Yahoo Maps beta

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CNET editors' rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
Detailed editors' rating

Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 11 reviews
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Product summary

CNET Editors' ChoiceMay 06

The good: Yahoo Maps provides smooth satellite views for every corner of the globe; builds multipoint routes; offers live traffic data; integrates Local directory service.

The bad The bad: The Yahoo Maps beta couldn't remember our addresses; crashed during testing; Flash interface is slower than other map sites'; traffic information doesn't explain delays well.

The bottom line: With plenty of useful features wrapped in a simple and attractive interface, the Yahoo Maps beta is the online mapping tool to beat.

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CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Troy Dreier
Edited by: Elsa Wenzel
Reviewed on: 05/25/2006
Released on: 11/03/2005

Still stung from when Google assumed the search engine throne several years back, Yahoo is battling for supremacy in mapping. Google briefly ruled this realm last year when it released the Google Maps beta with satellite views and put to shame old-school sites such as Mapquest. The Yahoo Maps beta shamelessly appropriates Google's innovations, while adding in Yahoo's own excellent local content, plus a few new tricks.

Yahoo Maps packs in features without looking cluttered. You can create a map or a route, view satellite images, and find local businesses. We're impressed with this service, though it's still in public beta testing (you can access Yahoo's old map site here, but why?). By comparison, Google Maps, now a final product, suddenly looks so 2005 and vulnerable.

Yahoo makes it painless to track driving directions with several stops. Plus, you can view details about potentially dicey traffic situations and speeds.

It's easy within Yahoo Maps to chart a route with multiple destinations, find local attractions, discover traffic trouble spots, and drag new addresses into your search. Yahoo Maps beta uses a simple two-window layout similar to that of Google Maps, with search options and driving directions in the left pane and a map on the right. To display a map, type an address into text box A, then add point B to the second text box if you need driving directions. Additional text boxes appear as needed to easily create multipoint directions. You can also click any step in a set of directions to view a small inset map of just that step.

The Yahoo Maps beta is coded in Flash, so it takes a moment to load, and actions such as zooming in suffer a slight lag. The delay didn't bother us, even though Google Maps is faster. You can display a map as a standard line drawing, a satellite image, or a hybrid of the two and view or hide a tiny map-within-the-map. Icons above the map let you print it, e-mail it, send it to a cell phone, or show live traffic conditions.

While Yahoo's satellite views don't zoom in as closely as those on Google Maps or the Windows Live Local beta, there are no blank spots, so you can find any location in the world. Also, Yahoo beautifully smoothes its map images from different satellites better than Google does.

Yahoo Maps' links draw upon the company's wealth of local business directories. We found it more handy than Google for finding specific stores and services within a given area.

See more CNET content tagged:: Google Maps,; Yahoo! Inc.,; beta,; satellite,; satellite image

User reviews

Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 11 reviews
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Showing 3 of 11 user reviewsSee all 11 user reviews
3.5 stars

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful

"awesome features...just one quirk"

by atreya19 on May 29, 2006

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1.5 stars

"Stopped Working!!"

by IKTHUSRJD on February 11, 2008

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4.0 stars

"Yahoo and google have quirks"

by psedog on July 7, 2006

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Yahoo Maps beta

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