Yesterday Google Blogoscoped pointed out a hack for your Google Maps that would allow you to zoom much farther that you might think in just a few steps.
- Select the location you’d like to zoom in on and switch to satellite view.
- Zoom in as far as it will let you, and then click on the “link to this page” which is found in the top right corner.
- Replace the “z” parameter in the URL with a larger value like 20, 23, etc.
- You’re all set! If more detail is available, it will show it.
The key word in that last step is if. Every location that I tried to zoom further in on didn’t work. I went back to the Google Blogoscoped blog to see what everybody was saying about it, and it appears as though most of the images that I’ve seen where people have been able to zoom in to extremely close levels were from Google’s Australia Day 2007 fly-over.
Other images of animals in Africa (like the image of camels above) are most likely from the National Geographic project with Google where more than 92,000 photos were taken over a period of a year by an aero-photographer all across the country.
A couple of places where this trick is known to work is right over the Googleplex in California, and in New York. I gave New York a try, and it actually worked at a Zoom level of 20. Below is the before and after picture in New York.
Give it a try, if you find another location where this works, post it in the comments below.
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Tags: Google
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well it appears that Google Maps isn’t working correctly because it can’t find my house anymore, when I type in addresses it just gives an aprox location, which is no where near where it’s suppose to be, and it use to work fine.
Wonders how long this trick of zooming in will last.
Hmmm… your house has vanished? Yikes, I’d guess Google Maps is having some problems then!
It maxed out for me at 19, which is pretty clear and zoomed in, yet I can get this far with the slider. I have to admit, this is much further zoomed than I can get with Yahoo! maps, although I like the look and feel of Y! maps (despite the oversized ad that somehow ignore my AT&T status).
Google Maps is the only one that has a high-resolution image of our house, and Live Maps has a low resolution image that’s black and white…and I think that is horrible. I do like the interface for Yahoo maps a little more but Google’s satellite imagery is better.
Apparently, it doesn’t work anymore
Though, we saw the patch of camels lazing by.
I posted a response to this story over at Google Sightseeing.
Basically, yes there are a couple of locations around the world where you can zoom in a wee bit further, but it’s no better than using Google Earth.