Get news, learn tips and join Hangouts on the Google Maps Google+ page

Just a few moments ago, the Google+ team introduced Pages to help you better get to know your favorite brands, businesses and organizations. But the exciting news doesn’t end there! Today, we’d like to welcome all fans of Google Maps to join us on Google+ by adding our new page to your circles.

Here’s just some of the stuff you’ll find when you follow us on Google+:

• Product news and announcements. Stay up to date and share with friends.
• Hangouts with the Maps team. Bring your questions!
• User spotlights. We want to showcase you, our awesome community members.
• #GMapsTrivia. Put your geo skills to the test for bragging rights.
• Pro tips. Tricks from Googlers and fellow users so you can get the most out of Maps.

This page is a place for you to connect with our team and other Maps fans, discuss ideas and share feedback, and learn a new thing or two about our product. So say hello in the comments on our page, and we’ll see you soon in a Hangout!

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Google Maps and Places community manager, and Brian Hendricks, Google Maps marketing

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Share biking and walking directions with Custom Maps

Attention avid bikers and walking enthusiasts: You can now use your desktop to create a biking or walking itinerary using Custom Maps in Google Maps. You can choose to share these directions by allowing people to view your Custom Map and avoid the hassle of scribbling them down or printing them out. Additionally, you can access these stored directions from your phone with the Google Maps Android application.

This provides a quick and easy way to navigate trips that have multiple routes and stops when you’re on-the-go. Give it a try the next time you plan a group bike ride or to keep track of your favorite jogging routes.

To start, first get directions to your destination(s) and select the biking or walking icon in Google Maps. Next, scroll down to the bottom of the directions in the left-hand panel and click the “Save to My Maps” link.




You can then save the directions to an existing custom map or create a new one. Once the directions have been added to a custom map, you can continue to insert extra stops or make notes. After you complete mapping out your itinerary, you can choose to share it with friends or a workout buddy.



If you have an Android-powered device, you can access stored directions in Custom Maps right from your mobile phone - just click on the layers icon in the upper toolbar and select the saved Custom Map you want.

If you don’t have an Android phone, you can open your Custom Maps using your phone’s browser and visiting maps.google.com.



For more tips on custom maps, visit our help center.

Posted by Beth Liebert, Product Manager, Custom Maps

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Recap: Google Geo User Summit in Barcelona

Settled between the Catalan Coastal range and Mediterranean sea, the city of Barcelona is home to an array of culinary treasures, iconic architecture, endless museums and beaches, and the impressive FC Barcelona football stadium. The city’s distinctive mix of tradition and innovation thus proved the ideal host to the Google Geo User Summit Barcelona. From October 12th-14th, Google Map Maker, Google SketchUp and Building Maker, and Panoramio welcomed some of our most passionate mappers, 3D modelers and Panoramio photographers across Europe and the Middle East to celebrate their invaluable contributions to an ever-growing Geo Community.

View of Barcelona from Museu Nacional D’art de Catalunya by Matthew Walters, Panoramio contributor

The summit was an exciting opportunity for many of our top contributors to share their geographic crowd-sourced efforts, work directly with Google engineers to brainstorm potential new product features, and set strategies for improving the overall Geo community. Attendees also had a chance to mind-meld with our product leaders during a day of unconference sessions, sharing thoughts, ideas, and stories about their experiences that will help us to improve our products.

Following a keynote address by Aidan Chopra, Google Geo Evangelist, attendees shared their inspiring projects and practices with a rapt audience. We learned from Levan Beruchashvili how the National Agency of Public Registry helped map the entire country of Georgia for its recent graduation to Google Maps. Arek Pawlowski described hosting multiple SketchUp workshops at his university, creating almost 450 models in an ongoing effort to put all of Toruń, Poland into 3D. As it is the user-generated content that fuels the Google Geo products, these and other contributor testimonials stood out as the highlight of the summit.

Attendees at the Google Geo User Summit Barcelona!

To learn more about the Google Geo User Summit Barcelona, visit the event website, where you can browse photographs of the conference and its beautiful setting along the Mediterranean coast. Extensive session notes and user presentations are also available. If you’re interested in attending future events, please see the Map Maker Events Calendar, 3D Events Calendar and Panoramio Events Calendar. This summit was one exciting part of an ongoing celebration of the passionate mappers, modelers, and photo contributors who are improving Google Maps and Google Earth for the world to share. A tremendous thanks to all those who attended and helped make the event a success!

Posted by Lori Savageau, Community Manager, Google Map Maker

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Connect with mapping enthusiasts in the Google Earth Community

Do you ever wonder what Europe’s light pollution looks like? You might be curious to tour the world’s mazes. Or maybe you have a school project to research all of New York City’s cemeteries? In the Google Earth Community, we’ve learned that if you can dream it up, you can map it.

Map showing artificial night sky brightness in Europe, posted by member markdj in the Google Earth Community.
Exploring the Google Earth Community’s discussion forums, you’ll discover a unique geographic encyclopedia built from user contributions. From the beautiful to the bizarre, Google Earth Community maps are spawned from the curiosity and collaboration of forum discussions. The scope and quality of these maps are thanks largely to the Google Earth Community moderators, a core group of forum members who help curate content and educate users on how to use Google Earth as both an exploration and a documentation tool.

Recently, we hosted several members of the Google Earth Community, educators, bloggers and Help Forum Top Contributors in Rome for a user summit. Apart from discussions around new features in Google Earth and the future of geographic content sharing, the event was also a special opportunity for passionate Google Earth users to meet in person. Many Google Earth Community members have been contributing to forum discussions for over 8 years now, long enough to become friends as well as collaborative cartographers.

Attendees of the Rome user summit enjoy a day at the Vatican (photo courtesy of Frank Taylor).
Ultimately, it’s that kind of collaboration that makes the community around Google Earth so special. Have a question about overlays or tours? Top Contributors from the Help Forum are on it. Looking to share your own map of the animals you’ve found in Street View? The Google Earth Community will point you in the right direction. Read more about sharing your Google Earth content, and then begin your own exploration of Google Earth. After all, if you don’t map all the neolithic monuments of the Sahara, who will?

Posted by Robin Ziegler, Google Earth Community Manager

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A new way to get information about real-world places

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog.)

I love eating out with my friends and trying new places, but one of the most difficult questions you can ask me is "Where do you want to eat?" Today, we’re making a few improvements to Google search that will make it a lot easier and faster to answer this question. For example, I mentioned to a friend that I’ll be visiting Boston, and he suggested that I check out a barbecue place called Redbones BBQ in Davis Square. Since I don't know that restaurant, I do a quick search for [redbones bbq] to see if it’s a place I’d like.


When I do, I see the same familiar search results page but I notice that there's now a new panel to the right of the results -- where previously only a map appeared -- with much more information than before. I see two images with pegman, the Street View mascot, below the map so I click on the first one. This instantly takes me to an immersive 360-degree interior view of the restaurant, as if I were virtually teleported to Redbones.


I pan around and see that it's a cool colorful restaurant with a nice, comfy feel. What's more, when I go back to the search results panel and click on the second image, I’m able to look around the outside of the restaurant and get a sense for the neighborhood via the familiar Street View experience. I’m beginning to really like this place! Further down the panel, I see the price range indicating it won’t be too expensive and an “at a glance” summary that tells me Redbones has great beer and pulled pork sandwiches -- and menu links if I want to see more. Thanks to this helpful information right on the search results page, I’ve quickly been able to make my decision: I’m going to Redbones for a pulled pork sandwich.

Even if I’m not looking for a particular place by name, I can learn about places and quickly decide which ones are right for me. If I want to find a bar near Redbones for a few drinks after dinner, I can just search for [bars davis square] and get a familiar list of results. Only now, scanning the list and comparing places is easier than ever, since the instant preview feature will show the same detailed information about the various bars when I hover over the “>>” symbol to the right of each result. After just a few seconds perusing the additional local information for different places, I know that Joshua Tree has a great beer selection and that the Orleans has live music but is a bit farther away.


This new type of layout may appear on the search results page for a range of real-world places -- restaurants, hotels, local businesses, landmarks, museums and more. Of course, the local information that appears will vary depending on what’s available online. So the next time you plan your visit to the New England Aquarium or Fenway Park, you might be able to check out their opening hours, get directions, and find the nearest transit stops, all from a simple Google search.

In the coming weeks, you’ll start seeing the improved local search experience in more than 40 languages. Give it a try and start discovering new local favorites, near and far!

Posted by Jim Müller, Tech Lead

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Take a walk in the park with Street View

(Cross posted to Official Google Blog)

Whether you’re planning a trip to a park around the block or around the world, you’ll now find more parks showing up in Street View. Over the past year, the Street View team, equipped with the Street View trike, traveled to 22 different countries to photograph some of the world’s most beautiful and unique parks. Starting today, you can explore the couple hundred new special collections we’ve added by visiting our gallery.

You can now tour High Line, which sits 30 feet in the air, over the bustling streets of New York City. The park sits on an elevated freight train spur that spans 1.5 miles and cuts through the western side of Manhattan. Because of Robert Hammond and Joshua David’s efforts, visitors can experience an innovative park that would have otherwise been a demolished urban structure.

You can tour the park in Street View here:

View Larger Map

Across the pond, you can visit Kensington Gardens in London. Once privately owned by Kensington Palace, the majestic arbor skyline and delicate flower beds draw locals and tourists alike. Kensington Gardens is also dotted with famous statues, such as Peter Pan, and home to the idyllic Serpentine Bridge.

View Larger Map

Community parks are where we take our evening stroll, play sports on weekends and picnic with friends. Koganei Park in Tokyo, Japan is one such place, especially during the cherry blossom season—a charming park beloved by photographers, joggers and romantics.

View Larger Map

You can see more Street View special collections in this gallery or get inspired to travel with this video.

Posted by Ryan Falor, Product Manager for Street View

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Driving directions, biking directions … and now, carving directions!

We just couldn’t resist combining two of our favorite pastimes: pumpkin carving and geeking out about Maps. Behold: Pumpkin carving sheets to show off your Maps, Earth and SketchUp pride. Just click this link, hit print, and follow the how-to instructions.

Think you got skills? Let’s see ’em! We want to build a photo gallery of your finest work. Just send a photo of your Maps pumpkin our way on Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #gmapspumpkin. Bonus points — and infinite bragging rights — for anyone who can pull off that Pegman.

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Maps and Places community manager

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