Google has announced a new service

Google lets users fine-tune maps

Has Google lost your address? Now you can help it find you.Starting this week, the Mountain View search giant is letting users edit the errors found in its online mapping product.

"Sometimes a location can be a little off on a map and your friends can't find you," the Mountain View company explained in a video posted on YouTube by software engineer Seth LaForge. "Now you can fix that."

The move comes as Google grapples with opening more of its operations to outsiders. Once notoriously closed and secretive, the company is increasingly seeking to turn itself into a platform for other businesses.

To be successful, the ambitious effort will require contributions from people around the world, ranging from software developers who write new applications to owners of mom-and-pop businesses who enter information on the site about their grocery store, coffee shop or dry cleaners.

"There are multiple reasons that Google is doing this, and one of them is to clean up and improve the quality of the data," said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Sterling Market Research.

"Inaccurate Google map locations are a problem occasionally for most people who use online maps," said Gus Allen, founder of Swamplot, a Houston real estate blog. Among other services, Allen directs his readers to local demolitions using Google maps. Last week, Google mistakenly placed a Houston address in Oklahoma, he said.

To edit Google Maps, a person needs a Google

account. If someone see an error while searching for a business, he or she can click an "edit" link. For example, Google originally marked the entrance to the Mercury News on a side road leading to the employee parking lot until a reporter dragged the marker to the correct location - the newspaper's grand 1950s style entrance - Tuesday afternoon.
Google said it will prevent abuse by restricting changes to certain listings, like hospitals, police stations and schools, as well as the addresses of businesses that have claimed their listing online at Google's Local Business Center. Edited addresses will be clearly marked, and links to original address markings will be retained.

Users can also report abuse through a link. Certain edits, such as moving a marker more than 200 yards, must be reviewed by a Google employee.

"Move a marker, and make your virtual neighborhood a better place - that is, in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, where it works right now," LaForge wrote in a blog post Monday.

By making maps more useful, Google is trying to capture a larger share of the dollars spent on online Yellow Page advertising and local search - which is estimated to grow from $1.9 billion this year to $4.9 billion in 2011, according to the Kelsey Group of Princeton, N.J.

Yahoo is also eyeing this market. It began allowing businesses to update their information in January 2007. A spokeswoman for Yahoo said the number of companies that have done so is in the high hundreds of thousands.

A spokeswoman for Google said more than a million businesses have "interacted" with their online business center.

While there are an estimated 25 million local businesses in the United States, the total number of advertisers in the traditional Yellow Pages is 3.5 million, according to the Kelsey Group.

Sterling said the relatively large numbers reported by Yahoo and Google illustrate the great potential for local search online, which is still at a very early stage. "There's been a lot of learning and now all the parties are figuring it out," he said.



Users now able to alter Google Maps locations

Google has announced a new service that will enable users to move incorrect markers on Google Maps for their home and businesses to the correct locations.

Writing on the Lat Long Blog, Google engineer Seth LaForge stated that people can now click on a location flag on Google Maps and then choose edit in the pop-up box.

In order to guard against "people monkeying with markers", whenever a recently-moved address or business is identified, a "show original" link will appear so that users can see where it has been moved from, he added.

Access to certain listings, such as government buildings and hospitals, however, will be restricted and some edits, including moving a marker more than 200 metres from its original location, will require a moderator's approval.

According to Mr LaForge, "fixing markers can be downright addictive". He added that he has "spent hours using Street View to locate businesses and houses and then moving their markers".

Commenting on the new service, Greg Sterling wrote on his Screenwerk blog: "The move is consistent with [the] increasing 'socialisation' or openness of Google and part of a broader effort to obtain fresher and better local data.

"Allowing the community and business owners to edit and update information is the only viable way to have an accurate database."

The provision is currently available in the US, Australia and New Zealand.