Google Maps Vs Mapquest - what’s your pick?
Then, I noticed that Google Maps was not very impressive after all.
For the last one year, I had been traveling a lot and for every trip, I made sure to compare the directions of Google maps and mapquest. More than 95% of the time, I ended up choosing mapquest because it not only gave me the shortest route but also gave me the fastest route besides giving me good time estimates. There had been very few instances where I picked Google maps.
Just as an exercise, try to find the direction from Detroit, MI to Chicago, IL. Pull up the directions on Google maps and Mapquest. Here are the differences:
| Mapquest: Est. Time: 4 hrs, 30 mins | Google Maps: Est. Time: 5 hrs 15 mins |
Now, compare the two maps and you will see that the two directions are entirely different. Mapquest takes you from
Another example, is Detroit, MI to Tallahassee, FL
| Mapquest: Est. Time: 15 hrs, 53 mins | Google Maps: Est. Time: 21 hrs 13 mins |
Notice that in the above example both of them give about the same miles, however Mapquest estimates the total time to be 15 hours 53 minutes and Google maps estimates it to be 21 hour 13 minutes. Both of them pretty much give the same route. I found myself reaching my destination in about 15 hours and 30 minutes, close to Mapquest’s estimate and about 6 hours earlier than Google’s estimate. Now, that makes a big difference in my travel itinerary.
These examples are in favor of Mapquest. I did not find a strong example favoring Google maps. If you know of some favoring Google maps please comment to this post and I will rewrite this post with your comparison.
14 comments:
i got lost many times when i used google maps :-(
i do agree mapquest is better than yahoo maps!!!
reverse directions - where is it in mapquest?
reverse directions is sort of hidden in mapquest. its now on the righht side under advanced options. i know its hard to notice. bad design!
I dont know where you folks are located, but in the New Jersey area.. Mapquest's directions ALWAYS take you WAAAY out of your way, and half the time get you lost because they reference streets that dont exist, or names that have changed years ago!
AOL needs to shut down mapquest, because Google Maps & Windows Live maps beat it hands down.
andew, could you tell us one example so i can append the blog?
Yahoo Maps Beta seems to give almost identical results to MapQuest for these two, and I prefer the Yahoo interface by far.
Detroit, MI => Chicago, IL
280.7 miles, 4 hrs 7 mins
Detroit, MI => Tallahassee, FL
997.5 miles, 15 hrs 37 min
True. Both yahoo and mapquest source from TeleAtlas.
I dont know where you folks are located, but in the New Jersey area.. Mapquest's directions ALWAYS take you WAAAY out of your way, and half the time get you lost because they reference streets that dont exist, or names that have changed years ago!
AOL needs to shut down mapquest, because Google Maps & Windows Live maps beat it hands down.
That's not a Mapquest issue, it's a New Jersey issue. I live in NJ, and we have the crappiest most confusing signage in the 50 contiguous States.
The issues you had with Google Maps appear to have been fixed. As of today, Detroit to Chicago is 4:29 and going the same route. To Tallahassee, it's 16:12, which is much closer than before.
"That's not a Mapquest issue, it's a New Jersey issue. I live in NJ, and we have the crappiest most confusing signage in the 50 contiguous States."
There are not 50 contiguous states, so that's impressive.
I use both. They complement one another nicely :). However, lately Google introduced the ability to drag any route point to whatever place you want - and this changes the game dramatically! Google wins...
Google Maps is the only map site I have seen that does not require JavaScript. I'm sick of web sites doing this for no good reason, and I'm fed up enough to just skip over their web sites. In 99.9% of the cases JavaScript is totally unnecessary.
Now, in these days of high gas prices and high parking costs, if I could only find a map site that gave me WALKING directions!
(BTW, you can tell from the way I capitalize and punctuate, that I made it beyond the 3rd grade.)
"Now, in these days of high gas prices and high parking costs, if I could only find a map site that gave me WALKING directions!"
Hmm...Google must have heard you...
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