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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google adds Smart Navigation to Streetview

I have always found StreetView very cool but very frustrating due to the infinite time spent navigating the view. Google has introduced an upgrade that now makes it much more usable. From the Lat-Long Blog announcing the upgrade:

Today, we are really excited to introduce a new mode of navigation which liberates you from the road arrows and gets you where you want to go in just a few clicks. You can now use Street View’s smart navigation to travel to a new place just by double clicking on the place or object you would like to see. We have been able to accomplish this by making a compact representation of the building facade and road geometry for all the Street View panoramas using laser point clouds and differences between consecutive pictures.

As you move your mouse within Street View, you’ll notice that the cursor now has lightly-shaded geometry attached to it – it will show an oval when your mouse is following a road and a rectangle when moving across the facades of buildings. We affectionately refer to this cursor geometry as the “pancake” because it has the appearance of a pancake laying flat to the object where the mouse is pointing. By giving you a sense of depth,it makes the flat image almost feel three-dimensional!

Here is a vide that describes the new feature:

Take a tour of the street of the Frank Llyod Wright designed Martin Darwin House in Buffalo to see how it works:


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