Los Angeles — MapQuest Inc., a popular online mapping website in the US, owned by AOL — striving to recapture its status as most-visited mapping website from Google Maps — has just unfurled a revamped interface and several new features, with the aim of boosting the site’s capabilities to not only display maps but also inform users about the places shown on them, the company said Tuesday.
Despite voices claiming that AOL had pretty much given up on the venture, Denver-based MapQuest’s maps have been refurbished with enhanced user-interface features, and the familiar logo has changed from funky red type to a bold green “MQ” and a more businesslike typeface.
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Henceforth, the familiar map design and logo appears when a user visits mapquest.com, but the new look is revealed when a user goes to a link that appears on the site, or directly via http://www.new.mapquest.com/.
Among the new and embellished features are a single search box for driving directions, online maps and business listings alike, in addition to a revamped log-in mechanism to MapQuest accounts that now accepts credentials not only from AOL but also OpenID, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Twitter, according to AOL.
“We are committed to furnishing accurate maps and directions to millions of people every day,” said Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MapQuest. “We have invested in creating a new user experience that helps users discover what is there, nearby and along the way, making it more than how to get from Point A to Point B. The MapQuest evolution is underway and aspires to transcend how consumers engage with maps by adding seamless context and sharing capabilities.”
The upgraded mapping and direction service rolled out a host of new options on Tuesday that the company expects will make its site more intuitive and help people plan and discover new places as they travel the roads.
To commence the journey, MapQuest has unveiled a more streamlined and user-friendly interface that resembles the ones you will find at Bing Maps and Google Maps–probably not a coincidence. Type your entire starting address in one field, your ending address in another, and you can then see the directions and mapped route side by side.
MapQuest’s has also attempted to make it easier for users to save, personalize and share information, such as trip itineraries, on AOL and also third-party sites and social media services. The “My Maps” feature lets you save your own personalized maps and directions for future reference. The new MapQuest also taps into the world of social networking, letting you share your My Maps itineraries with other people through Facebook and Twitter.
Furthermore, MapQuest now integrates content from Patch, a service that delivers local news and information, which MapQuest’s owner AOL acquired last year. The main purpose of combining Patch, according to MapQuest, is to educate and inform travelers not only about where they are going but about what places they can find during their journey.
Once the top mapping site in the U.S., MapQuest — which claimed some 49.1 million users in May is now number 2, having been overtaken by Google Maps, according to the latest data from comScore.
VIDEO: Click here for a MapQuest Inc. video presentation about its new features.