Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog

Like the London Tube Map, recording and retrieval of locations and their relationships doesn’t always have to do with their Lat/Lon. There is a more elegant way to abstract the relationships of location, and unambiguously describe places in a permanent, language-neutral manner. Since Where on Earth joined Yahoo! in 2005, Yahoo! has geo-enabled the network, including geo-tagging advertising, Flickr photos, Yahoo! Maps, and so many of the location based services that Yahoo! has offered.

Yahoo! is now offering a developer preview of this Yahoo! Internet Location Platform.

Here’s an example of the new platform in action. Check out this photo on Flickr. This photo was geo-tagged by the user, and since it was placed on a map, we were able to give it a set of these location tags. If you browse in to the tagged metadata using the Flickr API, you’ll notice a set of geo-tags called WOEID (Where On Earth ID’s) which are permanent, unambiguous, language neutral tags that represent that location.

Since we have content with a tag, we can find out some interesting things, tag 727232 for example, is Amsterdam, and we can use the new API’s that we’re releasing to find out all sorts of relevant relationship information, including:

• The parent, the administrative region of Amsterdam
• Neighbors, such as Landsmeer, Zaandam, and Watergang.
• Belong To’s, such as North Holland, Western Europe, and the Europe/Amsterdam Time Zone
• and more!

(note, the links above are XML, and may not be openable in all browsers)

This service allows you to discover location relationships from free-text place names, tag your content with location ID’s for easy indexing, disambiguate numerous objects tagged with the same location, and so on.

Go ahead and check out the documentation on the Yahoo! Developer Network at http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/

Congrats to the Yahoo! Geo team on this preview,

Michael Lawless
Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

PS  For more on subject, check out the post by Dan Catt here.

We have seen countless users struggle to find what they’re looking for in a specific area or neighborhood using current local search and online maps products (ahem…ours included). The results may be spread over too wide an area or not in a specific enough area.

While we have had refinement options to help users narrow by distance or neighborhood for a long time in Yahoo! Local, this required the user to make the refinement selections and run their search again. This is certainly useful in many cases, but it is a cumbersome way to explore and compare results in different areas.

What users really wanted was a way to visually explore the results on the map more directly. And now they can with the release of a unique and innovative search circle in Yahoo! Local.

To see the search circle in action, let’s suppose you’re looking for Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. You type in the query and get a set of results:

Not bad, but these restaurants are scattered across the city and you really want to see what’s closer to Golden Gate Park. So you click on the ‘Expand Map’ link to get a more detailed map view:

This is where the search circle really changes things. Now you immediately see how wide the search area is but can easily narrow this down…

…and just as easily drag the circle closer to Golden Gate Park…

…or perhaps you’re wondering if there’s a Chinese restaurant within roughly a one mile radius of the beach? No problem, just shrink the circle down a bit (it dynamically calculates the radius in miles) and drag the search circle again – it will even automatically pan the map if you hit the map edge…

What would once have been a much more difficult task has now become incredibly easy. So go ahead, try it out and figure out just how many Chinese restaurants, banks or nail salons are within a one mile radius of your house. We think you’ll like it, but as always, please let us know either way. We’re always looking for feedback (the good and the bad) from our users.

Tom Wailes, Yahoo! Local UED

The Yahoo! Maps team is happy to announce the single biggest imagery update on maps.yahoo.com since the program inception.  While we’ve steadily added new cities around the world every month (over 500 now) since the beginning, we haven’t made as much of a change in the US until today.  Our latest release improves both breadth and depth.

Going wide, we’ve made big improvements in our wall-to-wall coverage of the United States, improving our back-drop data for a number of complete states, including California, Oregon, New York, the Carolina’s, and numerous other states in the west and midwest.  State-wide, you’ll see an improvement in freshness, color and clarity.  Here’s an example up at McCloud, CA, which is a beautiful part of California near Mt. Shasta.

Going deep, and I think more importantly, we’ve enabled up to 2 extra zoom levels of aerial photography and satellite imagery for the Satellite button for hundreds of cities around the US.  Not only can you see more detail, but in many places the imagery has gotten a welcomed refresh as well.  To see what I mean, check this out new view of Denver City Hall.

I’ve always believed that satellite and aerial imagery adds an important context to understanding our maps and driving directions, and with this update, I hope you’ll agree with me that this feature is even more useful.

Cheers,

Michael Lawless, Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

We’ve been working hard all winter long, and  today, we’ve rolled out an update to Yahoo! Maps that delivers a number of improvements including; new neighborhood data, expanded worldwide coverage, and stylistic improvements.

Some of the improvements you might notice as you test-drive our updated Yahoo! Maps include:

• New Neighborhood Data at lower zoom levels with:
• > 300 cities with new neighborhood data added throughout North America, from Palo Alto, to Chicago, to Toronto, etc.
• > 12,000 new neighborhoods added, from “Lower East Side” (New York, Milwaukee, Bridgeport) to “Lower Collegetown” (Ithaca)
• Expanded Worldwide Coverage with much improved coverage, especially throughout Eastern Europe
• New POI information - highlighting Schools, Rest areas, Ski Resorts, etc.
  Additional shaded relief levels worldwide
• City label density increased for better usability
• Style improvements such as Hybrid Road and Label colors adjusted for better legibility
• Lighter map tiles – with an average of 30-60% reduction in size  

Stay tuned for continued updates and improvements throughout 2008.  Check it out and let us know what you think!

Cheers!

Gus Maldonado - Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Geo/Maps

One of the most requested updates at the Yahoo! Developer Network is to upgrade the Maps API’s to support Actionscript 3.  In fact, over 500 of you have voted for this, and your wish is our command.  Starting today, you’ll now be able to work with a native AS3 mapping component, brought to you by our own Zach Graves, Yahoo! Maps and the YDN.

Highly compact at only 30kb, this component won’t weigh your widget down, and those of you who know AS3 know that a native component handles raster graphics and overlays with ease, greatly improving performance. The new api supports complex custom markers, local search, geocoding, and of course maps, satellite and hybrid out of the box.

Take a look at the YDN release information where there’s more info, examples, and a couple of screencasts, and for you developers looking for the Flash edge, you’re welcome.

Michael Lawless
Sr. Product Manager - Yahoo! Maps

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, us insiders know that the difference between Hwy 101 and Hwy 280 is like the difference between the mall ring-road on the Saturday before Christmas and the Autobahn. Some of us will go through some awfully long detours just to get to our favorite freeways, but it’s not always easy to know the best way to get there. It can also mean that online maps aren’t as relevant because you might be coming at your destination from an unexpected direction.

Now following your favorite freeway on Yahoo! Maps is as easy as drag & drop. Once you get your directions to your destination, if you don’t quite like what you see, you can pick up your route and drop it somewhere else, and we’ll drive you through the area you select in the most efficient manner. If that’s still not quite right, you can tug on the route again until it’s perfect. Of course you can undo your through-points whenever you like, or go back to your original route. We’ll even tell you the difference in mileage and estimated time between your personalized route and our fastest route. This would be great for long trips where you want to see some interesting detours or scenic routes.

In addition to our personalized routes, we’ve made a few other changes. Searching for businesses on a map just got more informative. Inside the business popups on the map there are now photos and user review quotes, and we’ve also re-formatted the list view to make it easier to understand your results. Yahoo! Maps is now a bit faster, and we’ve fixed a couple of our favorite pet-peeves, like being able to save as many addresses as you’d like.

We hope you like the new functionality.

Happy drag & dropping,

Michael Lawless - Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

Make your blog posts map-happy with the new Yahoo! Shortcuts for Wordpress (beta). This is the same treatment that you may have seen inside Yahoo! Mail, News, or Travel.

Although Yahoo! Shortcuts will provide Flickr photos for your top terms, financial charts for companies such as Yahoo! Inc., and help you find out more about that HP Pavilion dv9500t you’ve been looking at, we’re especially partial to the Yahoo! Maps shortcut.

For example, if I were to put 701 First Ave, Sunnyvale, CA in the body of my post (as I just did), the plugin will auto-detect that there is mapping context, and give me the option of having an appropriate link. Inside the shortcut (rollover the address above to see it) you can expand to a popup which has links to see a full sized map, get driving directions, and search for nearby businesses.

There’s additional discussion on Yahoo! Search Blog, and in Yodel Anecdotal, so follow the links to read more.

Michael Lawless - Sr. Product Manager Yahoo! Maps, and ylocalblog caretaker.

You may have noticed that Yahoo! Local has undergone several front-end enhancements since its big makeover in August 2007. A couple of signficant changes took effect recently, namely, search refinement has been extended to allow users to drill down upon the exact businesses they seek. For instance, should you find yourself hankering for a family-friendly, California restaurant located within 10 miles of your home, you can make use of the Atmosphere, Distance, and Category locators to more readily identify the best options. To tighten results even more, filter by increasing the distance or narrowing to the highest rated restaurants.

In an effort to keep you better connected to new reviews from the people and places you prefer, Yahoo! Local now offers RSS feeds on key areas of the site so you can receive updates as they become available (Hint: look for the radiating RSS symbol ).

From our city guide pages, you can choose to “Add RSS” for recent reviews and stay abreast of users’ varied experiences with local businesses. If you encounter a great review from a particular user, click on a picture or name in order to view that user’s profile page and add an RSS feed to get his or her future reviews. Finally, you can establish an RSS feed to get notified when Yahoo! Local users comment on your reviews. Just navigate to your MyLocal profile page, scroll to the “comments on your reviews” section, and click to “Add RSS.”

Finally, a first review on a business really does get the ball rolling in providing valuable insights to other Yahoo! Local users. In an effort to encourage users to contribute that essential first review, you may have noticed the First Reviewer attributions that now appear on business details pages. It’s your key to finding out who the local experts really are, and to get credit for submitting a review that helps others make decisions.

We hope you make good use of the latest updates and as always, let us know your thoughts here.

Shawn Bolan

Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Local

Recently, Harris Interactive conducted a survey for us that studied the “psyche” of the online reviewer.  We wanted to determine what motivates people to contribute to online review sites like Yahoo! Local and we found that the majority of online adults feel compelled to offer their opinion in order to help others in their community through knowledge-sharing, followed by a desire to promote the business and help the merchant succeed.

Based on these motivators, it’s no surprise that three in four online adults (77 percent) agree that sites with online reviews of local businesses are valuable community tools, and one in three adults (33 percent) feel more connected to their community by contributing to online review Web sites.

Needless to say, we’re glad that we’re providing a service that helps connect others and offers invaluable advice when making offline purchasing decisions.  Four out of five online adults (80 percent) are likely to be influenced by a review, and seventy-one percent of respondents at least somewhat, if not strongly, find online reviews helpful in making purchasing decisions.  In addition, one in four adults (29 percent) say their purchasing decisions are either always or often influenced by online review content!  That’s a sizeable percentage of the population.  You can feel good knowing that the reviews you write on Yahoo! Local are helping others in your community make decisions about which product or service they plan to purchase.

We’re also happy to report that more users are influenced by positive reviews than negative reviews (27 percent versus 12 percent, respectively).  These numbers are inline with ones that resulted from a similar study last year and they show that while online reviews are helpful for users, they are also helpful for local merchants.

It’s great to work on such a positive community tool for both local businesses and consumers alike, and these survey results only strengthen our belief in the services we provide through Yahoo! Local.  We hope you’ll continue to find the site a helpful resource and we always welcome your opinions to make the service even better!

Frazier Miller - GM Yahoo! Local

August 29th, 2006 was an exciting day for us; it was the day after Flickr first announced their Geotagging feature using the Yahoo! Maps API, and they had exceeded their first month projection of 1 million geotagged photos in a single day. It goes to show that putting pictures and places together go hand-in-hand like peas and carrots, Bonnie and Clyde… You get the idea.

Today Flickr released two new maps-related features. The new Flickr Places pages will take some of the 30+ million publicly geotagged photos already uploaded and organize them into key themes for over 100,000 locations. Each Places page features interesting photos and photographers, related Flickr Groups, and the tags that make that area unique.

The maps page itself gets a great upgrade as well, with an improved world map where people can easily view popular and up-to-date themes. Clicking on any of these hot tags will take you to a selection of current photos from that area, tagged with more detailed information. This will provide a great visual lens into the latest interesting things happening around the world.

These new features further demonstrate our commitment to a global platform and will be available in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, and traditional Chinese.

Michael lawless

Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps