Google Maps has lately become a community-driven platform where contributions from users themselves have made the experience a lot more useful. For example, finding reviews, inputs, real-life images as well as incident reporting have all made it way more than just a mapping and navigation platform. And soon, Google Maps will let you be an architect of roads – without a degree in architecture – by letting you draw new and missing roads on it.

Of course, Google will verify your road scribbling adventures before they go live for others

Actually, Google Maps will let you do more than that. Aside from drawing new roads on Google Maps, you can also add those that are missing from the map view, rename them if the service has not yet updated the new moniker of a road(s), and even delete those that no longer exist. And in case a road has been closed, users will be able to contribute details such as when and why the closure happened, and alternative directions to a spot that avoids such closed roads.


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Of course, your entries will be assessed and verified by the company before the changes start appearing for others on Google Maps. The company says that the ability to tweak road information on Google Maps will start appearing to users in more than 80 countries over the coming months. All you have to do is click on the side menu button, tap on the “Edit the map” option and select the “Missing road” option to be a good samaritan. But do keep in mind that this facility is available only on the desktop version.

Google Maps is also getting a useful updates tool

google maps recent updates

Google Maps is getting another useful tool that will let you add photos of a place without having to go full ‘local guide’ and adding reviews and other information to the community-sourced database. When you look up a place on Google Maps and go to the “Updates” section, you will now see a new ‘Add a photo update’ button that will let you contribute photos. And if you feel like it, you can also add a few words to describe the place. This “updates” section is also where you can find the latest photos of a place, giving a good idea about how it has been lately,