We had a big year at MapQuest and we wanted to thank you for being a part of it!
Here’s just a quick run down of the 2012 highlights:

Big Plans for 2013

In 2013, you’ll see us continue to improve what you’ve come to love about MapQuest, including exciting new products that move us further along in our vision for the future: to inspire your travel time, family time, free time, anytime; wherever the map meets your life.

Every month, 36+ MILLION^* of you shared the journey with us.
Looking forward to another great year with you!

Onward!
Your friends at:

As MapQuest grows, we don’t want to just get people where they want to go. We want to inspire them to explore new places. And the way we do that is by extending our products and services to help throughout the entire trip-cycle: inspiring, planning, experiencing, and sharing travels and adventures.

Putting all these experiences together in an engaging platform will let one person’s account of their trip or a professional travel article inspire others to travel. And when they share their adventures, it will then inspire more fellow travelers.

Today we’re excited to announce MapQuest Discover. This early beta focuses on the inspiration piece of the trip-cycle by providing a photo-centric social and travel experience centered on places that people may want to explore, whether it’s for a night out, weekend trip, or vacation of a lifetime.

Users of Discover can create and share collections of favorite places (“My favorite pubs” or “The Best Golf Courses in North America”) or make bucket lists (“100 Places to see before I kick the bucket”). In addition to these user-generated collections, Discover contains travel guides written by travel experts.





MapQuest Discover’s homepage is an infinitely scrolling newsfeed of popular Places, Collections and Travel Guides. From here, users can quickly Like a Place, mark that they have Been to a Place, or Add a Place to one of their own Collections.

Collection pages include photos of all the Places in the Collection and also have a Leaderboard which shows which Discover users have been to the most Places in that Collection, providing for good natured bragging rights (“I’ve been to 49 of the 50 states!”). A user’s Passport serves as their profile page and shows all the places a user has been, collections they created, and more.





To complement MapQuest Discover and add more depth to our user’s travel planning experience, we’ve overhauled MapQuest Local. These redesigned pages about states, cities, places, and neighborhoods now contain reviews, deals, travel guides, related collections, and all the new features from MapQuest Discover.

For over 16 years, MapQuest has played an important role in helping people navigate the world. With the launch of MapQuest Discover and the overhaul of MapQuest Local, we’re excited about not just getting people where they want to go, but inspiring them to go there.

Vijay Bangaru, VP Product

As part of this effort, MapQuest Vibe will be rebranded as MapQuest Local, still offering Vibe rankings and scores, voting, rich neighborhood information and the complete local experience you’ve grown to love. You’ll see the new logos across the MapQuest products – from our websites to our free apps.

Watch for more exciting news soon. In the meantime, keep travelin’.

We even used our big data and what we know about where people like to go to create our latest local discovery product, MapQuest Vibe.   If you haven’t had a chance to download one of the top free travel apps in the iPhone store, go to www.mqvibe.com or search for mqvibe in the iPhone store to help you find cool neighborhoods and the best restaurants, bars, and shopping wherever you are traveling.

We hope you enjoy this look at what’s happening on MapQuest!  If you have any questions or would like additional about the infographic, please contact Anke Corbin at anke.corbin@mapquest.com.

*comScore January 2012

What are MapQuest Premium Listings?
MapQuest offers two types of premium business listings – MapQuest Only and Multi-site. Both options ensure that your business listing not only reflects accurate information, but also helps your business stand out from your competition with a custom marketing message.

Custom Marketing Message in a MapQuest Premium Business Listing

Benefits of MapQuest Only Premium Listings
For only 27 cents per day, MapQuest Only Premium Listings helps your business stand out from the competition with a bright green tag and up to 50 characters of custom marketing text on MapQuest.com. In addition to the benefits of a free listing, the premium listing can help your business gain more clicks, phone calls, requests for directions, or clicks to your website. MapQuest has more than 40MM users per month and they will see your featured services, discount info or any other marketing messages when they’re searching for that category.

Benefits of Multi-site Premium Listings
If you upgrade to the Multi-site Premium Listing Package, your marketing message and listing information will not only be reflected on MapQuest, but also on 8 or more major sites including: Yelp, Yahoo!, SuperPages, CitySearch, White Pages, Yellowbook, YellowBot and LOCAL.  For about $1 per day, you can control your business listing across all of these sites from one location and ensure that your business information, such as your address, phone number, website and more, are accurate.  Rest assured that your listing is up-to-date and standing out when potential customers are searching are searching for your business.

How to Optimize Your Marketing Message
Here are some tips you can use for your premium listing Special Offer message.  You change the Special Offer message at any time and it will update on the site within four hours. You can also track the total impressions and clicks to your business listing to see how effective it is.

• Use your daily specials, like daily discount, happy hour, and latest products. These can attract more customers who are looking for good deals.
• Add your Featured Products and Services to help you get closer to your target market.
• Use your Awards as tag messages, as customers would always like to choose the business recognized as the best.
• Try your slogan or other messages to separate your business from the competition.

Success Story: Falls Motel
Falls Motel, a motel in International Falls, MN, took advantage of the multi-site premium listing allowing them to not only display accurate information across all the sites, but also highlight their Special Offer marketing message: Clean comfortable rooms at an affordable rate. You can see their listing now on MapQuest.com, Yahoo! and the other popular sites included in the package.

Sign up for a MapQuest Premium Listing today to stand out from your competitors!

Business Photos and Video
Stand out from the crowd by posting photos and a video of your business!  Once you’ve logged into the Local Business Center, go to the Enhance My Listing page and add a “Storefront Photo” so that customers can easily recognize your business from the road. If you have photos of your store’s interior or other relevant photos, add these to “Additional Photos”.  Make sure all photos are high quality images and enter a brief caption describing the photos, ideally using relevant keywords in order to optimize your search engine ranking.  A YouTube video can also be added. Just copy and paste the link to your video into the text box next to the “YouTube Video” section on the same page.

Business Hours and Payment Methods
Help customers easily find your business hours by adding them to the Enhance My Listing page under “Business Hours”. Be specific so that customers know which days of the week and hours of the day you are open. You can also let customers know the types of credit cards accepted, whether you take cash or checks, and if financing and invoicing are available options, under the “Payment Methods” section of the same page.

Location and Parking Tips
Help customers find your business easily by giving them details on where to park.  These could be tips such as “Take the elevator to the 3rd floor, and go to the last door on the right” or, “Look for a blue building with a white door.” Parking can also be a source of difficulty for customers, so it may help them if you provide tips as to the best place to park, how to get there, and how much it will cost. This is also a great place to mention if your business validates parking or offers valet parking. You can make all these edits on the Enhance My Listing page.

Success Story: Play Music & Art
Play Music & Art, a small business in Canton, GA, took full advantage of their listing with a great storefront photo, video and parking info.  Take a peak at their business listing to see what’s possible in your own.

MapQuest users love business listings with photos, videos and parking tips – hopefully you’ll take a few minutes and update your listing with this great info!

Map Locator
When filling out the listing, you will be asked, “Does the business location look correct to you?” Next to the question appears a map showing a marker where MapQuest pinpointed the business address.  Take time and make sure the location is accurate; if the location is incorrect, now is a quick and easy chance to fix it.

Use the business listing tool to move the map markers for your business location. The blue icon reflects the location of your actual building and the red icon is what MapQuest uses to calculate directions.

To get started, just click on the map. From here, you can drag the marker around until the correct location has been found. The marker can be placed anywhere, even if the location is a mile off the main road, the marker can go there. This is helpful for customers who may not know there is a long driveway or access road to the location.

Ensure Accurate Directions
Click the next button to edit the access point to your location. MapQuest uses this icon to calculate directions.  This is helpful if the road to the building is in an unexpected location or if businesses prefer to direct people to a parking lot. The red marker with the car can be moved, but unlike the Map Marker it has to be placed on an road.

MapQuest’s Map Marker Locator tool is ready for businesses to use and map out their location. Companies can update, move, and zoom until comfortable with the marker location and know that every aspect of their listing is correct. Improve and update your listing today at listings.mapquest.com.

Getting Started
To get started on the Local Business Center, you must first claim your business. Make sure that MapQuest has the correct information for your business location, or choose to add a new listing if it doesn’t already exist. Once you have claimed your business, it is time to enter in your basic company information. This is your opportunity to obtain free marketing and show consumers why they should choose you.  Check out our short video tutorial for more tips on how to get started.

Business Listing Name
When entering the company title for your business listing you want to make sure it reflects what your business does. It should be the exact name of your company or organization – no “nicknames” or added tag lines are needed. When people are looking up business listings on the map, this is what will be bolded when they put their cursor over your business location.

Business Listing Details
The main key here is to have all of the company information correct and clear. Be sure to double-check the phone number, website, reservation website, hours, and credit card listings for accuracy. None of this information should be a part of the title; instead, it will be in the ‘more info’ section that a visitor will see when they want to view more details about your business. The time to be creative is in the business listing description.

Business Listing Description
This is the place to market your business and where you want to be creative and concise. The business description should have your competitive advantage, and explain what you do, who you are, and why customers should seek out your business. You want to limit the amount you write while also providing enough detail to showcase your business. This is where you need to take the time to add those SEO keywords about your business to add to your search engine ranking.

Success Story: Gasthas Eichler
Gasthas Eichler, a boutique hotel in Colorado, has all the key qualities of a successful business listing on MapQuest.com. It has a clear, accurate title and the listing has all of the important company information for customers including correct address, phone number, reservations site and website. It has a great description of the business with its competitive advantage and information about specific offerings and amenities.  This listing provides enough information to spark a consumer’s interest when booking a hotel.

In our next blog post of this series, we will give you more tips on creating your business listing.  To take advantage of this free marketing now, just go to listings.mapquest.com and enhance your business listing today!

Fall has many special occasions, and among them the changing of the leaves. Growing up, I was fortunate enough to experience the vibrant reds, oranges, maroons & yellows of Fall in Vermont. I spent my college years in southwest Virginia where the beautiful maroon and orange colors were indicative of my school’s colors and meant that it was football season. These days I’m in Denver, Colorado with a different view of Fall as the Aspens turn a bright green and then to a vibrant gold color. Although the leaves here are beautiful in their own right, I must say that the most beautiful Fall seasons that I’ve experienced were in Vermont & Upstate New York.

If you’re looking for some great foliage viewing and need some ideas, check out this list put together by our friends at Digital City. If you need a few tips for your trip planning, make sure you make use of all of MapQuest’s features:

Low on Funds?

• Check out our handy fuel cost calculator- it uses your car’s gas mileage in conjunction with the length of your trip and gas prices in your area to determine the cost of your route.
• Drag your route to see side roads and more foliage. (Save your route too!)

Looking for hotels to stay at along your route?

• Click on our on-map search tool on the right of the map- you can select either the bed icon or a brand that you prefer on the toolbar. Scroll up or down to see more options.
• Check for restaurants or gas stations too!

Planning in advance?

• Save your trip in your “My Places” account for easy access online OR on your mobile device!
• Check out MapQuest Local to see what else is happening at your destination.

Going on a whim?

• Check out our mobile products for your use on-the-go.

Safe Travels!

While these widgets are extremely useful and functional, none compare to the importance and impactful nature of our new Missing and Exploited Children Widget powered by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

The new widget features pictures and information about children who are missing from your default local area established on local.mapquest.com. You can also search for missing children by name and link directly to NCMEC’s website for other missing children resources.

Continuing a relationship with NCMEC that spans nearly 10 years, AOL and MapQuest believe the new widget is an informative method for anyone to easily help in the search for missing children.

The new widget can be found at http://local.mapquest.com