The app introduced several new features on Thursday to make Google Maps more interactive, including one that makes it easier for users to share photos of locations they visit.
Efforts to increase engagement with Google Maps appear to be working: the company said Thursday that it now has 150 million “Local Guides” – users who regularly contribute reviews, photos and information to Maps – on the platform. In 2020, Local Guides added more than 8 million places to the app.
“With all the changes our world has seen over the past year, more than ever, people are relying on updated, high-quality information about the places around them – for example, whether a nearby restaurant is open or if a local supermarket has updated opening hours,” Google said in a statement, adding that it “wants to make it easy for anyone with a Google account to contribute their local knowledge.”
Among the new features announced Thursday are “photo updates”, which will help people get a better, more up-to-date picture of places they want to visit; For example, they can see if the outdoor seating arrangement in a restaurant is in the shade. As it rolls out over the next few weeks, people can go to the new “Updates” tab when looking at a place in the app, snap a quick photo to add a caption and write, without doing a full review or need to leave a review.
Google Maps also makes it easier to report road changes in the app by adding an option to “Edit the map” that allows users to correct errors, including drawing missing roads, renaming streets, or removing incorrect roads. . The company says it will investigate contributed road updates before they are published.
To help more people take advantage of these interactive features, Google Maps is launching a “Local Love Challenge”, encouraging Android users to contribute photos, reviews and information to the app with the goal of contributing 100,000 location lists in the coming month. to work.