Last year in November Google opened up Maps to community editing, allowing people to move the pushpin markers to correct or improve the accuracy of business locations. John Hanke, Director of Maps & Earth, told us at the time that Google would move beyond just place markers and allow registered users to edit Maps more generally. Yesterday Google told us that users will now be able to edit any of the details about a business or location or add new businesses, even if they’re not the business owner.
The rest of this post is at Search Engine Land.
Meanwhile MapQuest adds real-time traffic. Now all the major mapping competitors offer it.
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Update: Yesterday in my SEL post I said that Yahoo! hasn’t had a problem (so far as I was aware) in allowing users to edit listings. However, today I was corrected. This blog post shows and argues that the open editing policy has resulted in lots of affiliate spam on Yahoo! Local. And, by implication, the risk is there for Google in the new policy.
Screenwerk 
March 19, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Responding to the update:
At least with Google, you can still verify and lock out any edits to your business. With Yahoo it seems that the only way to lock out edits is to advertise with Yahoo Local or their yellow pages.
March 19, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Yes re claiming the listing and locking out on Google.
March 26, 2008 at 12:25 pm
[…] of anyone the edit listings in Yahoo! Local, which has been the policy for almost two years. Google recently adopted the same […]