Find more with Google Maps

Posted by Lior Ron, Product Manager

There's a lot to discover in Google Maps: addresses, businesses, points of interest, user maps, and even photos, books, and videos. To help sift through all of this, we've added a new search option that will help you find exactly what you want. Check out the new "show search options" link near the search box. Following this link will add a drop-down menu with three options for refining your search:

• Locations - Search only addresses, places of interest or other location names. For example, searching for "storm" will bring you to the city of Storm, Finland.
• Businesses - Search only businesses. Searching for "storm" over San Francisco will show you businesses with storm in their name.
• User-created content - Search maps created by users in Google or anywhere on the web. Searching for "storm" over San Francisco will show some interesting photos from the stormy week we had in San Francisco last month.

This last option is particularly useful for exploring the world from the vantage point of true local experts. Here are some cool searches I was able to do: "Windsurfing in San Francisco" shows windsurfing spots around the Bay Area from YouTube, virtualglobetrotting and Flickr (while business search will show windsurfing business listings); "Romantic places in Paris" includes results for romantic places mentioned in mashups by francoissachs.nl, communitywalk and Platial; "Seinfeld New York" highlights locations featured on the show from Panoramio, Flickr and other highlights from Google My Maps.