About a month ago, Google announced Tell Maps, a way for Google Maps contributors to use AI to tell Google Maps more about places. "You can suggest edits conversationally, right from Ask Maps and the Contribute tab," Google said about Tell Maps.
This feature is now rolling out within Google Maps.
Google wrote:
Insights from over 500 million contributors play a big role in keeping Maps fresh and helpful, and now we’re making it simpler to share updates. You can suggest edits conversationally, right from Ask Maps and the Contribute tab. You can even upload a photo of a storefront sign — Maps will detect the new hours from the image, and ask you to confirm before submitting the suggestion for you. As always, Maps’ built-in protection systems review suggested edits for accuracy, and won’t post suggestions that violate our policies. It’s also easy to tell Maps about an insider tip — just say something like “more parking is available behind the building,” and Ask Maps will surface this helpful information to others in the community.The live transit widget, more personalized responses, and remembering past conversations in Ask Maps are rolling out now everywhere Ask Maps is available. Food ordering, discovering hotels and events, and conversational contributions are rolling out now in the U.S., with more countries to come over time. With these updates, we hope Ask Maps makes navigating your day just a little easier.
Claudia Tomina posted on LinkedIn that this feature is now starting to roll out. She wrote:
I tested it this week, and it's genuinely agentic. Meaning the AI isn't just answering questions, it's taking action on your behalf: finding the listing, formatting the contribution, and posting it for you.Here's what I found. - It could not locate a service area business I tried to mark as nonexistent. - I posted a tip and it appeared ready to publish as a customer post. It's currently under review, not live yet. - I asked it to leave a review. Instead of doing it for me, it handed me a link to leave the review myself. That step is not agentic yet.
Here is her screenshot of this:
Here is the original video Google posted of this:
Amy Toman wrote, "look forward to digging in." And Darren Shaw wrote, "If enough people use this feature to tell Google something about your business, Google may pick up on it and use it as a relevance signal in search and AI results. If you want to be bad, you can also use this feature to tell Google that your competitor is rude and that their services suck. So, we’ll have to see how Google handles sabotage."
Here is the Google help document on this feature.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
