Faster trip-planning with saved searches

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 5:49 PM

Do you plan most of your trips using Google Maps? If so, then you're just like me. I love how I can get ratings, driving directions, and even local tips through the My Maps that other people share. Using these tools, I can plan an efficient and productive trip even if I don't know the area. Recently, they helped me plan a great day in San Francisco -- visiting the California Academy of Sciences, eating at a local restaurant called Park Chow, shoe-shopping at a boutique called Huf, and topping it all off with a stroll through the Ferry Building.

While planning my day, I found myself performing the same searches repeatedly in Google Maps, and one feature really makes this a lot easier. In the lower left-hand side of the window, you'll notice a blue plus sign with some of your recent searches next to it, as shown below:



Click this plus sign to expand a list of all the searches you've performed in your current Google Maps session. It evens saves your driving directions! You can see how, in my instance, I was able to bounce around between the places I wanted to visit easily without having to re-type the search query or re-input the driving directions I wanted:



You can even select multiple search terms to display them as one search. This really helps you save time and can even remind you of something you may have searched for earlier.

Happy mapping,
Alvin, Google Maps team

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