As the sunny days approach, Google has just announced three features “to make summer travel easier».
Better recommendations
The first new feature concerns the improvement of Google's recommendation lists. From now on, when you visit a city, Google Maps will recommend the places of interest most likely to interest you. To do this, it relies on reference sites, recognized for offering the best places, whether for eating, visiting or having fun.
The recommendations are also based on “Local Guides”, recognized by Google users. Any Google user can become a Local Guide if several of their reviews in the same city have been approved by a large number of people, thanks to a “like”.
Google specifies that three lists are offered:
- The 🔥 Trending list is updated weekly with places that have recently seen a spike in popularity on Maps. This is ideal for helping you discover the latest hot spots.
- The 🏆 Top list brings together places that the Maps community has always loved. Come here to discover a region's tried and true, long-standing favorites.
- The 💎Gems list is about places that might be a neighborhood's best-kept secret. It is home to excellent restaurants that still go unnoticed.
These lists will gradually be deployed in different countries, initially in the United States and Canada, by the end of the month.Google has not provided further information regarding a release date in France.
Customize your lists
Since 2017, it has been possible tocreate your own lists in Google Maps, and share them, but they are not very customizable. From the end of the month, however, you will be able to personalize them further. As a reminder, when you add a location to a list, it will bealways pinned and visible on the map.
Now, Google Maps allows you tosort places in your lists. This can, for example, be useful when planning a trip, to sort places chronologically, based on the order in which you are going to visit them.
Location overviews are more consistent
Google Maps is great for finding places to go, but sometimes,the information we need about it is not put forward. For example, you are looking for a restaurant, and what you want to see at first glance is: the menu, reviews on the quality of the food, and possibly photos of the dishes and the location. However, it is likely that you will first come across a comment from a dissatisfied person, who rates the place one star because it was full on the day they wanted to go there. The same goes for the photos. Instead of the food and the room being highlighted, we often find unnecessary photos, of the frontage for example, or of a decoration.
In order to offer a better overview of the places at first glance,Google Maps will use AI to directly offer the most important information.
Apple also regularly updates its navigation application, which has recently benefited froma feature already present in Google Maps.
