Thursday, April 10, 2014

MapQuest In Major Overhaul, Pushes Towards Local Discovery

Denver-based MapQuest rolled out a major overhaul to its service Wednesday--and announced a number of big partnerships--to make the site more relevant to local discovery and search. MapQuest.com said the launch is a "completely reimagined" experience specifically focused on local discovery, a move which shifts the company away from being just a mapping site to more of a search engine--which have increasingly been encroaching on the company's original focus on online mapping. Among the moves are deep integration with FourSquare, GrubHub, SinglePlatform, Booker, SeatGeek, the FAA, and much more--including letting users order or book a restaurant reservation online, booking travels directly from a widget, and immediate information on flight and travel delays. The move comes as search engines such as Google, Bing, and others have supplanted MapQuest's original, mapping-only functionality with their own integration of mapping into their services over the last decade or so. MapQuest called the move a "game-changer" for its current and new users.