How Mapquest Is Stacking Up Beside Their Competition
By LanceThorington at 3 September, 2010, 12:00 am
Probably no one realized the potential of the market when online maps and driving directions first became available. It surely would have been difficult to guess that they would grow to become such large and popular enterprises. Initially Mapquest launched campaigns everywhere to encourage visitors to try the newest thing, online driving directions. It worked but if you build it, competitors will also come. They did and they too have done a sterling job of encouraging repeat users. Mapquest may have begun the trend but Yahoo Maps Google and Rand McNally have joined in to add their own little twists. What follows this are overall impressions of each site.
Mapquest has upgraded their interface since they first began and the interface appears lighter and easier to handle than before. They have also incorporated a 360 degree street level view into the maps. Predictably this feature is not fully functional in more rural areas but covers a lot of the larger cities. Icons were also easy to find and intuitive.
Yahoo has entered the online driving directions market with their own driving directions and online maps. While the interface is clean they offer only satellite, hybrid and map views. The nice little perk of 360 view is absent at present. Absent also are the multitude of icons present with some online driving sites. This gives a nice clean field of vision but also lacks some of the extras.
Google maps appears to have a much less resource intensive interface than was in use as little as 1 year ago. There were options to view videos of the areas in the sidebar as well as photos. The options took a while to locate but there was no lack of variety either. Additionally although there is a street view option somewhere, it was not easily located from the map and driving direction page.
Rand McNally is a relatively new site but a well known name in fold up driving maps and atlases. They offer downloadable maps as well as driving directions. Advertisements on the map page are a little bolder than competing sites and they also lack a 360 view.
Vague Test
One of the easiest ways to glitch any online map or driving direction interface is to be too vague. While testing these sites that is exactly what was done. Several towns were chosen and directions or a map for the city center of that town were requested from the sites. Google returned a side bar list of locations that contained the name city or center while giving suggestions. Yahoo and Rand McNally returned the response that location could not be found. Mapquest returned a map showing the cities requested with a mark in the center. Google returned a number of suggestions with the name city or center in them.
Conclusions
Yahoo and Rand McNally don’t seem to be in the same league as the giants. Google offered a lot of options most many were difficult to find and use. Mapquest appeared to give the most intelligent response to vague directions, and to have the simplest to use options without being overwhelming. Based on these criteria, the clear winner is Mapquest, for now.
MapQuest launched as an online website to service people that need to get from point A to point B but do not know how to get there. More info on http://www.funandsafedriving.com/mapquest-2.html
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