Digital mapping blazes trails

Digital maps produce so much more than driving directions these days.

You can pull up satellite and aerial images, discover neighborhood jazz clubs and

check traffic conditions. You can get rail schedules and, perhaps one day, tips on foot and bike trails through parks.

As features are added, mapping companies are having to build better technologies and find better sources of data, including their own users.

Microsoft Corp. is working on a mechanism that would have avid mountain bikers, for example, collectively plot good trails. Yahoo Inc. is appealing to its users to add information on local businesses and places of interest. Yahoo recently bought Upcoming.org, a collaborative calendar of events.

“More and more data has to become available to provide these kinds of great offerings,” said Jeremy Kreitler, Yahoo’s senior product manager for maps. “These kinds of information will come from people around local areas contributing.”

Online mapping is hot and competitive. Nielsen/NetRatings recorded a 28 percent jump in visitors last year, with one-third of Web users visiting at least one mapping site in November.

Microsoft, Yahoo, MapQuest and Google Inc. receive their primary data from two companies, Navteq Corp. and Tele Atlas NV, both of which have been canvassing the nation’s highways and byways to keep their databases complete and accurate.

Data companies typically are paid for each map consumers generate. Christian Dwyer, MapQuest’s director of operations, estimates that driving directions cost his company a penny apiece and a static map much less — expenses recouped through sales of ads displayed at the site.

To distinguish themselves, mapping providers must decide individually which of the various attributes provided by Navteq and Tele Atlas to emphasize: Is speed limit more important than distance? Would it make sense to take a highway for just one exit?

MapQuest, for instance, assigns scores to various route alternatives based on the number of turns, distance and other factors and, unless you tell its software engine to avoid all highways, it presents the route with the lowest score.

Mapping companies also must decide how much information to provide. Zoom out, and data on local streets only clutter the map, even if the information is readily available.

Yahoo employs consumer focus groups to help it figure out the proper balance. It also dispatches motorist guinea pigs onto the road with driving directions, while employees tag along and watch how they fare.

“This is where it’s more art than science,” Mr. Kreitler said.

The basics have changed little since MapQuest’s site opened nearly a decade ago, on Feb. 5, 1996. How mapping providers differentiate themselves, then, is in the distinct features they offer.

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