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Google Maps: Their Take on Local Search

Posted by TimSlavin at February 11, 2005

Google launched a new (beta) service called Google Maps this week. It's a fascinating look at how Google proposes to help people find their local businesses online, as well as related businesses. Click their canned search for "hotels near lax" (LAX is Los Angeles International Airport for those who have not lived in LA). Then click one of the tabs that appears on the map. Amazing, and useful.

Of course Yahoo! Maps has been out a little while and so has MapQuest. The Quaker-like simplicity of Google products, however, yields an better result and counterpoint to these earlier efforts. Google is thinking about how to put information into one space while the others are thinking about page views and ad revenues (more pages = more revenue).

The problem to solve is helping people quickly find their local drycleaner or hardware store. Certainly these are better solutions than simply signing up local businesses to run ads on their services. Instead you get maps, directions, and links to the website (if the busines has one: great local search might render brochure sites irrelevant in some cases).

map.search.ch, a Swiss map service, shows how Google might overlay satellite images on line maps (Google recently bought Keyhole, a satellite imagery service).
URLs:

http://maps.google.com


http://map.search.ch


http://www.mapquest.com


http://maps.yahoo.com

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