Google is getting more comfortable with its inner wiki. It is now allowing anyone in the U.S., Australia, or New Zealand to improve Google Maps by editing places for everyone else to see. So if a restaurant listed on a map of your local neighborhood has closed or moved, you can correct the map. You can also add your own places. It was possible previously to edit your own maps, but now Google Maps will take the edits and let everyone benefit who subsequently looks at it. Google Maps should get really detailed now. It is not clear, though, how disputes will be handled.
Just as Wikipedia brought forth a generation of encyclopedists, Google maps is now creating a whole new class of cartographers. We are all map makers now.
The demo videos below show how to get wiki.
The video no longer seems available.
great…i can just imagine “this is where my ex-gf who dumped me for a butch lesbian lives. her no. is 123-456-789 / SSN: 33333333 /address :1234 Dyke St. Palo Alto, CA”
hehe
Nice introduction which might almost make Google Maps through Google Androiid perfect. Having updated information about each landmark, given more people are active, would be a certain advantage
P.S: Videos are working nicely for me.
And now dominos employees will be deleting pizza hut locations of the map
This is awesome. Not just because it’s going to help create a much more complete and up to date map/yellow pages for everyone to use, but Google is making a big move here in defining wiki-style rules and accountability in a MAJOR product.
I don’t know how they are going to guard against spam and users with bad intentions, but I’m guessing they have a plan and it will probably be something we see other big companies copying to help free up their data to the users as well.
I wonder if they can find a way to pull in data (or allow pushed data) from other sources that already have a lot of this defined. I know http://www.daviswiki.org already has lots of metadata for just about every business in Davis, Ca, and it would be a shame for google to have to ’start over’ when this data is already freely available.
Google will have to look at wikipedia and find ways to monitor/manage this – that said this should really help improve the content on the site.
@2 – that is exactly the first thing that came to my mind as well (sort of like the “for a good time call xxxxxxx” written on public restroom walls).
@4 – Yup, I could totally see a couple of dateless middle / high school losers having a great time with this one over the course of a Saturday night.
This is great, when it works. I’m finding that when I do a search while zoomed in on a location, I don’t get the “Can’t find what you’re looking for?” so I don’t get the opportunity to make a landmark. There’s some landmarks in my old hometown I’d love to add, but can’t because I can’t make the option to add appear.
Context driven menus are great! When they work. When they don’t, without a big manual menu to call up some where, there’s no other way to get to the form. Very frustrating, and currently killing the ability to make this functionality really fly, in my opinion.
Recommended feature: Create review pages by locality. Show all recent activity (add/delete/revision) for a given area (say, 20 miles around zip code X). Perhaps log which are viewed more often, etc and create popularity rankings. Tie in with reviews. Etc, etc. This could spur local editor groups and evolve into a social network/tourism application.
The privacy issues should be obvious here. I hope google has really thought this thing through, and that people’s addresses are kept out of this.
Also, I’m not clear on whether or not one could perform advanced searches based on their tags (essentially what the “Type of place” field is). Say, a search for “New York, NY tag:Coin Store” shows all coin stores in NYC. If not that would be another wise addition.
The problem Google faces here is that even a small amount of bad data can drive users away permanently. Google may get a ton of great relevant changes but as soon as they have one bad change that sends you on a wild goose chase to find that local laundry mat because a competitor or pissed off customer changed the address you may want to stick to a more reliable source for business information. Nothing pissed me off more than when MapQuest gave me bad directions, making me late for an appointment. Reliability is what led me to use Google maps, but now that they are relying on users I may need to find another source.
This is just to enticing to the malicious competitors or pissed off customers to input bad data. It’s also too large for Google to manage even though I’m sure they have some sort of waited system based what they know about the user. Just because it worked for Wikipedia does not mean it will work for a local search application.
It’s our world and companies – the smart ones – are in a rush to let us take it over. Can politicians – even (may take longer in that area) – be too far behind?
Wikimapia.org has been doing this for a really long time… But its not very organized or monitored. If Google can manage it well, then it can be a really useful service.
LOL @#4
Go Google go. In spite of what a lot of people say, Google keeps on democratizing the web more and more.
Do No Evil … right?? I hope.
BUT ARE THEY GOING TO SHARE THEIR DATA LIKE WIKIPEDIA?
Was this feature really necessary? I’ve been impressed with Google’s ability to crawl the web, extract geographical entities, and plot them correctly on their maps. Seriously, how many times did you look for something and not find it? Or you found it, but it was in the wrong spot? I can’t remember a single time and I’m a heavy Google Maps user.
Google probably has figured a way to use their crawled & extracted data to “confirm” these edits. I can’t imagine they’d just open this up in true wiki style and solve a problem they didn’t have.
I think this plus Knol is revealing. Google can’t organize the world’s information through search alone, so they’re looking to supplement search with wiki. Competitively, wiki is the greatest threat to Google right now, so this is a good pro-active step.
We have been at this for the past 5 months. We allow users (registered users – just to cut down on spam) to “Blog on the Map”. sadakMap Local allows users to post information on the map (not restricted to business listings – why cant a trekking spot, or a local farmers market be listed on a map). Others can comment on the post (akin to blogs – no registration reqd for comments). We have 2 other offerings, sadakMap Groups (yahoo/google Groups on a Map), and sadakMap Enterprise (white label locator service for enterprises with retail locations).
Our surmise is that instead of blindly loading all businesses on the map, allow the community to decide what shows on the map – gradually building it out. Editing is restricted to the user that added the mark on the map.
SpotMeUrl: http://www.sada...m/spotme/unmesh
I’ve actually just looked through their user generated content and the majority of them are garbage or biased. I’m going to have to agree with #19.
I shall always miss you Wikimapia!
We recently wrote an article about how Yahoo Local was getting slammed by affiliate spam. While vandalism can be a pain, the real problem is the people who gain money by scamming the listings. Full story here http://blog.ecl...-affiliate-spam