What Does Google Maps’ Desi Avatar Has In Store For You?

The search giant Google is taking one of its largest markets seriously. This time the company has introduced new features on its navigation platform Google Maps. The application that allows users to find any address and navigate from one place to the other will now be further enhanced with features that are being termed as ‘desi’ – or specially to cater to the Indian users.

The features – Plus Codes, Add an Address, Smart Address Search and language support – are expected to ease finding address (even the difficult ones) and in turn, navigation. Here’s more about the four features and how these will be a good news for real estate:

Plus Codes

Available internationally, Plus Codes is a feature that has been newly introduced in India. This feature is an addressing system that makes search more and more specific. It works like street address and this code helps find or share a place on Google Maps.

This code has two elements – the first being a short code of six to seven letters and numbers and second is a locality. This will allow the user to reach some of the remotest addresses or even areas or roads that do not have a name and hence, do not find a place on Google Maps.

A user can set a Plus Code and allow the other user to easily navigate to your specific location.

So, what if your project is on the city periphery, in an area that doesn’t find a mention on Google Maps? You could create a Plus Code and share it with your prospective homebuyers to easily navigate to you.

Add an Address

Launching a project and want to create a unique address for it on Google Maps? Not every home in India is mapped on Google Maps. However, this feature will let you find your or someone else’s home easily on maps. Now, you could pin a location and then add an address to it. You have to live in this location to be a real contributor to this feature. To make it easier for the users, Google allows you to search property via street view to pick your exact apartment.

Smart Address Search

Do not know the exact address? You could now use other things such as landmarks or images to figure where exactly you want to go to. In case you are unaware about the precise address, Google will suggest you nearby landmarks, businesses. This sounds something similar to how a human would have helped us navigate to a particular address. It brings you to the closest possible destination, making navigation easier for you.

Six new languages

Google Maps is going vernacular. In case you are using voice navigation, you could now do that in six Indian languages apart from Hindi. These include Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam.

Features launched earlier

This is not the first time Google launched India-specific features. It has earlier launched navigation for two-wheelers. It also introduced Hindi voice navigation three years ago.

Google also works closely with the traffic police of some of the key cities in the country, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, among others, to provide real-time traffic updates.