Enginespy.com

The Yahoo! Maps team is happy to announce the single biggest imagery update on maps.yahoo.com since the program inception. While we've steadily added new cities around the world every month (over 500 now) since the beginning, we haven't made as much of a change in the US until today. Our latest release improves both breadth and depth.

Going wide, we've made big improvements in our wall-to-wall coverage of the United States, improving our back-drop data for a number of complete states, including California, Oregon, New York, the Carolina's, and numerous other states in the west and midwest. State-wide, you'll see an improvement in freshness, color and clarity. Here's an example up at McCloud, CA, which is a beautiful part of California near Mt. Shasta.

Going deep, and I think more importantly, we’ve enabled up to 2 extra zoom levels of aerial photography and satellite imagery for the Satellite button for hundreds of cities around the US. Not only can you see more detail, but in many places the imagery has gotten a welcomed refresh as well. To see what I mean, check this out new view of Denver City Hall.

I've always believed that satellite and aerial imagery adds an important context to understanding our maps and driving directions, and with this update, I hope you'll agree with me that this feature is even more useful.

Cheers,

Michael Lawless, Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps