Know where you are

Posted by Terry Garcia, Executive VP Mission Programs, National Geographic

Welcome to Geography Awareness Week 2006.

National Geographic has been exploring and inspiring people to care about the planet for more than a century. But today -- with new geo-technologies such as Google Earth, Google Maps and the National Geographic-ESRI MapMachine — anyone hooked into the web can explore any place on Earth at the click of a mouse. Caring begins with seeing, and there’s no better way to see a place than to be there. So we know these new geographic tools mean better stewardship of our world’s extraordinary places, animals, and cultures.

This year we’re celebrating Africa. My Wonderful World — the National Geographic-led campaign for geographic literacy — has teamed up with Google to create a new Geography Awareness Quiz on Google Earth that lets you test your global IQ as you tour the continent.

All week, we’ll also highlight innovative projects that bring Africa to the rest of the world, such as Michael Fay’s Megaflyover, National Geographic magazine’s coverage of Africa on Google Earth, and the Koobi Fora Research Project -- on our My Wonderful World blog. We hope you’ll join us!

Keep track of your Maps searches, too

Posted by Vlad Adzic, Software Engineer

Google Personalized Search now includes Google Maps, which means you'll no longer have to remember searches you do for addresses, businesses, or directions on Maps. Instead, you'll be able to browse, search for, and bookmark them directly from your search history, just as you already can with your web, images, news, Froogle, and video history.

If you already have Personalized Search enabled, you can access your history through the "Search History" link in the upper right corner of Google Maps. Otherwise, you can sign up for Personalized Search, and make sure you're signed in to your Google Account when searching.

It's all about location

Posted by Ethan Russell, Product Manager

We've had lots of success working with the real estate industry to make home listings more easily discoverable on Google. And we're constantly attending real estate industry events and working daily with partners to help connect them with potential home buyers by adding more and more of their listings to Google web search. Over and over again, we hear from you: keep it free and keep it simple and keep it free.

So today, on our first day at the NAR event in New Orleans, we're happy to let you know that we've further simplified the process for real estate providers looking to make listings searchable on Google (and it's free, of course). Regardless of what kind of real estate professional you are, now you can easily go to one page to upload your listings to Google Base so that people can find them through Google. There are even dedicated pages for you --whether you're brokers, agents, MLS , or IDX vendors.

If you're tech-savvy, you can of course continue to send listings to Google Base yourself. But in any case we hope you find the many upload options available to you friendly and easy to use. If you're interested in Google and real estate, do check out all of the tools available to you. And if you happen to be in New Orleans this weekend, stop by our NAR booth.