Heather Hopkins’ analysis of MapQuest and Google Maps traffic trends in her post GoogleMaps Making Inroads Against Leader, Mapquest reveals more than is obvious at first glance about Google’s market share gain in the maps race. While Yahoo’s share decline has been steady over the year, Google’s jumps appear to have come at the immediate and direct expense of MapQuest.

Greg’s post made me more aware that Google has made multiple moves to increase their map share. I have identified Google’s “actions for each of their first three spikes (I am sure that a more nuanced and detailed chart would likely show more):

1- Google removed links to other mapping products SearchEngine Land January 16, 2007

2- Google upgraded the onebox with more links to maps January 31, 2007

3- Google roled Maps out to many more countries. Sept. 14, 2007

Hitwise in the past has confirmed that there is a lag in their data is due to the nature of of their data collection and Google’s rollout schedule of the update. Thus the ramp up in market share starts slightly after the announcement. It appears that Mapquest makes a rebound after the initial loss but never back to their original numbers.Each of the first three events were due to different strategies on the part of Google. In case one they removed links that sent visitors off to other maps sites. In case two they added a significant number of inbound links to maps. In case three they expanded their markets served.

It is not clear what caused the impacts at points 4 and 5, perhaps someone can fill in the blanks.