You can put +1 over your favorite maps

Google launched the +1 button for custom maps in Google Maps. By clicking the +1 button you can tell other viewers that a particular map is helpful. It’s also a way to thank the specific map author for creating a useful custom map. For instance, say your friend created an awesome map of Hawaii Hikes and Surfing. Now you can let them know it was handy by clicking the +1 button. You can find the +1 button underneath the map description on public maps when you‘re signed into to your Google account.

 

You can keep track of your +1’d maps by going to your Google+ profile, and clicking the +1 tab. Your +1′s are always public, but your +1′s tab doesn’t have to be. You can choose to show this tab to the world, or simply use it to manage your record of things you love around the web. Currently, the +1 button only shows up on maps.google.com and not on embedded views of maps.

Maps you +1 show up on your profile  

But don’t just +1 other peoples’ maps, get +1’d yourself! Create your own custom maps and share your must-stop-spots for travel destinations or your own neighborhood. Custom maps enable you to highlight sites, restaurants, shops, routes and more for anyone you choose to send your map to. To get the link for your map, open the map and then click the link button in the upper right. Copy and paste this link into an email or IM or post it to your Google+ profile so others can find it.

Send out links to your custom map 

Create Maps. Share Maps. +1 Maps.

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The evolution of sitelinks

When you’re searching, you often have a specific task in mind, like figuring out which exhibits are showing at a nearby museum. Despite this narrow goal, people often start with a broad query, like [metropolitan museum of art], with no mention of exhibits. For these searches, the first result may include a list of links to specific sections of the site, which are called “sitelinks.” Today, we’re launching several improvements to sitelinks, including the way they look and are organized in search results.

 

Sitelinks before today’s changes

 

 

Sitelinks have been around for a while, but when we first launched them years ago, they were much more limited—a single row of just four links:

 

It turns out that sitelinks are quite useful because they can help predict which sections of the site you want to visit. Even if you didn’t specify your task in the query, sitelinks help you quickly navigate to the most relevant part of the site, which is particularly handy for large and complex websites. Sitelinks can also give you a good overview of a website’s content, and let webmasters expose areas of the site that visitors may not know about.

As it became clear how valuable sitelinks were, we continued to improve their appearance and quality. We rearranged them into a column of links to make them easier to read. We doubled the number of links, creating direct access to more of the site. We started showing sitelinks for more results and we continuously made improvements to the algorithms that generate and rank the links. With each of these changes, people used sitelinks more and more.

That brings us to today’s launch. Sitelinks will now be full-size links with a URL and one line of snippet text—similar to regular results—making it even easier to find the section of the site you want. We’re also increasing the maximum number of sitelinks per query from eight to 12.

Improved sitelinks with URLs and snippet text

In addition, we’re making a significant improvement to our algorithms by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links. This reduces link duplication and creates a better organized search results page. Now, all results from the top-ranked site will be nested within the first result as sitelinks, and all results from other sites will appear below them. The number of sitelinks will also vary based on your query—for example, [museum of art nyc] shows more sitelinks than [the met] because we’re more certain you want results from www.metmuseum.org.

(Via the Inside Search blog)

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Google Earth: The New Acceptance Criteria for 3D buildings

It was over five years ago when we came up with the initial Acceptance Criteria for photo-textured 3D buildings in Google Earth. Since then, we’ve learned many things and have also made many improvements to the 3D modeling process—including the release of Building Maker and two updated versions of SketchUp. Given all of these changes, we realized that our Acceptance Criteria were due for an overhaul.

Our new Acceptance Criteria have been completely rewritten with the goal of making them clearer and easier to follow. Issues relating to photo textures, permanence of structures, splitting, and entourage have proven to be the most common areas of confusion in the past:

Photo Textures

Our new minimum requirement for photo textures is more lenient than it’s been in the past. Photo textures are only required on upward facing surfaces of the model and on the main facade. We encourage you to photo texture the entire model, but we also understand that it may be difficult to get accurate imagery on every side of some buildings. Any remaining, non-photo-textured faces in your model should be painted with realistic-looking textures that match the color and look of the building in real life.

Permanent Structures

Beginning today, only permanent structures will be accepted. As we constantly refresh our satellite imagery, temporarily-positioned entities like vehicles and people don’t belong in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer.

Model Splitting


From now on, all submitted models should contain only one structure each. Each structure should be uploaded as a separate model file. This includes properties that have multiple buildings on them such as a house and a shed or garage. If buildings are all connected in a city block, they should be split into separate models based on building type, function or address. When our review team is assessing connected block models for splitting issues, we will look at the facade and roof textures to see if there are changes in material that signify where a split should have occurred.

Entourage


In addition to splitting buildings, we are now requiring all models of trees and other permanent entourage (such as signs, light posts and benches) to be uploaded separately from the buildings with which they may be associated. This ensures that when another building is uploaded in the same location, we are only judging the quality of the new building model versus the original. It’s a shame to have to remove good tree models just because they’re attached to a building model when a better building model is submitted that doesn’t contain trees.

Also, multiple, related trees and other entourage objects can be grouped into a single model as long as they are located in a relatively concentrated area. This means a single model can contain all the trees for a block or a park, but it shouldn’t contain all the trees for multiple blocks or an entire city. Remember that only permanent entourage is acceptable—cars and pedestrians move around, and thus don’t belong in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer.

Other improvements

One other big improvement we’ve made is the addition of tips and suggestions to each of the thirteen individual Acceptance Criteria. If a model you submit isn’t accepted, you’ll receive an email notification (opt into these emails via your preferences) that includes a direct link to concrete information about how you can improve it before you re-submit.

What about models that have already been accepted?

To help make this transition easier, we won’t be going through all the models we’ve already accepted in order to remove ones that fail to meet the new Acceptance Criteria. If your model has already been accepted, it will stay in the 3D Buildings layer until and unless it is sent through the evaluation process again. There are four actions which can cause a model to re-enter this process:

  1. You make an edit to your model and re-upload it to the 3D Warehouse, replacing the previous version.
  2. Someone else submits a model in the same location as your model.
  3. Periodic terrain and aerial imagery updates cause your model to go through our automated alignment process.
  4. Someone clicks the “Report a problem” link for your model in Google Earth.

It’s still a bit of a subjective process

Keep in mind that judging 3D models is still a difficult task and is prone to subjectivity. All submitted models are reviewed by real human beings who take time to ensure that they meet our standards. Because human beings sometimes make mistakes, we have a way for you to appeal negative judgements. If, after reviewing the Acceptance Criteria, you feel we’ve made the wrong decision, use the “Tell us why we’re wrong” link (at the bottom of the model’s 3D Warehouse page) to ask us to take another look. You’re encouraged to include links to photos of the actual building or other online resources to will help us to understand your point of view.

We know how much time and love goes into making beautiful 3D models for Google Earth, and we greatly appreciate all the effort you put into your work. Here’s hoping that the changes we’ve made will make for a smoother, more enjoyable geo-modeling process for everyone.

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Google Maps Mashups 1

Climate Hot Map



The Union of Concerned Scientists has created this Google Map to show the probable effects of global warming around the world. The map is accompanied by a Climate Hot Map Scavenger Hunt, which if you complete successfully gives you a chance to win a trip for two to the Rio Cachoeira Natural Reserve in Brazil.

The map explores the effect of climate change on people, the environment, the oceans, ecosystems and the temperature. You can select to explore any of these categories on the map using the menu at the bottom of the map.

Planefinder.net



The ash cloud created by the eruption of the Puyehue volcano in Chile continues to cause huge disruption to plane flights in Australia. Real-time flight tracking website planefinder.net is using Google Maps to show the location of the ash cloud as it drifts around the southern hemisphere.

The ash cloud is predicted to linger over south-east Australia for some time, causing widespread disruption to flights in and out of Sydney and Melbourne. At the time of writing the planefinder.net map shows a few flights in and out of south-east Australian airports but nowhere near the flight activity that can be seen in and around Perth.

Mibazaar has created a Google Maps based application to explore where people are searching for a given keyword in Google Search.

In this demo of the application you can view where people are searching for different makes of Ford car around the world. For each make of car you can view the ten locations where the most people are searching for that Ford.

The map includes historical data so you can view how searches have changed over the years for each make of car.

Mibazaar – Google Trends – Ford

sailorsmap.com


SailorsMap is a Google Map designed to help boat owners find useful places nearby.

Marinas and local stores that may be useful are added to the map on the fly. If your browsing device supports GPS then SailorsMap is automatically positioned at your current location.

As well as displaying nearby points of information, found via Google Maps Search the map, displays the nautical anchorages of Croatia.

Censo2010


The Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística has created an application that allows you to browse the results of the 2010 Brazilian census on a Google Map.

Using the application you can click on a census tract on the map and view demographic information collected in the census. The information includes the population, the percentage of men and women and the percentage of different age groups in the population.

Dotter Example – San Francisco Crime Map


This Google Map displays 5000 crimes in San Francisco almost instantly on a Google Map. The map was created with the Google Maps API and the Dotter.js, a javascript class that generates data URIs.

The crimes displayed were committed in San Francisco between the 25th April and 25th May 2011. What is really impressive about the map is how quickly the 5000 data points load on the map.

If you want to create your own super-fast map with thousands of data points then the Dotter.js class is available on Github

Quake-Catcher Network


Many laptops these days are built with accelerometers that are designed to protect your hard drive from damage. The accelerometer detects sudden movement and can switch the hard drive off so that the heads don’t crash on the platters.

The Quake-Catcher Network realised that they could create the world’s largest and densest earthquake monitoring system simply by using the data from accelerometers in the world’s laptop computers. The Quake-Catcher Network links participating laptops into a single coordinated network that can detect and analyze earthquakes faster and better than ever before.

QCN uses Google Maps to show the data collected from participating laptops and from participating desktop computers with USB sensors. The map also shows the latest USGS reported earthquakes.

Live Call Map – OnSIP


OnSIP, a provider of Voice over IP calls has released a real-time Google Map of calls made using its service.

The map makes nice use of the drop marker animation in the Google Maps v3 API. Each time an OnSIP customer makes or receives a call, a map marker is dropped on the live map, openly displaying call volume peak and trend information. A marker is dropped on the map every time an OnSIP customer makes or receives a call.

Map Channels


Map Channels, the popular Google Maps creation tool, now lets you add data to a map from Google Fusion Tables.

In the four years that Map Channels has been running over 20,000 maps have been created by its users. It has proved popular with casual map makers and with major news organisations., including Fox News and CBC.

You can create a Google Map with Map Channels using data from a KML, a Google Spreadsheet, a GeoRSS feed, tab delimited text and now with a Google Fusion Table. You can see an example of a Map Channels created map with data provided by a Fusion Table in this Wikipedia Events Map.

Postholer.com


Postholer.com has created a Google Map of some of America’s most interesting trails. The map includes the route of the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Rail, the Continental Divide Trail and many more.

When you select a trail its route is displayed on the map. You can then select to view waypoints, points of interest, parking, camping spots and photos along the trail from a drop-down menu.

As well as providing a Google Map of the trails Postholer.com also provides a full set of printable maps for each trail.

Ofcom – Broadband Speeds Map

Ofcom, the regulator of the UK communications industries, has created a Google Map to show the speed of broadband throughout the UK.

Each county in the UK has been ranked on how they score on four broadband metrics; average sync speed, percentage getting less than 2Mbit/s, superfast broadband availability and broadband take up. The map displays as a basic heat map with each county coloured to show how they perform overall on each metric.

The map confirms what you already probably suspected. If you want superfast broadband then you are more likely to be lucky if you live in a big city. If you live in the Outer Hebrides then you are probably going to have make do with superslow broadband.

 

 

Cross from Google Maps Mania

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Some Changes in Google Places and Reviews

Google Places has once again “mixed it up” in the review arena. They are no longer showing the count for 3rd party reviews on the main search page and they are only displaying the count for Google reviews. They are still showing the link the to main 3rd party review sites on the main search results page but have removed the review snippets on all businesses except restaurants and hotels. Some businesses, Demand Force clients for example, will have seen a huge drop in the review count. You can bet that DF’s phones will be ringing of the hook with questions about the change.

On the Places page itself, Google is now highlighting with bold, bright red the option to leave a review, they no longer show 3rd party review snippets and the have pushed 3rd party review links well down the page and below the fold. And I for one will not miss the wildly weird review snippets that they often chose.

Google is clearly reducing their reliance on third party reviews and increasing the prominence of their own reviews. That is obvious and it makes sense from their self interested point of view now that they are garnering adequate volumes of reviews on their own.

Minimally it signals that Google thinks that they now have a large enough and useful review corpus that will provide consumers with a decent idea of the quality of the business they are looking at. Google will have more control and better insight over their reviews than those from other sites. It also seems to signal that they think that they are getting their review spam under control….although that remains to be seen.

This move will certainly change the relative importance and value of 3rd party review sites AND of 3rd party review management companies (like Demand Force) in the mix of things. The review sites and review providers will still have good links on the main search results page. That should mean that their traffic will not be negatively affected as most traffic likely comes from the main serps and significantly less from the Places Page. That being said I think this is a shot across their bows that all of them will hear. Review sites and review management companies alike will need to think about how it impacts their business plans.

In terms of Places rank and location prominence, it may reflect an update to the algo or perhaps signal a change of emphasis…. although that is much harder to say and much harder to track if that is in fact the case. If I were to be a betting man I might say that it signals less importance on total quantity of reviews but more on review site diversity and quality. But that is just a guess and is really nothing different than I would have said last week.

Does it mean you or your client should use just Google as a review platform? NO! Putting all of your eggs in one basket was short sighted and will continue to be. If you have a short memory it was but a few days ago that they managed to misplace many of their reviews and have done so regularly in the past.

It does though point out why any business should take a long term balanced approach to review management…. lots of sources; Google, Yelp, demand review sites, CitySearch, industry specific sites etc, It is always best to have a balanced portfolio as the winds could change. They have changed before and they will change again. Truth be told we don’t really know what the winds signify anyways. If you were only getting reviews from one source (like Demand Force) you really need to assess your practices and develop a plan to compliment their services. You should have been doing that already anyways.

You need to be where you clients are, you need to make it easy for the client to leave reviews, you need to feed Google’s algo the diversity it is looking for  and you need to protect yourselves as best you can against the vagaries of a crazy industry.

And that means that you still need to be at Yelp and Trip Advisor and Citysearch and Yahoo and Google and where ever and will continue to need to do so.

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