mapquest.com

Author's product rating:   

Layout & Design	Excellent
Navigation	Excellent
How fast is this website?	Very fast
Content Update	Very often
Search Facility	Excellent
Quality of the Content	Excellent

Advantages:	Great Content
Disadvantages:	Need to add more countries

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

“Roads…to heaven “
Since the internet generation took a big stroll, people wanted convenience. Convenience is what consumer wants, whether you speak about online shopping by a click of a mouse or listening to music online.

Now everything is simple mouse click away. When we take big names in their respective field we talk like “if it is searches than it has to be google, “if it is shopping than it has to be Amazon”. Similarly one website which has been the most popular destination for all the net surfers in UK and US has been mapquest.com.

Today we talk about everything paperless, whether buying a ticket virtually or whether it is getting a life insurance just clicking the mouse. Its all about brick and mortar generation. In US, if you want to buy a flight ticket from one destination to the other, you don’t have to take the pain of going to the travel agent, pay the money and get the ticket. Now everything can be done with the luxury of sitting in the ac office and just logging on to the internet, get your ticket booked and get a confirmation code, which can be called a e-ticket code. When you reach the airport just give your confirmation code and show your identification, if you are a foreigner than show your passport and if you are the resident of US than show your driving license. Hence, no paper is involved, how simple life has become.

Talking about convenience, there is one website you shouldn’t miss, if your planning a trip to US, UK or Canada and you plan to drive most of the places.

Mapquest.com
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Mapquest.com are the pioneers in the virtual portal for maps. Mapquest is the world leader in online, voice and wireless mapping and driving directions, providing destination information solutions to business partners and consumers anytime, anywhere. It has been consistently ranked in the Top websites and has been satisfying its user with great real-time content. Mapquest is the part of the AOL property group and with such a brand name behind; it has been consistently rising in popularity.

I got to know about Mapquest, around 2 years back when I was handling a client who used to get customer support for a search engine and we used to advice customers to Mapquest for any travel direction related topics. Though Mapquest has been in the Internet arena since 1996. It has seen tremendous growth and my recent visit has shown even some of the Indian maps available but still it is growing as far as the other countries are concerned apart from US, UK and Canada.

From www.mapquest.com, consumers can find millions of locations anywhere in the world, obtain detailed maps and accurate driving directions, locate places of interest, customize road trip plans, and create, save, fax, download or email personalized maps. MapQuest's Yellow and White pages allow people to find contact information for residents and businesses in any city together with maps and directions to get them there.

It also offers consumers many valuable timesaving features like one-click access to saved maps and addresses, a road atlas and real-time traffic reports of more than 65 US cities. Map Quest’s Traffic-at-a-Glance page allows commuters to quickly view traffic incidents on a large overview map and to check out live images from traffic cameras in major cities that are updated every few minutes.

Design..Layout…Content..
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As it is managed by Aol, you don’t expect them to make a bad and pathetic website, but instead it is a website which will be very easy to navigate. The design of the website is up to the international standard, with 2 main colours having all the focus, it’s the cream, reddish and brown colour. They have been pretty consistent as far as the colour and use of fonts are concerned and it’s really easy and very comfortable for the normal consumers eyes. Because being it on the Internet and most consumers are constantly looking at the screen, the map is really visible properly and it doesn’t hurt your eyes much. The website loads pretty faster instead being such content rich website. Though I had some trouble when accessing from India.

Content is king…
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As they say content is king, Mapquest’s survival has been solely on their rich content. The some of the excellent features are :

Street Maps…
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This were their specialty is in, they have into the depth map of the city. For e.g if you are looking for the map of New York, it gives you an accurate result, if there are 2 or more New york’s than it gives you all of them based on their state and you can pick your choice. If you want the street map of NY again, it gives you that, hence getting you the 3rd block or the 4th block. In depth and in detail right from the small street of NY to the big and complete road direction from NY to Atlanta. You have got everything at Mapquest.

Airport Terminals
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It offers Airport terminal maps of the most International airport of the world. The map includes street surrounding the airports, location of parking, rent a car etc.

National Parks of US
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It has got beautifully pictures of National parks of US. I wrote to their customer service and they are very soon going to include NP’s in Canada and UK. It has got everything from things around the National Parks, basic amenities like staying, contact information etc.

Scenic Drives
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MapQuest.com has created beautiful, detailed maps for 53 U.S. National Scenic Byways. In addition to maps, you can find photographs, scenic drive descriptions, helpful notes and contact information for each scenic drive. Estimated driving time and driving distance are also included for all scenic drives.

Apart from this you have got the Topographic Maps & World Atlas

Driving Directions
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You have got detailed driving directions of North America and Europe. So were ever you are, you are hooked on with the maps of North America and Europe.

Road Trip Planner…
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MapQuest.com offers you a comprehensive trip-planning feature. You can give the details of your trip and they will give you maps and driving directions, along with the details of hotels, places you can see, places to eat and things you want do. So next time you are planning for a trip Europe or US then you know were you have to go.

Live Traffic Reports…
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MapQuest.com provides live traffic reports for over sixty major cities across the U.S. Traffic reports include information on the type of traffic incident, severity and expected duration. Traffic information is updated every two minutes. This is called real-time information.

City Guide
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MapQuest.com offers local information for many major cities across the U.S. You can find local dining, entertainment, sports, weather, news and more in MapQuest.com's City Guide.

Customer Service
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They have got a pretty decent customer service who answer your query in quick and accurate manner

Though Mapquest is growing, we still need to see many map’s like detailed maps of Asia, Africa and Australia. If they are planning a global reach they need to gear up faster and give the Internet Community, which is growing with leaps, and bounds where this one big world is one big country for us.

I have been using this site for around 2 years and it is really of great use. So get mapped with this website, and see whether you can see your local street on the world map.

Happy Surfin!!!