Google Maps is bringing a new community feed in the Explore Tab. This new feed will show the latest reviews, photos, and posts of places and events near you, offered by people and businesses you follow. It also offers content from experts like food and drink merchants, and articles from noted publishing houses. This new Google Maps community feed looks to offer recommendation of nearby events and places to go to.
The tech giant has confirmed that this new community feed in Google Maps is rolling out globally for Android and iOS users both. However, this appears to be a staggered rollout, as we don’t have access to the new feed on Android so far
The new community feed can be found in the ‘Explore Tab’ inside Google Maps. Clicking on the tab and swiping up will reveal posts, photos, and reviews from community members that offer an opinion on nearby places and events.
Users can like these posts and follow new people and businesses. Google collates all of this nearby community-centric information from the 20 million contributions it says it gets every day. These contributions include recommendations on favourite spots, updates to business services, fresh reviews and ratings, photos, answers to other people’s questions, updated addresses, and more.
The community feed in Google Maps essentially aims to make it easier to discover things to do and places to go in an area. It includes updates on menu additions in popular restaurants, nearby hike trails, popular day trips in the city, and other such events. “By panning and zooming the map, you can find helpful information for almost any location in the world, thanks to contributions from in-the-know locals,” Google says in the blogpost.
Google Maps community feed takes into account your interests and offers you content tailored to it. For instance, if you’ve marked an interest in healthy food or Chinese cuisine in your Google Maps food and drink preferences, you’ll see more recommendations, photos, and business posts for that type of dining.
This community feed also aims to help businesses connect better with customers. These businesses can use their Business Profile on Google to let users know about their current offerings and operations, like takeout and delivery options, new online services, and the safety precautions taken. Google says that in their early testing, it found that posts from merchants are seen two times more than before the feed existed.
Google Maps can be downloaded on Android and iOS handsets both from the Google Play store and Apple’s App Store, respectively.