6) You can quickly save a location you searched on at Yahoo Maps by clicking on "Add to My Yahoo" (7) For more information on Yahoo Maps Locations see the help section (8) One Tip: Ten locations may not do it for you. I personally use Yahoo's MyWeb feature. I got to a specific location on Yahoo Local and click on the "Save to My Web" button. This way I can save Doctors, Restaurants, and Friends location easily. Of course, you can also add them to your Yahoo Address book.

Both Google and Yahoo have methods to send the data to your mobile phone.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:13 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Yahoo, MapQuest Bring Where 2.0 Back to Earth

Excuse the pun, of sorts. Many of the speakers and panelists over the past couple of days at Where 2.0 demonstrated a range of cool technologies or whiz-bang features that probably don't have a hope of becoming breakout, mass market consumer applications. That doesn't mean they aren't interesting or useful. But the question is: where will these companies be in 5 years?

Presentations from Yahoo's Paul Levine and MapQuest's Jim Greiner today independently focused on practical issues like business models and mass consumer adoption.

Paul Levine, Local GM for Yahoo, had the unfortunate challenge of being in front of a hungry crowd before lunch and dealing with some technical glitches with his presentation. However he did an excellent job, given those challenges, presenting tons of information in a compressed 15 minutes. Levine raced through Yahoo's broader social media strategy, Local and Maps. He also announced the Yahoo Local & Maps Blog, which Yahoo sees as a communication tool for all its local constituencies (bloggers, press, merchants, consumer-influencers and developers).

Levine said, "Participation is guiding our strategy, for Yahoo broadly, for search and especially in Local." He reiterated the FUSE (find, use, share and extend) concept. "We want to tap into the amazing body of content that's out there broadly, whether it's online or in people's heads."

Levine identified three principal constituencies for Local and Maps: consumers, merchants and developers. Levine said that Yahoo's strategy is to build "a container" for consumers to provide content to Yahoo. He cited Answers and Local ratings and reviews as two of several examples. Merchants are the business model and developers help extend the value of Yahoo's platform and tools. Regarding monetization Levine asked the semi-rhetorical question: "Where's the business around all this; where's the value creation?"

That's a theme that MapQuest GM Jim Greiner echoed in his talk later in the afternoon. Greiner said that he wanted to impress upon the crowd "three simple truths" that MapQuest has learned in its more than 10 years in business: 1) focus on what's truly useful to consumers, 2) make it economically viable and 3) aim for the mass market.

He gave examples of each but pointed out that the dominant use case of mapping online is still driving directions. By his own admission, MapQuest is not the innovator it once was, but it is the market leader. He showed comScore traffic data reflecting MapQuest's leadership and continued growth, despite some of the "sexier" features being promoted by its competitors. But he acknowledged that some of those features would be added to MapQuest: personalization, aerial and satellite imagery and street-level photography.

Greiner stressed simplicity and utility and cited Wayfaring.com as a mashup tool that ordinary people could use without any technical knowledge. Ironically, however, the founders of Wayfaring.com haven't quit their day jobs because, according to hearsay, they don't yet have a business model that permits them to do that.

Indeed, there are only two or three business models online: subscription/licensing or some version of advertising. And with advertising you ideally have to offer targeting and some degree of reach. This is very difficult for most of the small consumer-facing sites at Where.

Effectively then these startups become labs and talent incubators for the search engines and portals. While most of these companies hold out hope of being the next Flickr or del.icio.us, both of which Yahoo acquired.

In contrast to Greiner's very pragmatic, "real-world" approach, Yahoo's Levine struck a balance between practical questions (i.e., monetization) and technological innovation. On the latter point he discussed the integration of Yahoo assets such as Flickr, Local and mapping and the work being done at the Yahoo Research Lab in Berkeley. As an example he discussed automatic geocoding of photographs from mobile phones using cell-tower triangulation.

Levine ended by seeking to differentiate Yahoo's Maps and API from its competitors. He went through a list of bullets but mentioned the Yahoo content API as part of the overall value proposition for developers: Flickr, Local content and traffic in addition to the underlying mapping platform.

Levine also pointed to branded online campaigns created by Baskin Robbins and Columbia Pictures utilizing Yahoo's mapping tools as evidence of its richness and adaptability.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 4:22 PM | Permalink

April 18, 2006

TechCrunch Rates Yahoo Maps The Best Mapping Service

TechCrunch has an outstanding review of mapping services offered by Yahoo, Google, MapQuest, Ask.com and MSN. The review takes you through scoring on views, navigation, mapping routes, functional actions and services and pricing. Overall, Yahoo maps wins over the other mapping services.

Yahoo Maps was by far the best application tested. Its fast Flash interface, multipoint directions, live traffic information, and easy send-to-mobile feature make it the hands down winner. It also features the most robust API options.

Read the full review at TechCrunch. Oh, I have my own little and un-comprehensive review on mapping services based on driving to Toronto next week.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:28 AM | Permalink

April 12, 2006

New Global Satellite and Aerial Imagery Added to Yahoo! Maps

Yahoo has beefed up its Yahoo Maps beta with several new features, including more comprehensive and detailed coverage than most of its competitors. Yahoo says Yahoo Maps now offers complete, detailed maps and high-resolution satellite imagery for all of lower 48 United States.

Also new are medium resolution maps for the entire globe, featuring images at 15 meters per pixel (zoom level 5, medium resolution), which essentially lets you find and see every city, town, and major land feature in the world. Yahoo says this makes it the most comprehensive mapping and satellite imagery service available, at least for now.

Yahoo has also cleaned up the data you see, processing the satellite imagery to make the visuals more aesthetically pleasing. This means you'll no longer see uneven seams where images are joined, missing imagery or strange colors.

All of the new imagery is available for anyone to use on websites, for mashups or other uses through the Yahoo Maps API.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

April 7, 2006

SDForum To Host GeoSearch & Mapping Session With Google, Yahoo, MSN, & Ask.com

Search SIG announces that Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com will be on a panel named MapOFF! to take place at Yahoo headquarters on April 11th. The panel includes Jeremy Kreitler of Yahoo, Thai Tran of Google Maps, Alex Daley of Microsoft Virtual Earth and Andy Yang of Ask.com, moderated by Brady Forrest of Microsoft. More information on the event here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:54 AM | Permalink

January 17, 2006

New Mashup Combines Public Library Location Info with Google and Yahoo Maps

If you live in the US or Canada you no longer can say you don't know where public libraries in your area or any area for that matter are located. Over on ResourceShelf we've posted about Libraries411.com a new mashup that combines public library location info (and more) for more than 20,000 libraries in the US and Canada and mashes the info with both Google Maps or Yahoo Maps. Cool!

Posted by Gary Price at 6:26 PM | Permalink

January 3, 2006

New OSX Dashboard Widget for MSN Virtual Earth; Yahoo Maps Gets a Widget

It goes without saying that 2005 was the year of online maps and online aerial/satellite imagery. Here are a couple of new tools that will likely continue their popularity into 2006.

+ First, a new version of an MSN Virtual Earth widget was released over the weekend for Mac OSX Dashboard.

+ Second, Yahoo Maps now has a widget (Mac and PC) that's available here.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:36 PM | Permalink

December 27, 2005

Saturday Night Live Skit Mentions MapQuest, Yahoo Maps and Google Maps

The final edition of Saturday Night Live of 2005 about 10 days ago included a hilarious "digital video short" by cast members Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg as they walk the streets of NYC rapping about everything from The Chronicles of Narnia to map search tools (MapQuest, Yahoo Maps, and Google Maps).

When the video ended I wondered (more liked hoped) a high quality copy would be available on the web and available for downloading.

Today, Media News Daily reports that the SNL video is available on iTunes for free. If you have access to iTunes, go to the iTunes Music Store and select: + TV Shows for the genre box (left column) + Then NBC in the "Networks" section (left column). The video is titled "Lazy Sunday." Look for the text that says "free."

If you don't have access to the U.S. iTunes store or don't want your own copy, no worries, the video is also available (copyright emptor) Google Video and YouTube. The iTunes version looks better (not recorded off of tv) and does not have an NBC spider (the logo in the lower right corner).

So, what does this fun and funny music video have to say about the three map search tools?

They're rapping about where to see The Chronicles or Narnia Chris: Let's hit up Yahoo Maps to find the dopest route. (image of Yahoo Maps page visible)

Andy: I prefer MapQuest

Chris: That's a good one too.

Andy: Google Maps is the best.

Chris: Tru dat!

Andy and Chris: Double True!

The words "Double True" appear in Google colors.

Yes, the video is also another example of the power of how Google is able to reinforce its brand with little extra effort.

The complete transcript (unofficial) of the rap is also online.

If you feel like several big laughs and many smiles, this 2.5 minute video is more than worth a look and/or download.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:10 PM | Permalink

November 10, 2005

Mashups a Go-Go! New Mashups from MSN Virtual Earth and Yahoo Maps

It's good to see more map mashups coming from developers working with both MSN Virtual Earth and Yahoo Maps. Here's a look at just a couple of them. Remember, these are just released apps and bugs are bound to exist.

MSN Virtual Earth

  • Virtual Places Nice! All sorts of "overlays." Add in images Flickr, travel books about a specific location, weather, local blogs, and more. Coming soon will be a tagging, sharing, and publishing. Btw, Virtual Places says it works with Firefox. However, I had problems when using my Firefox browser. Might be my problem.
  • OSX Dashboard Widget for MSN Virtual Earth For the Mac folks out there.
  • Read All About It Combine MSN Virtual Earth with the Amazon.com book database. Enter a location and find books about the location or events that took place there.

Yahoo Maps

  • Local Events Browser This Ajax-based demo allows you to find events in and around San Francisco. Find events by date and tags. Add events directly to your Yahoo Calendar.
  • MashupUpcoming.org Impressive! Take Yahoo Maps and then add events from Upcoming.org's (a new Yahoo property) database. You can even add in local traffic, wi-fi hotspots, and ATM's.
  • Geocoding, Local Seach, Traffic API Mash-up with Yahoo Maps! Useful and easy to use. Enter an address, a local data (like a store name), and then decide to overlay traffic info. Select each button one at a time. Btw, you can use Zip Codes instead of city/town name.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:25 PM | Permalink

November 3, 2005

Yahoo Maps Adds New Features and Tools

Yahoo has upgraded its Maps service, integrating local search results and adding a lot of cool "wow" factors to the service. They've also released a bunch of tools for developers to hack their own maps. More in today's SearchDay article, Yahoo Enhances Maps, Integrates Local Search.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

September 28, 2005

Yahoo Maps Japan Begins Adding User Info

Yahoo begins updating online map based on user tips, from Japan Today, reports that Yahoo Maps Japan has begun allowing users to submit local information for inclusion on maps. Worth noting is that user submitted info will be verified before it's added to the service. service.

"To submit local information, users first have to access the website and select a particular area, and then send in-depth information only locals would know, such as "a convenience store has opened" or "the name of the building has changed." Based on those submissions, Alps employees will visit the area to verify information before they update the map, which will be done once a month.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:09 PM | Permalink

July 11, 2005

Yahoo Maps Mash-Ups Begin Rolling Out

It has been about two weeks since Yahoo released an API for Yahoo Maps. Since then, developers have started releasing "mash-ups" that overlay various types of info on top of Yahoo Maps. Here's a list of a few of them.

The Yahoo Maps Web Services mailing list is a resource to monitor for new mash-ups.

Postscript: Greg Kelsey notes that it's now possible to map rental listings from Yahoo Real Estate

Posted by Gary Price at 7:07 PM | Permalink

June 30, 2005

Yahoo Maps API Released

It's about six months until the holiday season but web developers who like to work with maps have already been given a couple of gifts. Yesterday, Google released an API for Google Maps and today Yahoo has released an API for Yahoo Maps.

According to the news release the Yahoo Maps API is free, backwards compatible, and builds on the GEORSS standard.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:27 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2005

Google Maps Not In Google Search; Comparing Services & How Do They Do That?

Nice catch from Tara, finding in Google Maps Not Integrated into Google Search? that the new Google Maps service launched this week has yet to replace either Yahoo Maps or MapQuest in what comes up in Google web search results. C'mon -- make it an option :)

Meanwhile, nice story from the AP pitting Google Maps against MapQuest, Yahoo Maps and MSN Maps and finding those services aren't replaceable yet. MSN gets marks for going beyond North America and driving features. But Yahoo gets a "hands-down" win for ease of use and functionality. But Google is praised for looks-and-feel, plus the cool ease of dragging maps. For more, see Google's maps aesthetically appealing, but features need work.

Meanwhile, how does Google Maps work? Via Boing Boing, here's an explanation.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:10 AM | Permalink

February 8, 2005

New Google Maps Now Live

Google has released a new Google Maps service via its Google Labs site. Covering the United States, it allows you to drag maps around to find a new location, rather than the usual method of clicking to recenter and reload a page.

Once you've selected an area, you can then keyword search to make local information appear on the map. For pizza places on the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, it worked pretty well. For apartment rentals, the map suddenly zoomed out from a scale of about 1 mile to 50 miles. But zooming back helped to show places I knew should be listed.

To do the searches, I found the area I was interested in, then used the search box above the map. A Local Search link above the map can also be selected. Doing that will let you specifically say to search the map below or you can enter a new city and/or search location. A Directions link brings up two boxes allowing you to enter a starting and ending address to generate driving directions, in the map and with turn-by-turn guidance.

On the Google Maps home page, you'll also find boxes to generate directions on the right-hand side of the page, as well as boxes letting you locate a local business or zoom directly to a location.

Google Maps doesn't offer traffic information, as was recently added to Yahoo Maps. See Yahoo Offers Real-Time Traffic Reports for more about that. Yahoo Maps vs. MapQuest looks at an LA Times article on Yahoo's own work to further develop its own mapping system. And from Chris Sherman, Yahoo Enhances Local Search with Maps looks at how Yahoo Maps allows for local information to be added to Yahoo Maps.

For more, see the Google Maps FAQ and tour pages. Want to discuss or comment? Visit our forum thread, Google Maps: Fresh out of Google Labs.

Postscript: Also see Gary's A Few Minutes With Google Maps

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:17 AM | Permalink

January 10, 2005

Yahoo Maps vs. MapQuest

The LA Times Chris Gaither in: Overtaking MapQuest a Challenge for Yahoo, takes a look at what Yahoo is doing to gain market share from MapQuest in the online map arena.

Gaither writes, "But when it comes to challenging the market leader in maps, Yahoo hasn't had as much luck. MapQuest has widened its lead in recent months despite Yahoo's enhancements."

The article includes discussion of their dynamic Smart View technology that Chris wrote about last March. I can personally report that this is my "go to" service when needing map, direction, and local merchant info.

Most telling is a quote by a MapQuest user that focuses on the brand loyalty that people have towards this service.

"I've been using MapQuest forever, and I'm pretty familiar with it," he said. "It's quick and easy."

This illustrates something I've written about on several occassions, it's one thing to develop new, and in the case of Yahoo Maps, useful search services but it's something else to get people to try it and then use it on a regular basis. I've also experienced this type of loyalty in the web search arena when trying to get people to take a look at new or different services.

"It's probably true that Yahoo has added more features, but adding more features doesn't always mean more customer adoption," MapQuest General Manager Tommy McGloin said. "We've held the line despite some good competition."

Finally, the article discusses what Google might be up to with its purchase of Keyhole.

and speaking of aerial images and maps... Have you tried TerraFly from Florida International University? It's free. Enter an address (U.S. only), find aerial images, click on a location and find out local info including nearby schools, census data, hotels, etc. Very cool!

Posted by Gary Price at 11:44 AM | Permalink

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