Help improve the “blue dot” for people visiting your venue
April 5th, 2012 | Published in Uncategorized, Google Earth
When we announced the availability of indoor maps for Android last November, we also introduced Google Maps Floor Plans as a tool for business owners to upload the floor plans for their venue and have them appear in Google Maps for Android. Today we’re releasing the Google Maps Floor Plan Marker app, which enables those who’ve uploaded floor plans to improve the indoor location accuracy their visitors experience when using indoor maps within their venue. The app is available for people in the United States through Google Play.
If you’ve uploaded a floor plan through the Google Maps Floor Plans tool, once you install the Google Maps Floor Plan Marker app, you’ll be guided through the process of walking around the entire surface area of your place of interest. Using the app, you collect data from sources such as GPS, cell tower, and publicly broadcast WiFi information that can help us make the My Location feature’s familiar “blue dot” icon accessible for Android users when they’re inside the venue. The time it takes to complete this process depends on the size of the venue, but you can pause and resume a marking task at any time if you want to take breaks.
The information you choose to submit will ultimately help visitors and customers more quickly and easily orient themselves, see where they are and what’s around them. Customers will even be able to see which floor they’re on in buildings with multiple floors, and the map will automatically update to the right floor if they go up or down a level!
To get started, download the Google Maps Floor Plan Marker app from Google Play. The app is currently only available in English for people in United States.