Google, Bing and Yahoo Online Maps – Reviewed

Maps…where would we be without them? Lost that’s where!

Maps have been a crucial tool for the advancement of human Cozy Digital. To think that before people started scratching maps into the walls of caves about 8,000 years ago, the transfer of knowledge about the physical world around us was passed on by word of mouth. No wonder everyone thought the world was flat for a while! When the first genius decided to draw a map, (cartography as it would be known if it was taught in school), they produced a document which captured their developed knowledge so that it could be built upon by someone else. As maps accuracy continued to improve and people mapped further afield, like during the ‘Age of Discovery’, eventually whole areas and whole countries were mapped, giving humans a better understanding of the world as a whole.

These days we are lucky enough to live in a time which benefits from the fruits of centuries of technological, mathematical and cartographic advancements. Every step of human history has seen a step forward in the accuracy and sophistication of maps, and looking at maps through the ages can draw you a picture of how we have advanced as a society.

As a mark of where we are now, we have online maps. Online maps use the most advanced technology and cartographic techniques to chart our world. Not only do they shows us where the roads are, they go a whole lot further, giving us a host of other information making them an extremely popular destination for internet users worldwide. Google, Bing and Yahoo all have free offerings as part of their array of services, so with this review I will deduce through some crafty tests which of the big search engines has the best.

Here is what I will be testing:

Search

I will search for a specific location and judge which finds it quickest and most accurately.

Views

The way the map is displayed is crucial to how easily you can interpret the image. How easy it is to use the map in its different display options?

Zoom

I will zoom in on each location and judge how quickly and how smoothly it gets closer to the target.

Features

What extra features do or don’t they have?

Business Search

For a general term, how many suggestions does it give you?

Route Planner

How quickly can it get you from A to B and what else does it offer?

Appearance

What is the overall look of the map and is it a pleasure to use?

SEARCH

Being the birth place of Christopher Columbus, the founder of America and one of the big stars of the ‘Age of Discovery’, Genoa seemed as good a place as any to test with.

Google

Found it within 0.25 of a second. Bang on.

Bing

Bing found Genoa, as well as Paraguay within 0.25 of a second. Bang on.

Yahoo

Yahoo took a bit longer to find Genoa, nearer to 1 second. The image grew in squares one by one. Bang on location.

I also tested for a country and street for each of the competitors and the results were the same. Searching for Paraguay Google appeared a bit more zoomed in while the others gave a little more context in that it was zoomed out so you could see the shape of the continent. And when searching for 30 Bankhead Drive, Edinburgh (Evolution’s Edinburgh office) all offered exactly the same image in less than 0.25 seconds.

VIEWS

Sticking with Mr Columbus, when he landed in the New World, the first place he set down was in the Bahamas. So I searched for the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau.

Google

The view Google presents you with when you enter your search is very nice. In this case the island is in the centre with the exact location of your search highlighted with a pin. The bar on the left includes photos and links to useful options like ‘Directions’ and a slightly less useful sponsored link to ‘Hotels in Nassau, Germany’. You can also choose to view the map in ‘Satellite’ view or ‘Earth’ view which requires you to download the ‘Google Earth’ plug-in.

Bing

Bing presents you with a fairly sparse view. There is a pin for the exact location but there is no road information at all. There are major towns marked but even the proximity of the island looks boxy. I guess this is a sign of Bing not having mapped the whole world yet. They do however have a satellite view. There is a bar on the left but it only has a short description of Nassau.

Yahoo

The view is very similar to Bing in that there is a very sparse amount of information on the map for this location. There are a couple of roads drawn in but they seem to have spent the time Bing had on place names on this, so there is only one place name and two lake names. You can view a satellite view on the left hand bar, but there is no extra information.

ZOOM

To test the zoom function I’m staying in the ‘New World’ and going to its heart: The Big Apple! This is mostly because New York City is likely to be mapped comprehensively by all of the search engines and offers a nice complicated landscape to render and much to zoom in on.

Google

Zooming in is almost completely smooth and when you get in close before jumping into ‘Street View’ (more on this later) all the buildings are in architectural style 3D which is quite cool. When you change to satellite view while zoomed in you see a snap shot from the ‘Earth’ section and the satellite view overlays road names and place information. If you go to ‘Earth’ mode you can zoom all the way in from space and have the massive sky scrapers jut out at you in super 3D! The zoom is even smoother in this mode too.

Bing

When I zoomed in as close as I could in Bing, every single scroll of the mouse caused the page to go blank and render one square at a time, so not very smooth. The aerial view is much like Google’s satellite view and offers the same type of information but won’t let you zoom in as far. Also the same slow rendering takes place when zooming in and out. A cool option in Bing is the ‘Birds Eye View’ option which gives you a view as if you are looking from a blimp hovering just above the city. You can zoom one step in and out of this view and rotate through 360 degrees. I liked this a lot.

Yahoo

Yahoos zoom is incredibly annoying. If you hold your mouse over where you want to zoom in on, and scroll forwards, the view zooms in but moves up at the same time. Like a parachutist missing their mark. This means you have to drag the screen up first and aim low so that when you zoom in what you’re aiming for reaches the centre of the screen. The lag on the rendering is also annoying and often when accompanied with the ‘swoop’ zoom means you completely lose what you’re hunting for. Another thing is that you can’t zoom close enough, leaving you hanging a few hundred feet above the city. While the images above were not as close as I could get, the one below is.

FEATURES

Google

Google has several nifty features:

Street View has been talked about a lot for both its all encompassing handiness, and for its privacy breaching nosiness. It is really good for finding somewhere to the very doorstep and is normally quite slick but has a limit to its flexibility when you just need to stop and accept that you are not going to be able to read that blurry door number.

Earth lets you zoom out all the way into space and right back in again to see a large portion of the world in pretty great detail but it does take quite a while to get going.

Next to the choice of map type you can select ‘More’ which brings up a choice of what results you want to see displayed on the map. These included: Photos, Videos, Wikipedia, Webcams, Terrain and Properties. Without going into too much detail, these reveal so many links that pop up on the map to user photos and videos, Wikipedia articles, webcam links and properties for sale/rent that the entire terrain of (in this test) the UK is covered. That’s a lot of results.

There is also a traffic feature which allows you to see what the traffic conditions are like in some areas live, or look back at how they were at specifiable times and days within the last week.

You can also choose to share your location so that when you search for something, Google localises the results to be personal to you. You can choose to enable or disable this option.

I found all but the traffic and Earth features useful as the traffic feature didn’t have wide enough coverage and I still don’t know what Earth is for, apart from being fun to use.

Bing

Standard aerial view is accompanied by bird’s eye view, which is pretty cool but a bit too clumsy to be used for anything more than virtual sightseeing. Features include Tube map, Favourites section, Welcome screen and er a survey.

Yahoo

There is a Hybrid and Satellite view selection. Hybrid is basically Satellite with streets mapped over the top. However, the inability to zoom in close enough leaves you with a fairly useless tool when compared with its competitors. Features include language choice and…er print.

BUSINESS SEARCH

Many people use search engine maps to find businesses in their local area, so I chose the word ‘supermarket’ and tried it for each.

Google

651,597 results.

Google gives you a good amount of info on each result like its address and phone number, link to reviews, photos and options to zoom to its location on the map, see it in street view or to get directions.

Bing

1 result

Despite saying “We didn’t find business results for your search” it brought one result. It offers you the option to get directions, to save the location and to email it. Bit rubbish.

Yahoo

12,102 results.

Yahoo has a separate box for business searches and offers similar information to Google including directions, address and phone numbers. I like how it only shows ten results at a time on the map too. No photos but when you click ‘more info’ it takes you to a page with a more detailed localised map and web results for that business. Not bad.

ROUTE PLANNER

To test out their route planning skills I gave them a tough challenge: John O’ Groats at the very north of Scotland, to Land’s End at the very south of England. The challenge is: who would do it fastest, which journey time would be fastest and what else does it offer?

Google

Speed – Less than 0.25 seconds
Journey Time – 14 hours 55 mins (837 miles)
Other Offerings – You can choose to have the route planned for if you are on foot. When I selected this for this route it changed the journey time to 6 days 14 hours and had me taking several ferries and visiting Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and France. You can also select a point on the route and drag it to change the route. This then alters the journey time etc. for you. Nice.

Bing

Speed – less than 0.25 seconds
Journey Time – 15 hours (836.2 miles)
Other Offerings – Bing lets you send these directions to your mobile or email. Also, it does have a ‘new’ walking route planner but was unable to provide results for this route.

Yahoo

Speed – After Yahoo telling me several times that “Driving directions cannot be determined between these locations, and after I had found one location first and then added the second it had taken at least 10 seconds to bring me results.
Journey Time – 13 hours 25 mins (834.4 miles)
Other Offerings – It lets you reverse the direction of the route, make it a round trip and send the route by email. But that’s it.

APPEARANCE

To judge the overall appearance of the map features I journeyed to one of the most beautiful cities in the world Barcelona! Also, to try and keep this theme going, this is the place where Christopher Columbus returned to after his first trip to America and reported back to the Spanish Royal family. There is even a 60 foot column just for him.

Google

Map – Neutral tones, with easy to distinguish main roads from motorways. You can see the grid of the centre of town from the initial view and you can easily hide the left bar to reveal the rest of the map.

Satellite – Slightly strange colour for the Mediterranean Sea but the resolution is good enough to see the wake of a boat in the shallows and individual buildings in the centre of town.

Bing

Map – A very pale map, with the land all white with tiny bits of green. The biggest roads stand out but there is very vague definition of anything smaller than main roads.

Satellite – The sea is completely black which is a bit strange but the definition of buildings is good despite the image quality being slightly fuzzier than Google’s.

Yahoo

Map – A much more basic map with very little definition outside of the main roads and a lot less initial information compared with its competitors.

Satellite – Probably has the best sea colour but by far the lowest quality satellite image. The city centre is an orangey blur while the country side isn’t any better.

CONCLUSION

After a long thorough exploration of online search engine maps I have seen many wild and wonderful sites. I have felt like Christopher Columbus visiting new destinations and having crazy adventures. If he were alive today and he wanted to explore a distant land, he could now easily find a laundrette in Paris and peek in its front window to see if the natives look friendly. Then email them and plan his route to get there all from his laptop.

3^rd

In last place Yahoo Local limps in a long way behind its competition. With a lack of extra features, annoying zoom and clumsy interface it was the most unsatisfying to use. It did have good business results and produced the fastest route time but it falls down too early in the experience to make you want to use it again.

2^nd

Bing comes in a solid first runner up position, or first loser depending how you look at it. This could easily have been last as it failed the business results test and had similarly bad view results but its zoom was less annoying than Yahoos, had better satellite image quality and included the cool birds eye view option.

1^st

Google wins hands down. It has way more features than either of the other two, has the slickest zoom and satellite views and even has street view to top it off. It had by far the most comprehensive business search results and a very flexible route planning tool. If Christopher Columbus was to plan a new adventure today, I’d recommend he use Google Maps.

• About the Author
• Latest Posts

About Adam

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