The search engine giant has optimized its service “My Maps” as well as the route planner of the local search offering, providing small but useful functions.

Until now, those wanting to generate a set of directions using the route planning facility had to enter a start address under “Calculate Route”, and then enter one for the destination. This is no longer absolutely necessary, according to Nick Lee, software engineer for Google, in a post in the Google Lat Long Blog. Once can now enter simply start location, and a keyword in the end fields, instead of specifying a location or exact address, for instance “pizza, restaurant, hairdresser, movies or museum.”

In this case, the generated results are displayed in a list along side the map. These are sorted by distance from the entered starting point. And if one clicks on one of these generated results, it is then automatically taken as the chosen destination, and the route is planned accordingly. However, one is also able to specify the exact address to speed up the process.

Placemarks, lines and shapes now can be reordered
Another new feature introduced as a result of user feedback is the ability to reorder items to the left of “My Maps”, as described in another post on Google’s Lat Long Blog. Logged-in users are now able to move and rearrange items per drag and drop, according to their needs – geographically, alphabetically or whatever…