Content Central Blog

Your world, your base map

Today we released new base map data for the U.S. in Google Maps, Google Earth and other Google services. We developed this map by integrating data from many sources, including datasets provided by government agencies and other organizations with an interest in making their mapping data widely available.

One such organization is the USDA Forest Service, which provides comprehensive and detailed data for all of the national forests within the U.S. Using this dataset, we've been able to show the boundaries of U.S. National Forest-managed forests and grasslands in our base map, making these lands more visible in Google Maps. We've also used Forest Service data to improve roads and trails on these public lands.

"An important part of the mission of the USDA Forest Service is informing the public about the forests and grasslands we manage. In order to achieve this, we want information about our lands to be accessible to as large an audience as possible," said David George, Geospatial Service and Technology Center, USDA Forest Service. "We are very pleased that Google has used our geospatial datasets to improve the base map in Google Maps and Google Earth so that everyone can easily discover, navigate and enjoy these public lands."

National parks, forests and other public lands in the Pacific Northwest, based on data from the USDA Forest Service, the U.S. National Park Service and other sources

We've also created the Base Map Partner Program to enable organizations with mapping data to contribute their data to Google Maps and Google Earth. This program, like those we've introduced for other map content types, offers organizations with mapping data -- and an interest in making it more visible and useful to internet users -- a straightforward process for adding this data to Google's services. We now provide specifications on the types and formats of base map or "vector" data we welcome, including new roads, housing developments, parcel data, points of interest and bike trails. We hope that organizations with mapping data, such as local governments, regional GIS consortia or real estate developers, will take this opportunity to improve and enrich our base map for their community.

If the opportunity is of interest to you, tell us about your organization and your data. If you don't have large datasets to provide, but do have edits to the map to suggest, then try our tool for easily suggesting edits.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Posted by Megan Quinn, Business Product Manager

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 9:30 AM

Introducing the Google Merchant Center

(Cross-posted from the Google Merchant Blog.)

Today, we're excited to announce that we're launching the Google Merchant Center, which will replace Google Base for those of you submitting Product-type items to Google. If you submit products to Google, Google Merchant Center is now the place to upload your feeds, check on the status of your items, and get information on the performance of your listings.

Google Base is still available for other types of structured content, but the Merchant Center provides a better, optimized experience specifically for product listings. The Merchant Center is where we'll continue adding features and improving the tools for uploading and managing product listings.

In general, the Merchant Center interface is very similar to the Google Base interface, so we hope it's easy to transition. Sign in to the Merchant Center using the same Google Account information you did for Google Base. Your existing data feeds, items, FTP settings, etc. will be there for you.

For any non-product items you've submitted to Google Base, those will remain there and you can continue using Google Base to manage those items and settings. If you used the same account to submit both product and non-product items, you'll need to go into Google Base and reset your FTP settings. There's more info in the FAQs about this and other questions you may have.

As part of the launch of Google Merchant Center, this blog will be replacing the Google Base Blog. Please update your bookmarks and subscriptions, and visit us often!

Posted by Ioannis Kalafatis, Product Manager, Google Merchant Center

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 11:27 AM

And please give a warm welcome to....the Map Content Partner Help Center

Earlier this year, we discussed how we've been taking steps to make it easier for government agencies and other organizations to add their authoritative mapping data to Google Maps and Google Earth. Since then, we've been working to expand our programs for map content partners so we can welcome additional types of mapping data. In support of these programs, and in response to feedback received during our participation earlier this year in a conference of the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), we've developed a help center just for organizations who contribute mapping data to Google.

Our goal in launching the Map Content Partner Help Center is to be as transparent as possible about the partnership and content licensing process, the types of map content we welcome, the data formats we're able to accept, and other questions we frequently hear. Through the help center, we also provide a few ways to contact our Map Content Partnerships team, whether you want to tell us about data you'd like to add to Google services or want to raise a specific question or issue related to our partnership.

Like all good online help services, we hope to keep this help center up-to-date to address the many -- and sometimes out of left-field -- questions you send our way about partnering with Google. It's not that we don't like to interact with our partners and field questions personally. It's the fact that we're developing these partnerships globally, there are only so many of us in our U.S.-based Map Content Partnerships Team, and we're only fluent in three languages (four if you count Canadian). So, in rolling out this help center, we are better able to communicate with organizations the world over -- currently in English, and soon in other languages, eh?

Posted by Dylan Lorimer, Content Partnerships

Monday, September 28, 2009 at 10:18 AM

Place Pages for Google Maps: There are places we remember!

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

Google Maps is a great tool for exploring places — you can pan around the map, zoom in and see nearby places, look around in Street View and search for whatever you want. But what I always wanted to do is be able to get a clear understanding of what a place is all about. Instead of doing the research all over the web, wouldn’t it be great to see all the information about one place in...one place?

Starting today, you can do that on Place Pages for Google Maps. A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, we really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world.

You can get to a Place Page by clicking on "more info" in search results, or by clicking "more info" in the mini-bubble. Now, instead of just getting a slightly bigger bubble, you'll get an entire page of rich details, like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related websites.

Here are some of my favorite places, and what you can discover about them using Place Pages:

Tartine Bakery: My favorite bakery in the world. The "Place Summary" section compiles voices from all over the web praising the desserts but warning you about the lines. The "Details" section aggregates material from over 500 authoritative sources; for example, you can find the menu from Zagat.com. The "Related Maps" sections shows user-created maps that include this bakery, such as this delicious California dessert map.

Yoda statue: One of my childhood heroes in real size! The "User Content" section shows excerpts from all over the web describing this hidden little gem; "Nearby Transit" helps you find the best way to get there by public transport; and there’s even some useful local ads in case you want to get one of these at home.

Tokyo: I've spent a lot of time here lately as it's home to part of the Place Page team. On the city's Place Page, you can find out the most popular hotels, parks and major landmarks in Tokyo, browse local photos and videos, see what other people are searching for and access maps about the city from all over the web.

Zurich Hauptbahnhof: I’ve traveled through the central train station in Zurich several times over the last year, visiting the local team that made Place Pages possible. Place pages for transit stations are particularly useful because they'll show you a list of all the lines serving that station, as well as provide a timetable of upcoming departures.

As the Beatles' song in this post's title suggests, we want to make it easy to remember places: pages will come with a friendly URL that is easy to remember and link to under google.com/places. For example, the San Francisco Place Page will be found at google.com/places/us/california/san-francisco-city. Right now we include cities and most businesses, but we're working hard on bringing this to all Place Pages.

We want there to be a Place Page for every place in the world, but we might be missing a few places here and there. If you're a business owner, you can add or update your business details through the Local Business Center. This allows you to make sure your Place Page reflects the most accurate, authoritative and recent information about your business. And if you don’t have a business, but you discover a place that doesn’t have a Place Page, you can add it through community edits or Google Map Maker, depending on the country you’re in.

Whether you're searching for a great local florist or planning a trip across the globe, we hope Place Page for Google Maps makes your explorations easier and happier.

Posted by Lior Ron, Senior Product Manager, Place Page team

Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 4:30 PM

Supporting Facebook Share and RDFa for videos

(Cross-posted from the Webmaster Central Blog. Editor's note: If you have videos on your website, you'll likely find this blog post interesting. It offers insights into how to help Google discover and index video content. It's the first in a series of posts on the topic; you can follow the full series on the Webmaster Central Blog.)

Have you ever wondered how to increase the chances of your videos appearing in Google's results? Over the last year, the Video Search team has been working hard to improve our index of video on the Web. Today, we're beginning the first in a series of posts to explain some best practices for sites hosting video content.

We previously talked about the importance of submitting a Video Sitemap or mRSS feed to Google and following Google's webmaster guidelines. However, we wanted to offer webmasters an additional tool, so today we're taking a page from the rich snippets playbook and announcing support for Facebook Share and Yahoo! SearchMonkey RDFa. Both of these markup formats allow you to specify information essential to video indexing, such as a video's title and description, within the HTML of a video page. While we've become smarter at discovering this information on our own, we'd certainly appreciate some hints directly from webmasters. Also, to maximize the chances that we find the markup on your video pages, you should make sure it appears in the HTML without the execution of JavaScript or Flash.

So, check out Facebook Share and RDFa and help Google find your videos!

Facebook Share:

<meta name="title" content="Baroo? - cute puppies" />
<meta name="description" content="The cutest canine head tilts on the Internet!" />
<link rel="image_src" href="http://example.com/thumbnail_preview.jpg" />
<link rel="video_src" href="http://example.com/video_object.swf?id=12345"/>
<meta name="video_height" content="296" />
<meta name="video_width" content="512" />
<meta name="video_type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash" />

RDFa (Yahoo! SearchMonkey):

<object width="512" height="296" rel="media:video"
resource="http://example.com/video_object.swf?id=12345"
xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/media/"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
<param name="movie" value="http://example.com/video_object.swf?id=12345" />
<embed src="http://example.com/video_object.swf?id=12345"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="512" height="296"></embed>
<a rel="media:thumbnail" href="http://example.com/thumbnail_preview.jpg" />
<a rel="dc:license" href="http://example.com/terms_of_service.html" />








</object>

Posted by Michael Cohen, Product Manager, Video Search Team

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 3:48 PM

Introducing the Street View Partner Program

Street View is one of the most popular features of Google Maps. It already lets you virtually behold amazing sights like Yosemite's El Capitan and the Roman Coliseum without ever leaving your computer. So it's no wonder that, practically since the feature launched, organizations have been asking us how they can be displayed in Street View. Street View users have also chimed in with excellent suggestions ranging from universities to tourist destinations to racetracks. We've worked hard to implement some of the best ideas, and today we launched some of our first Street View partners, including Legoland California, Thunderhill Raceway, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and San Diego State University.

To accommodate all the enthusiasm and allow for more great additions, we are also excited to introduce the Street View Partner Program. Now, any organization or business can apply to have their property featured in Street View. Street View is available from Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Maps for Mobile, and provides a unique platform to showcase your property to millions of users around the globe.

If you are the owner or authorized property manager of a university, tourist destination, outdoor shopping center, or any other interesting location, please visit our partner website and sign up for consideration. Displaying your property in Street View provides a number of benefits:

Build your global audience and encourage visitors via the #1 mapping site in the world.
Add Street View of your location to your website using our API.
Show off your property to users who might otherwise not be able to visit you.
Best of all, it's free!

While we can't accept every property into the program, we are committed to providing Street View for as many interesting locations as possible. We even built new Street View vehicles, like the pedal-powered Trike, to easily and safely collect locations with pedestrians, delicate terrain, or narrow paths.

Now you can get on the map in a whole new way! To get started, visit our partner website to learn more about the program and submit your property for consideration.

Posted by Philippe Dauman Jr., Content Partnerships

Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:19 PM

Your country on Google

(Cross-posted from the Google Lat Long Blog.)

You've heard it before: Google is interested in partnering with government agencies to include specific types of mapping data in Google Maps and Earth. We've recently been focusing this partnership effort on national governments of developing world countries as well as international organizations active in these countries. We hope to complement the work of Google Map Maker's users, now rapidly mapping many developing world countries, by incorporating the authoritative data - such as political boundaries, aerial imagery and road centerlines - that governments and other public sector organizations are well positioned to provide.

If you belong to or are involved with one of these public sector organizations, our message is simple enough: Hundreds of millions of internet users have turned to Google Maps and Google Earth to better understand and navigate their world. We know that these users expect to find a complete and accurate map, whether they're looking for the location of a store in a major city in Europe or the route to a village in a corner of Africa. And so our goal is to provide accurate mapping data all over the world and present it in the world's most common langauges.

If you find that we don't offer a complete or accurate map of your country or a country where your organization operates, and if you have better data to share, we want to hear from you. Some concrete examples of the benefits of sharing your mapping data:

Tourism and economic development: high-resolution imagery and vector data exposes your country's diverse landscape to the rest of the world on Google Maps and Google Earth, encourages visitors, and improves our existing data. One popular way users interact with Google services is by posting photos of places they have traveled to so that others can see pictures of interesting places they'd like to visit, such as Machu Picchu in Peru, or the Sphinx in Egypt.

Trade: high-resolution imagery of modern, urban and commercial areas as well as imagery of natural resources can encourage interest in foreign direct investment. Vector data of populated places, points-of-interest, roads and other important data gives investors valuable information about how to navigate your country. For instance, in Panama, the recent promotion of Panamanian real estate to the international market could be supported by geographical data and visibility to the targeted audience through Google products.

Emergency services coordination: accurate mapping data like roads and place names is crucial for relief aid work in times of crisis and emergencies, such as natural disasters, and civil and international conflicts. For example, when Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, Google was able to publish data on Google Maps that helped disaster response teams quickly provide aid to the regions that needed it the most.

Cultural heritage promotion: sometimes place names are in two or three different languages, dialects, or scripts; we can display them in each. Some examples are Belgium and Thailand.

It's also simple to work with us. In some cases, we are able to communicate with you in your local language and we may be able to work under local law when entering into a content license agreement.

If your organization or government agency has high-quality basemap data that you're interested in contributing to Google to improve the coverage and accuracy of geographic information available for your country, contact us and tell us more about your organization and your data. Help us give the world the opportunity to discover and understand your country as well as you do.

Posted by Naureen Kabir, Strategic Partnerships