Thursday, October 13, 2011

MapQuest Launches Neighborhood Pages

Denver-based MapQuest has launched a new expansion of the mapping site this morning, with a push into neighborhood information pages. MapQuest said its new MapQuest Vibe effort pulls together local neighborhood information on 50,000 neighborhoods around the nation, across 27,000 cities, covering 98 percent of the population of the U.S. The new Vibe feature pulls together the top restaurants and other businesses, geolocated by a specific neighborhood, which are selected by algorithm--ranked via a proprietary "VibeRank"--for the amount of activity and interest in those restaurants and locations. In a conference call explaining the new features, MapQuest said that the move came because the firm noticed that users have been moving from the need for maps and directors, to local searches for businesses. The company said it has also used data points it has been collecting over the last 15 years to determine where people are going, to help more accurately identify the best restaurants in a location. The MapQuest team also said that it hopes to use the data gathered from the new MapQuest Vibe feature to further personalize and suggest information for users.