Goofgle has vastly improved the utility of Google maps for Indians by adding landmarks to driving direction in India. Now while navigating using Google Maps, you will find direction such as “Turn right after the petrol pump” rather than “Take a left towards the Highway 7”.
With the lack of proper road signs in India, most of us Indians do have to rely on visible landmarks such a petrol pumps, prominent shops, and dead cows. The service used the landmark data contributed by users, and their new algorithm judges which landmark would be most suitable for navigation.
Based on how important the landmarks are and how close they are to turns, Google maps is able to give useful directions. It will also combine turn counts (e.g. “the 2nd turn”), road names, intersection names etc. for giving you the best information available. All this information will also be available on Google Maps for Mobile.
Here is a look from Google of how the new directions compare to the ones before:
To help make this feature even better, you can contribute information about your locality using Google Maps Maker.