*** Links updated for 2023 using Create a Custom Map URL - Bing Maps | Microsoft Learn ***
The Live Search Maps China site just got some improvements. Innovation is burning like wildfire worldwide.
Driving Direction – New!
- Country-wide (mainland China) road coverage
- Inter-city (e.g. Beijing to Shanghai) and intra-city (e.g. Tiananmen to Bird’s Nest in Beijing) directions
- Multi-point directions (e.g. Tiananmen to Bird’s Nest to MS office)
- New data pipeline for China driving data
Transit Direction
- Improved performance by reducing engine average response time by 27% without quality degradation
- China is now the first Virtual Earth market to ship both Driving and Transit Directions
Real-time traffic:
Send-to-mobile
- Switched to new SMS channel with better coverage (GSM and CDMA) and higher success rate (>97%)
Local Search
- Improved Coverage for Map Answer and Phonebook Answer
- Map Answer triggered by query pattern “location + map (地图)”, e.g. search for “北京 地图”
- Rich UX in Phonebook Answer with map thumbnail (currently at 5% flight), e.g. search for “上海 ATM”
- Phonebook Answer triggered by location detection
Data updates
- 337 cities with street level map (previously 289);
- 10M POI/YP records (previously 7M) for 337 cities (previously 114);
- 600+ categories for Local Search (previously 200+)
- ~15K crawled and merged records in POI/YP data
I need to track down all these international updates. We’re going worldwide so fast!