Campus buildings depicted on Google Maps?

[Doug Thompson]

I have noticed that, for some colleges and universities, every building is depicted with a grey building outline and text label on the out-of-the-box Google Maps (what you get to when you go straight to maps.google.com...no custom overlays involved or anything like that).

 

At first I thought it was a "campus within a large city" issue, but the more I look, the more I'm finding relatively isolated campuses that are presented this way while their surrounding city/cities have no such detail.

 

This is coming up because, just in the past couple weeks or so, I have noticed a few of our campus buildings show up in this way on Google Maps...but not all of them. No buildings in our surrounding city are depicted, so it's not something that happened because Google was plotting the buildings for the entire city or anything.

 

The weird part being that nobody here (that I know of) was involved in getting this to happen...it just sort of "magically" appeared.

 

So, my main question is...is there something that we can do (someone we can contact, a form we can fill out, etc.) to get our entire campus depicted on the plain-vanilla Google Maps?

 

Thanks in advance for any help/advice anyone can provide on this,

 

Doug Thompson

Manager of Web and Electronic Communications

Ohio Wesleyan University

[Dave Olsen]

As far as I know our buildings magically appeared as well but I have been eyeing Google's Base Map Partner Program for adding our campus sidewalks. Unfortunately we haven't gotten the data yet. Maybe it'd help for adding building locations/outlines? I believe schools sometimes get Google reps as well who can help with map issues.

 

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/basemap/

[Mike Vysocka]

Doug,

 

I believe they sometimes take and use data from Google's Building Maker**:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwh/buildingmaker.html

 

** "Building Maker is a 3D modeling tool for adding buildings to Google Earth"

 

I could be mistaken but, at one point, I believe Google ran a 'map my campus' challenge for students, and data was taken from some of the submissions.

 

-- 
Mike Vysocka
Web Design and Application Development
College of Engineering
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC

[e-mail]  |  twitter.com/thewebvy

Find my office with Google Maps:
http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/maps/people/mjvysock/

[Carlene Kelly]

We recently saw this as well, and were wondering if there was a connection between the school using the Google Map API (which we do, and all of our buildings show up) and using another mapping image.

 

Our highly un-scientific study seemed to generally support this. Would love to hear more, especially if a school has buildings showing up and they do NOT use Google Maps for their campus map...

[Doug Thompson]

We do not currently use Google Maps for our campus map, yet three of our buildings show up. Of course, there are dozens of buildings that do not show up, but...it's a start?

[Carlene Kelly]

Interesting... I found it especially odd because some of the names Google uses on their map match exactly what we have on ours (and it's not just a common description).

 

Most likely it's a combination of factors...

[Doug Thompson]

Google Maps seems to be a little bit wonky sometimes...for example, there's a BP gas station showing up smack dab in the middle of our residential-only side of campus where our frat houses and whatnot are located.

Our Chief Information Officer just told me that he found a resource (I don't know if it was a physical person he can contact or a Web link or what) at Google Maps that he was able to request the addition of a building label and, after about 30 days or so, it showed up on the map.

That seems horribly inefficient for adding 50+ buildings, though...

[Marie Raney]

We don't use it either (but plan to!) but a few of our buildings show as well. Not all correctly labeled - I used the "Report a Problem" at the bottom right of the map to report the naming issues. They say they'll email me when the change is made!

[Svend Holst]

Hello Doug,

 

I've been trying to contact them, without luck. (Anyone have a phone number?)

 

Google did just let folks mark up maps themselves @ mapmaker.google.com. I've started adding buildings, and they're approved after three or four days. To see my work in progress, do a Google search for "3200 5th street, sacramento ca." I've added a couple points of interest, but they haven't shown up yet.

 

Cheers,

 

Svend

[Michael Plyler]

Most of our buildings appear within just a few hours if several google accounts (3-4) login to MapMaker and approve the community edits as highly accurate.

[Michael McCready]

Does anyone know when MapMaker will be available in Canada?