Does Google Maps make sense on a photo site?

[Forrest]

I know ten million people have asked if Google Maps would help their cruddy MFA site come up in the search rankings. But hear me out: I'm not looking for or expecting any SEO benefit from this.

I've driven coast to coast half a dozen times; the most recent was a two month journey. I've always loved geography, and I've collected photos from a lot of different places within the Continental US. I've even pushed my way up into Canada more than a few times.

On each page in my site that has a single photo, I list the date, general location, and exposure settings ... the last part because I get a lot of traffic from other photographers, and used to answer a lot of email asking for that stuff before I added it to the page. FYI, I strip out the exif layer from my jpegs, mainly to get rid of the 20 to 30 KB thumbnail embedded there. And then a bit of copy about the photo, the circumstances of the day, or whatever strikes me when I build the page.

So, along with the rest of this info, a map zoomed out to the country level would be in context. The downsides are the work it will take to find the long/lat, and, if you'll forgive my ego, the angel on my shoulder doesn't like the idea of attracting thousands of people to remote, untrampled places. You know, when I'm as famous as Ansel Adams.

[SEFL]

I think it sounds like a cool feature, if for no other reason than you're giving a little more information on your photograph and the area around it. Some people like maps and like knowing where things are (such as me...for some reason, I find them somewhat hypnotic.)

I say go for it, bro.

[Forrest]

I love their maps, too, but I know I'm unusual enough to make a bad focus group. But I've been giving some thought to how the satellite view could work with this new design I'm trying to build.

I used Google Maps a couple years ago in an intranet CRM application. A salesperson would pull up a customer, and have some tabs under the main info; one of them had a GMap showing the office, the customer if we could geocode their address, and people loved it. But then in that situation it was useful, and not just informational.

Still, I just really like geography. If I can figure out how to take a Photoshop texture and get a tile-able background I'm thinking to center a 900 px block with the photo, and I'm not sure if it'll be a really tall page with scrolling, or use something like tabs with j-script.

[Dave Hawley]

I have a Google map on my site....................but I can't find it ;)

SEFL, I heard Google is deleting Canada from their maps as it occupies to much space :D

[Comeran]

Originally posted by Dave Hawley
SEFL, I heard Google is deleting Canada from their maps as it occupies to much space :D

Actually they are removing it because "it is a waste of too much space" not because it merely occupies too much space. Besides anyone in or going to Canada must be lost anyway, what good would a map do them?

8)

[WebSavvy]

Originally posted by Forrest
The downsides are the work it will take to find the long/lat....
That won't be as "hard" as you think. :)

One of the reasons I've had so very little free time is because of some new things I've added to the directory. In just a few days you'll be able to use our HAM Weather application and find the lat/lon for any city, any state, any country on the planet. :)

Plus, I've been busy with a few other little neat things too.

I still have to get back to your review thread, and I will .. just have been completely swamped -- and with the shoulder injury, you know how much fun it isn't ;)

Forrest, I think the maps would make a really nice addition to your photos.

[SEFL]

Originally posted by Comeran
Actually they are removing it because "it is a waste of too much space" not because it merely occupies too much space. Besides anyone in or going to Canada must be lost anyway, what good would a map do them?

8)

We'd all know which direction we were going on the only road here, like in that one South Park episode. :D

[polarmate]

Forrest, if you have mapped the location in Google Maps and it is centered, it's v easy to find the lat/long.

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));
(Please delete the space between java and script in the code above as VB seems to be adding that space for security reasons.)

Copy that into your address bar and it will pop up the lat/long of the place.

Better still create a new Bookmark (Firefox), give it a meaningful name and paste the code to the 'Location' field and create a Bookmarklet that you can use over and over again with Google Maps.

The only caveat is that you need to have the location you mapped in the dead center of Google Maps. So make sure that you have not moved the maps around.

<edited to add>I believe there are Greasemonkey scripts out there that will do the same thing. I haven't tried or tested those so I can't say either ways. I kind of like this bookmarklet. </edited>

[Forrest]

Thanks, PolarMate!

I've seen a few applications, and even written one, that take the GMap sample code, and change a span's innerHTML property to show the long and lat after you center a map.

For some of my photos, the ones I shot in Seattle or San Francisco, I can just look up the cross streets and get pretty accurate coordinates, but for the bulk of them, probably around 80 or so, I'll have to play with the maps and grab this stuff.

But then I guess making a decent web site is supposed to be work...

[polarmate]

Just remember that innerHTML was introduced by Microsoft for IE. Although it appears that Firefox now supports it to a certain extent (http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/DOM:element.innerHTML), it is not W3C compliant and it's better to use the DOM.

[Forrest]

To follow up ... I've been implementing this on the blog I created to extend my site. You can't do as much in word press, because it rewrites your code, but what I managed to do people seem to enjoy...

[Comeran]

Do you have any advice for others going to do this?

Any downsides?

Com-