Apple has continued its recent efforts to improve its mapping service by partnering with several new data providers, according to Apple Maps Marketing. The company has historically partnered with companies like TomTom, as well as its own in-house mapping data and others for its information.
These new companies don’t yet appear on the list of map data attributions, Apple is recommending businesses who wish to submit bulk locations to be listed in its Maps app instead go through one of the company’s partners, including these ten new names:
- DAC Group
- Location3 Media
- Marquette Group
- Placeable
- PositionTech
- SIM Partners
- SinglePlatform
- UBL
- Yext
- Yodle
This list isn’t a complete representation of Apple’s partners, and even the full list in the email to inquiring businesses (which includes previously-known partners) doesn’t include every single one of Apple’s providers, but the above ten companies certainly appear to be brand new additions to the lineup.
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Good news.
Once iOS8 came out I switched to Apple Maps and have never looked back. Apple maps have steadily improved to exceed the quality of the Google maps products, including GMaps and Waze. Google products are great at showing ads. Google now just gets in the way.
Apple Maps simply works and gets me where I’m going in the fastest, most accurate, and least painful way.
Ever since Google thought they “won” the map war, Google increased ads to the point Google Maps is stupid. I can’t both drive and see where I’m going AND dismiss annoying Google ads all at the same time. Google’s posture here is close to criminal, and undoubtably evil.
As Google inflates advertising, Google products become much less enjoyable to use.
I agree. I have honestly never had an issue with it. It works quite well for me and has gotten better since launch. Any addtitions such as this serve only to make it better. And yes, Google Maps has gotten quite bad since they “won.”
years later this is still being worked on…. ugh.
As is Siri and many other Apple features that didn’t work well out if the box.
Speaking of, how is the bug fix of the latest bug fix working ???
Meanwhile, android is flawless, right? 0 bugs, 0 lag, 0 copying from Apple and instantly delivered on all hardware. And every android feature is so kickass at v1.0, it never has to be improved beyond that version.
And even features like Siri, which did natural language interpretation before G Now (or your favorite S Voice for that matter) existed, can now control home automation and has great accessibility features like altering settings on the device. But it’s all worthless and inferior, right?
Clueless.
Google is still “working” on adding locations and violating our privacy, 10+ years later. Get over it. Mapping software has much to catch up with old school maps. And they ned to always work on improving accuracy. All map software does, especially if they live in real time on the Internet.
Thanks for posting this Mike. An interesting point is that many of these new providers are more like marketing agencies (e.g. Yodle, Marquette Group, Location3, etc.) than pure data providers. My guess is that Apple figured this would be the fastest way to get the cleanest data for the top multi-location brands. Since these companies tend to have direct relationships with the brands, my guess is Apple will trust this data more than it does the data from the big listings aggregators like Neustar Localeze. So Apple has just given these companies a direct pipeline into their system which should be great for map data quality and super great for these businesses’ bottom lines.
These 10 are all advertising agencies that offer the service of enrolling a client in all the different Maps services. They have long advertised that they will put you in Apple Maps.
Nothing new – they would have always been “providers”.
I don’t think that’s accurate MT. I know many of these companies well. While some made the claim that they could help get you on AM, I don’t think any of them explicitly sold it as a service because in reality the best they could do was submit your listing to all of the data aggregators that fed into AM. Yext has never sold their service as an Apple Maps solution (full disclosure: Yext is a client of mine) and as of this posting still hasn’t publicly disclosed they are working with Apple – see http://www.yext.com/products/listings/network/.
The something new here is that Apple has explicitly disclosed that these companies are now direct pipelines into Apple Maps and now that the cat is out of the bag, I guess these companies can now advertise as such.
Anyhow not trying to make tempest in a teapot, but in the local search industry, this is kind of a big deal.
Yes, for a fee.
So this is essentially enlarging the sales force of telemarketers.
… or it’s providing a service for money like most other businesses. They are middlemen, yes, but their services are solicited by customers… again, like most other businesses.
The best map is one that guides you to your destination, accurately and simply.
This is where Apple fails.
I detest maps used as tools to try to solicit business that happens to be a long the way.
Yes, it’s a tool to convince you to buy things but it won’t help your navigation experience.
But then, when has Apple Maps been anything other than a punchline?
maps has been fantastic for me. It even found a dr office google could not.
I wish they’d add a weather layer to map apps. don’t need too much info just where it’s raining/snowing and severe weather warnings like tornadoes, etc.
I am skeptical. Apple has had two years to improve Maps and has not done so. In my home state of Oklahoma there has been no discernable improvement, all while Google Maps and OSM have continually improved. It’s reached the point where Apple needs to totally overhaul Maps or abandon the effort altogether.